Hegseth Goes Off on CNN—and Cheers Planned David Ellison Takeover

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took some pot shots at the media Friday during a press conference and openly salivated over the coming right-wing takeover of CNN.

Hegseth railed against what he described as biased and intentionally misleading graphics and headlines on news reports such as “Mideast War Intensifies,” arguing that such a TV banner should read ‘“Iran Increasingly Desperate’ because they are. They know it, and so do you, if it can be admitted.”

“Or more fake news from CNN: reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. Patently ridiculous, of course. For decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” Hegseth ranted. “This is always what they do, hold the strait hostage. CNN doesn’t think we thought of that. It’s a fundamentally unserious report. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Hegseth is referring to Trump supporter and billionaire David Ellison’s successful takeover bid for CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that portends a shift to the right for the news network. It’s an open admission that the Trump administration, through its wealthy allies and supporters, is trying to take over the media for more favorable coverage and avenues for propaganda.

To drive the point home, Hegseth criticized another “fake headline that I saw yesterday: War Widening.”

“Here’s a real headline for you, for an actual patriotic press: How about ‘Iran Shrinking, Going Underground’? See, Iran’s leaders are hiding in bunkers and moving into civilian areas. The only thing that is widening is our advantage,” Hegseth said.

The term “patriotic press” alludes to a news media that serves the interests of the Trump administration and U.S. government as opposed to the truth and the public interest. Hegseth and his bosses want a pliant media serving their interests under their control, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve shut out publications that refuse to bend the knee or produce fawning coverage.

Vice President JD Vance appears desperate to create daylight between himself and Donald Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, as the president’s inner circle starts to split over the conflict.

Two senior administration officials who spoke with Politico Friday painted an image of a reluctant vice president who stood by his position against U.S. intervention while sitting courtside to Trump’s military onslaught in Iran.

Vance was “skeptical” of the military campaign and “worried about success,” a senior Trump official said over text message. The vice president “just opposes” the war, they added.

Vance’s role “is to provide the president and the administration, you know, all points of views of what could happen from many different angles and, you know, he does that,” said a second senior Trump official. “But once the decision has been made, he’s fully on board.”

Previous reporting on Vance’s position on the war did not include his supposed skepticism. During a meeting in the Situation Room on February 18, Vance said that if the U.S. did launch a military campaign in Iran, it should “go big and go fast,” people familiar with his remarks told The New York Times.

Several journalists called bullshit on Vance’s sudden change of heart. “Why isn’t he advocating a change in policy rather than leaking to POLITICO about his internal monologue from 2 weeks ago?” wrote The Bulwark’s Tim Miller on X.

Matthew Yglesias suggested on X that “this kind of leaking suggests a White House team that knows things aren’t going to get better soon.”

It’s worth noting that Vance isn’t exactly known for standing by his word. But he is gearing up for a presidential run to succeed Trump in 2028—so an off-ramp to supporting the president’s unpopular war is probably looking pretty good right now.

Vance isn’t alone in looking for an exit: America’s wildly expensive aerial bombing campaign has caused some genuine fractures within the Trump administration, Reuters reported Friday.

Officials from the Treasury Department and the National Economic Council are among those who cautioned Trump that rising gasoline prices could hurt approval for the war at home, an adviser and two others close to decisions told Reuters. Chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief James Blair have also stressed the political fallout of higher gas prices, and urged Trump to say the war is nearly finished.

Trump seems to have taken this to heart as he continues to confusedly claim the war is “won” but that the U.S. must stick around to “finish the job.” On Thursday, he insisted that rising gas prices are actually good, surely a winning political message.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth admitted that the U.S. military is using “every tool of AI” in the war on Iran.

“Every tool of AI, of cyber, of space, EW, counter-UAS, you name it—we’re employing it. Blinding, confusing, and deceiving our enemy. Because we know who the good guys are here. And the American people do too. And that makes my job simple,” Hegseth said at a Friday news briefing. “I serve God, the troops, the country, the Constitution, and the president of the United States. And answer only to those, all in service of victory on the battlefield.”

Hegseth touches on all the hits—good guys versus bad guys; we’re doing this for Jesus Christ and George Washington—while weaving in the implementation of the pernicious AI technology that the government is paying for. Was it AI that bombed a school full of children?

This commitment to using “every tool of AI” also comes just a day after Palantir CEO and government contract–holder Alex Karp declared that his technology would hurt “humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters,” and help “vocationally trained … often male, working-class voters.”

The Trump administration seems to have been caught off guard by Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, once again showing a glaring lack of planning.

CNN reports that President Trump’s national security team wasn’t prepared for a worst case, but somewhat predictable scenario for the war. Analyses from the Treasury and Energy Departments forecasting economic and oil market impacts also weren’t prioritized like they were in previous administrations, unnamed sources told the news outlet.

Meanwhile, six U.S. servicemembers were confirmed dead after a refueling plane crashed in western Iraq Thursday, bringing the official death toll of U.S. military personnel to 13 since the war began February 28.

Trump depended on a small circle of close advisers in deciding to attack Iran, which effectively marginalized discussion and debate within the government over what could happen if Iran took action to close the strait. Now, the White House could spend weeks trying to mitigate the shock to the U.S. and international economy. Oil tankers are stuck in the Persian Gulf, and using the U.S. Navy to escort them out is considered too risky.

Shipping companies have requested naval escorts from the U.S., which has so far turned them down. Diplomats from other countries, business executives, and former government officials are reportedly confused and stunned at the White House’s failure to account for the strait’s closure.

“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” said one former U.S. official, who has served Democratic and Republican administrations. “I’m dumbfounded.”

White House officials have even tacitly admitted to members of Congress that they didn’t plan for Iran possibly closing the strait as retaliation for U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, sources told CNN. These officials reportedly thought Iran would think closing it would hurt them more than the U.S., especially considering Iran didn’t close the strait during last year’s U.S. strikes.

Now, Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement Thursday that the strait will remain closed as a “tool of pressure.” At the same time, Iran is successfully destroying U.S. missile defenses in the region, and American missile stockpiles are dwindling. Trump’s lack of planning is not only causing ongoing damage to international markets and the U.S. economy, but also putting U.S. troops and interests in harm’s way as this war continues on.

This story has been updated.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was abruptly yanked out of a Thursday interview with Sky News’s Wilfred Frost after President Trump demanded his presence in the Situation Room. 

Frost and Bessent were on camera and already into the interview when a staffer interrupted, telling Bessent, “The President wants you right away.” Bessent, seeming surprised, left immediately. 

“This is totally wild. I’ve never seen anything like this on television,” NBC News’s Matt Bradley wrote.  

Bessent returned around two hours later and was visibly flustered. 

“Mr. Secretary, I have to say—this is a first … that an interviewee’s been pulled away to go to the Situation Room,” Frost said upon Bessent’s return. “How’s the president, was he stressed?” 

Instead of a simple “Yes, he’s fine,” Bessent began to rave about how great the war on Iran is going, and how one of his own children is considering joining—details he offered completely unprompted. 

“No, the president is in great spirits. The Iranian mission is proceeding well ahead of schedule,” the secretary replied. “And I have to tell you, Will, that I have a teenage—teenager who’s considering military service. And I could give this team my highest compliment, from President Trump to the head of Joint Chiefs, to the secretary of war. I would say that I would trust my child’s life in their hands.” 

It is unclear what exactly Trump and Bessent spoke about in the Situation Room—although the Trump administration removed sanctions on Russian oil Thursday evening to counteract the skyrocketing oil prices caused by the Iran war. Regardless, Bessent’s rushed reassurance and his random aside about sending his child to possibly die in Iran do not instill confidence in everything being A-OK.

The man accused of stealing sensitive social security data didn’t just potentially commit a massive security breach that could affect millions of Americans—he also has a serious conflict of interest.

Earlier this week, it became clear that the Social Security Administration’s inspector general was looking into a whistleblower complaint about a former software engineer who worked under Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency. The complaint claimed the unidentified man had access to two sensitive SSA databases he maintained on a thumb drive, and had intentions to hand that data over to a private employer.

That ex-DOGE staffer has since been identified by others in Washington, and his name is John Solly, multiple sources told WIRED.

Since October, Solly has been the chief technology officer at Leidos, a career pivot that could pose a major problem for the executive branch, according to the résumé on his personal website (Solly has since taken the site offline).

Leidos’s website boasts enormous contracts with the Social Security Administration, including a five-year deal totaling up to $1.5 billion.

Solly—through his legal counsel—denied any wrongdoing, reported WIRED. “A spokesperson for Leidos also said the company found no evidence supporting the whistleblower’s claims against Solly,” the magazine noted.

All in all, 70 million Americans rely on the Social Security Administration and its services, but hundreds of millions could be affected by the purported theft.

According to his résumé, Solly supported other DOGE engineers on projects including “Digital SSN,” “SSN verification API (EDEN 2.0),” and “Death Master File cleanup,” the last of which refers to an SSA database that contains millions of Social Security records for deceased Americans. The purpose of maintaining the database is to limit the potential for fraud, blocking would-be thieves from stealing the identities of those who have died.

The application programming interface, or API, meanwhile, could be used to allow different software programs to communicate with one another, sharing data between them.

“In this case, it could allow Social Security data to be accessed by agencies and institutions outside of SSA,” reported WIRED.

Solly also may have had access to SSA’s numerical identification system, also known as NUMIDENT, according to an earlier report from The Washington Post that identified the whistleblower complaint but did not name Solly as the accused offender. NUMIDENT hosts even more sensitive data, cataloguing all the information included in a Social Security number application, such as full name, birth date, race, and other personally identifiable information.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice spent weeks emailing its request for Oklahoma’s voter rolls to the wrong email address. Then it sued Oklahoma for not complying. 

It began in December, when Department of Justice officials wrote a letter demanding that Oklahoma Secretary of State Paul Ziriax turn over the state’s voter registration lists, Democracy Docket reported Thursday.  

There was already a problem: Paul Ziriax isn’t Oklahoma’s secretary of state, and never has been. He is actually the secretary of Oklahoma’s State Election Board. And somehow, that isn’t even the DOJ’s biggest blunder in this tale. 

The agency didn’t hear back, so it sent another email, and then another. Nothing.  

In late January, DOJ officials finally got a response from Oklahoma election official Misha Mohr, who said that her office had only just received the previous emails. 

“The email address was misspelled on the previous correspondence,” she wrote. Instead of sending messages to “info” at the Oklahoma State Election’s office, the government had addressed their demands to “ifo” at the same mail server. 

This gaffe is part of a wider trend of unprecedented prosecutorial missteps by Trump’s Department of Justice, undermining numerous civil and criminal cases. A recent filing included misspelled versions of “voters,” “emergency,” and “United States.” Another filing repeatedly misspelled the name of an elected official. 

The federal government has sued Washington, D.C., and 29 states—including Oklahoma—for not complying with its demands to turn over voter registration forms. Twelve states have provided or pledged to provide the government voter registration lists, with information including license plates and Social Security numbers. Federal judges in California, Michigan, and Oregon have rejected the federal government’s claim to the troves of voters’ personal data. 

Improper disclosure of this highly sensitive information could violate state and federal laws, and raises concerns about risks to Americans’ security and privacy. And clearly, the Trump administration has been less than careful with Americans’ Social Security information. 

Republican Senator John Cornyn got a firsthand lesson in why the SAVE Act, backed by President Donald Trump, would suppress votes if passed.

At a Senate Judiciary hearing Thursday, Cornyn said, “I don’t understand how [the SAVE Act] could disenfranchise millions of Americans. Maybe you could explain.” His Democratic colleague, Dick Durbin, was happy to oblige. After thanking Cornyn for his question, Durbin explained that the voter ID requirements of the bill are not satisfied by a driver’s license, but only a passport.

“Fifty percent of Americans do not have a passport. Those who want to obtain it so they can vote will pay $186 and wait three or four weeks for that to happen,” Durbin said. “Secondly, you can use a birth certificate, but any person who has changed their name as a result of a marriage … has to find not only their birth certificate but some correction of it to prove that they are eligible to register to vote.

“It’s estimated that 9 percent of the voters in America do not have the identification required by this bill. It means that, ultimately, those people will not be voting. And I think that is the ultimate goal of this administration,” Durbin continued. This was news to Cornyn, who asked if these concerns could be addressed by the amendment process. Durbin responded, “When’s the last time we amended a bill?”

Durbin is correctly pointing out that the SAVE Act seems designed to make it harder to vote—particularly for lower-income Americans and married women who change their names—rather than to tackle voter fraud, which is practically nonexistent anyway. Trump administration officials, such as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, have admitted as much. Meanwhile, Trump has made it his priority over everything else, even stuff Americans want, because he wants to rig elections in his favor.

The White House is weighing in on the internal affairs of private business—again.

Trump administration officials are reportedly seething that CBS News hired Jeremy Adler, a communications executive who previously worked for former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, according to insiders that spoke with Axios Thursday.

Cheney, a lifelong Republican and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, stood out among her caucus for her unrelenting critiques of Donald Trump’s performance during his first term. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, repeatedly rejected Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy, and served as the vice chair of the House committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol riot.

Exactly how Adler’s affiliation with Cheney would prevent him from functioning as a communications executive for the news network is not clear, but nonetheless, the decision did not sit well with the people surrounding the president.

Further, the administration’s public derision at Adler’s appointment once again flouts the free-market philosophy that Republicans have championed for decades, highlighting the growing differences between Trump’s MAGA agenda and the larger conservative party.

“The idea CBS would hire Liz Cheney’s flack who has worked to jail President Trump and make it impossible for anybody who supported the president to get hired is insanity. What the hell is Bari Weiss thinking?” a White House official told Axios.

Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist, was tapped as the newsroom’s newest chief late last year, despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcasting, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had never run a major news operation.

In a few short months, her business decisions atop the network have unequivocally and single-handedly divorced CBS News from its decades-long place within America’s prestige news media circuit.

What was once crowned the “gold standard” of broadcasting, and the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, has since devolved into a graveyard for journalism ethics.

Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on a 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who had been deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT megaprison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, whom Weiss replaced with the likes of Peter Attia (who was ousted from his role as an on-air contributor shortly after his hiring was announced due to his various ties to Jeffrey Epstein).

Yet Weiss’s appointment was merely the cherry on top of a large portion of recent chaos at CBS. In the last year, parent company Paramount undermined itself by settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits with Trump over CBS’s fair and accurate coverage (in an apparent bid to butter up the administration ahead of a multibillion-dollar merger with SkyDance). That resulted in the loss of two storied showrunners, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who rejected Paramount’s approach to handling the groundless lawsuit.

The highest-ranking U.S. commander in Europe told Congress what has been obvious for decades—that bombing civilians is an evil and inhumane tactic that only leads to more long-term problems.  

“What I’ve observed over the course of studying air power in history is that anytime you attack a civilian population, you usually end up finding that it just hardens their resolve,” Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a Thursday hearing regarding Russian assistance to Iran. “We take this all the way back to the London Blitz in World War II. The Brits just had a stiff upper lip and kept on fighting, and I think that’s what we’ve seen in Ukraine, as well.”

While Grynkewich was referring to Russia’s bombing campaign in Ukraine, his statement could be applied to any American act of aggression over the past 20-plus years, from the Iraq War to U.S. support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, to the Iranian elementary school bombing that killed more than 100 children. 

Hundreds of Iranian civilians have died in the ongoing war. The same administrations that chastise Iran for chanting “Death to America” are the same ones with no qualms about using American weaponry to kill hundreds of normal people just trying to lead normal lives. If anything, their killings will only lead to further anti-American sentiment and radicalization. You don’t need to be some scholar of military history to recognize that.