Trump Administration Cooked Up Gay Ayatollah Story

The Trump administration wants people to think Iran’s new supreme leader is gay.

Fox News’s Jesse Watters asked President Trump Thursday about the rumor that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the hard-line cleric tapped to lead Iran, was a closeted gay man.

“Did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Jr. is gay?” Watters asked.

“Well, they did say that, but I don’t know if it was only them. Which puts him off to a bad start in that particular country,” Trump said. In Iran, same-sex acts are punishable by death.

The president then launched into a rant against slogans like “Women for Palestine” and “Gays for Palestine” while claiming that “no Republican has ever gotten the gay vote like I did.”

But there is no credible intelligence supporting claims of the so-called “Gayatollah,” and the whole thing is a lie, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, as well as two other sources briefed on the plot, told Zeteo.

“No one [here] gives it any credit; I doubt anybody in the Middle East does either,” one official told the outlet. “It’s some 20-year-old frat boy in the federal government’s idea of a good joke.”

A cohort of administration officials and MAGA insiders teamed up to fabricate a story claiming that intelligence supported gay rumors about Khamenei, who was selected to rule after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed earlier this month. The story soon showed up as an “EXCLUSIVE” in the New York Post with the headline “Trump briefed that Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is probably gay—and president has priceless reaction.”

Trump has claimed that Khamenei is not an acceptable replacement, but admitted he would be open to working with another religious leader as long as they were favorable toward the United States. Now it seems that his administration is trying to turn Iranians against their new leader.

“We wanted to mindfuck [the Iranians] with gay shit,” one knowledgeable source told Zeteo. A source within the Trump administration told the outlet that one of their MAGA group chats was titled “gayatollah.”

The House Ethics Committee found Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 ethics charges Friday morning, following an intense seven-hour public hearing a day earlier.

The committee said the evidence against the Florida Democrat is “clear and convincing”—and  will hold a hearing following the House’s spring recess to decide her punishment, which could include censure, reprimand, or expulsion from the House.

Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted by federal prosecutors in November on 15 counts, which include stealing $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to use for her 2021 winning congressional campaign. She pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Friday’s verdict, and Thursday’s rare public House Ethics Committee proceeding, stemmed from a December report on the committee’s investigation into Cherfilus-McCormick’s alleged violations. 

“The ISC’s investigation has revealed substantial evidence of conduct consistent with the allegations in the indictment, as well as more extensive misconduct,” the 59-page report read. House Republicans have been pushing to expel Cherfilus-McCormick from the House since it was released in December. 

The hearing was held by an adjudicatory subcommittee of eight Republican and Democratic House members, who ultimately found Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of all but two alleged violations. 

Friday’s verdict will likely pressure House Democrats to support their colleague’s expulsion.

“You lose your credibility if you’re applying a different set of laws and a different standard to people of the other party,” Massachusetts Democrat Stephen Lynch told Politico before Thursday’s hearing. “I mean, how could we ever justify anything we do if we only apply that to Republicans, and we don’t follow the law?”

“You can’t crime your way into legitimate power,” Representative Marie Gluesenkamp wrote on X following the House Committee’s verdict. “Since she was found guilty, she should resign or be removed.”

This story has been updated.

U.S. forces have blown through more than 850 Tomahawk missiles in the ongoing war in Iran, according to a new report by The Washington Post. The usage rate has led some Pentagon officials to raise concerns about America’s capabilities in the Middle East and future conflicts.

Trump’s Iran war has dragged on for four weeks, and the military is firing an average of 16 Tomahawks a day. One official told the Post the number of the missiles left in the region is “alarmingly low.” It’s not like all the strikes have been precise takedowns of Iranian officials, either. In February, the U.S. hit a girls’ school with a Tomahawk, killing over 175 innocents, mostly young children.

Tomahawks aren’t your run-of-the-mill ballistic missile. Built by Raytheon, the weapons can cost as much as $3.6 million and take two years to construct, according to military documents reviewed by the Post. Being 20 feet long and roughly 3,500 pounds, they must be carried and launched from naval destroyers.

Just 57 Tomahawks were included in last year’s defense budget, meaning Trump’s war is blowing through years of stockpiling.

The fire rate “has alarmed some officials and prompted internal discussions about how to make more available,” according to the Post. The concerns come at an inauspicious time, as Trump flirts with the idea of sending 10,000 additional ground troops to Iran.

White House officials would have you believe our Great Nation possesses infinite ammunition. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on March 4 that the military “has more than enough munitions, ammo, and weapons stockpiles to achieve the goals of Operation Epic Fury laid out by President Trump—and beyond.”

But it’s best to take this administration’s statements about the war with a grain of salt. Trump has also gloated that defense manufacturers are quadrupling production of their “‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry,” signaling that his administration knows it’s going through missiles at an unsustainable rate.

Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of two women and two Black Army officers, showing yet again that he will stop at nothing in his war on diversity in the U.S. military.

The officers were originally on a one-star promotion list of about three dozen officers consisting mostly of white men, The New York Times reported Friday.

Hegseth had been pushing Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to remove the four officers for months, but given their years of exemplary service, Driscoll refused, military officials told the Times. Hegseth finally removed their names himself, likely without the legal authority to do so.

As per military policy, the defense secretary is technically only supposed to approve or reject the entire list to prevent discrimination and prejudice—two things the former Fox News host has embraced in his catastrophic stint as defense secretary.

Since he was appointed in January 2025, Hegseth has gutted diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, pledged to remove women officers from combat, and banned trans people from serving in the military. “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons—based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” he said in a speech last November.

A similar feud over race happened last summer when Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant was selected to command the Military District of Washington. Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, was furious. He told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events, the Times reported.

Driscoll insisted the “president is not a racist or sexist,” and protested Buria’s apparently shocking declaration with a senior White House official, military officers told the Times. Gant’s promotion went through, and she began her service as district commander last summer.

It’s unclear whether Hegseth’s rogue removal of the four officers from the one-star promotion list will face similar scrutiny.

Senate Democrats approved a deal early Friday morning that would fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that Transportation Security Administration workers would get their long-awaited paychecks but forfeiting proposed reforms to immigration enforcement.

Senate Democrats and Republicans approved legislation that would fund most DHS agencies except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The bill would restore funding to TSA, which has been hemorrhaging employees as paycheck after paycheck has gone unpaid, causing severe disruptions at airports across the country.

However, Democrats failed to secure key reforms to immigration enforcement, including banning ICE agents from wearing masks and requiring them to obtain judicial warrants in order to perform searches.

“That ship has sailed, and they kind of kissed that opportunity goodbye,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.

He claimed that Democrats were more interested in having an issue to run on in the midterm elections rather than passing reforms.

“We could be standing here now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms, if Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement,” Thune said. “But they didn’t.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was proud of the Democrats for sticking together. “My caucus didn’t budge,” he said, adding that Democrats would “fight hard for reforms” and “there will be opportunities.”

It’s not clear whether those opportunities will arise before the midterm elections.

In the meantime, Republicans are planning to pass funding for ICE and Border Patrol as part of budget reconciliation, which will require a simple majority rather than the 60 votes this legislation required.