TV News LIES

President Donald Trump's approval rating has plummeted to the lowest level of his current term for reasons including his handling of the nation's cost of living and an unpopular ongoing war with Iran, according to a recent poll.

Just 34% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, a Reuters/Ipsos four-day poll released April 28 found.

The survey showed Trump's overall approval sliding 2 percentage points, down from 36% in a prior Reuters/Ipsos survey, which the outlet reported was conducted April 15-20.

"The majority of responses were gathered prior to the Saturday night shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, where Trump was due to speak," Reuters wrote in its report. Federal prosecutors have charged the suspect in the case with charges including attempted assasination of a president.

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On 28 February 2026, the first day of the war, the US and Israel launched a joint strike on the office of Iran's Supreme Leader. It resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior government officials. 

The neighbourhood where the Supreme Leader’s headquarters are located is known as Pasteur. It is named after the Pasteur Institute of Iran, one of the Middle East’s most prestigious and oldest scientific research centres, which predated most of the governmental facilities, including the Presidential Office, the Supreme National Security Council, and the Assembly of Experts.

On 28 February, the medical centre was left unscathed by the massive bombing in the Pasteur neighbourhood. However, a month later, on 1 April and 2 April, US-Israeli bombing hit the Institute, levelling its headquarters and 13 source laboratories.

Founded in 1920, following a diplomatic agreement between the French and Iranian government, the Pasteur Institute of Iran is part of 33 institutes worldwide at the forefront of the fight against infectious diseases, named after the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822-85), father of the germ theory and microbiology. 

"The main building is older than Israel," one of the Institute’s top scientists, who asked the name be withheld as scientists have been targeted by the US and Israel, wrote to me, adding "how dare they destroy such a piece of history?"

The 120-year-old building was on Waqf land, a religious endowment offered by the Qajar Prince and short-lived Prime Minister of Persia Abdol-Hossein Farman-Farma. It was a gift in the project to modernise Iran’s public health, which had been devastated in the first two decades of the 20th century by a great famine, the Spanish flu, and recurrent cholera and typhoid epidemics.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered a major expansion in the production and deployment of ground robotic systems, setting a target of at least 50,000 units for Ukraine’s military this year.

Speaking after a meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Zelensky described unmanned ground systems as the “next major step” in warfare, following the widespread use of drones.

“It is already impossible to imagine defense without drones – and the same applies to ground robotic systems,” he said, adding that they are crucial for logistics, evacuating wounded soldiers and combat operations.

Zelensky said the defense minister and General Staff have been tasked with meeting the target, stressing that such systems are “about protecting lives.” He noted that contracts for ground robotic systems this year already exceed last year’s volume by more than twofold, but said production must continue to grow.

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During Billie Little's roughly two decades working at Thomson Reuters, she felt pride in the company, which is known for its legal database Westlaw, its media company Reuters, and its role as a major data broker.

But as masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed Minneapolis early this year and the country reeled from federal agents fatally shooting Renée Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, Little and other colleagues grew alarmed that ICE agents could be abusing Thomson Reuters investigative tools that provide vast quantities of personal data on people including license plate information.

Little, who worked in legal publishing, was part of a committee of employees that sent a letter to company management in February flagging that ICE could be using Thomson Reuters products unlawfully and asking for greater transparency about the company's oversight of its contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Soon after their effort was made public in the media, however, Little was fired from her role.

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In the aftermath of the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting, Melania Trump accused Jimmy Kimmel of “hateful and violent rhetoric” and said it was “time for ABC to take a stand” against the comedian who has long been critical of Donald Trump and his policies.

The first lady appeared to be referring to a monologue by a Kimmel broadcast on Thursday, well before the Saturday attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner, in which he referred to Melania Trump as an “expectant widow” in remarks otherwise largely about the Trumps’ connections to Jeffrey Epstein.

Kimmel’s comment came during a skit parodying he White House correspondent’s dinner, in which the ABC host pretended to be the event’s MC.

“Our first lady Melania is here,” he said. “So beautiful, Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

Melania Trump’s criticism follows an episode last September where ABC suspended Kimmel after Brendan Carr, the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened the network for jokes the comedian made about the president. The incident sparked an uproar amid allegations that Carr was attacking the constitutional right to free speech, and ABC later brought Kimmel back on air.

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In an extraordinary article published on 7 April, the New York Times described how Donald Trump decided to go to war with Iran. It is highly unusual for the White House Situation Room to be used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders. But this time, the Situation Room was not just used for a meeting with a foreign leader. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin, Netanyahu took over the presentation space, backed on a screen by the leader of the Mossad as well as Israeli military officials.

As the New York Times describes the scene, “Arrayed visually behind Mr. Netanyahu, they created the image of a wartime leader surrounded by his team.” The article makes it clear that Netanyahu’s “hard sell” of a quick war was pivotal to the US president’s decision to partner with Israel in attacking Iran.

This article is unusual in recent mainstream media about the war, which typically avoids mention of the role of Israel in Trump’s decision. Here is one example, from a journalist I admire. When it comes to Russia, Rachel Maddow has been forthright and heroic on the topic of foreign influence on US policy. But in a 28 February MS Now episode, Follow the Money, devoted to exploring Trump’s reasons for going to war with Iran, Maddow exhibits diminished virtue on this topic.

In it, she asks the listeners to consider the question: “Who wants Iran bombed off the map and for their own reasons, who are Iran’s rivals and enemies?” Maddow’s subsequent discussion suggests that it is the Gulf Arab states that are primarily responsible, who, she says, “appear to have rented the services of the United States military”. Maddow’s February discussion of the causes of Trump’s decision to go to war, in hindsight, with the information provided by the New York Times article, should raise alarm bells for those concerned for the status of democracy and a free press.

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President Donald Trump recently slammed CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell, calling her a “disgrace,” during an interview on “60 Minutes” on Sunday. Experts in politics and journalism discussed Trump’s history of disparaging female journalists — and why it’s crucial that journalists continue to hold leaders accountable.

O’Donnell began the sit-down by saying she was glad Trump was safe and by asking how he was doing following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night. The interview began to sour when O’Donnell read aloud part of a note from the man suspected of opening fire on the dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D.C.

“The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it,” O’Donnell said. “He writes this quote: ‘Administration officials, they are targets.’ And he also wrote this: ‘I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’ What’s your reaction to that?”

Trump hit back by saying he knew O’Donnell was going to read the alleged note, “because you’re horrible people.”

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A group of Senate Republicans led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are pushing a bill to fund the construction of a secure 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House and say the project is essential to national security after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday.

Graham and his allies say the cost of the project would be offset by national park user fees and customs fees, and that the bill would authorize the construction of national security-related infrastructure below the ballroom, including an annex for the Secret Service.

“It’s very difficult to have a bunch of important people in the same place unless it’s really, really secure. The times in which we live are unusual. I’ve been up here for a while now, I’ve never felt the sense of threat that exists today,” said Graham, who was first elected to the House in 1994.

He noted that in addition to President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who are second and third in the presidential line of succession, were at the dinner Saturday when a 31-year-old man armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives tried to break into the ballroom before being tackled by Secret Service personnel.

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