TV News LIES

Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement.

The anecdote is contained in a book Hegseth wrote last year in which he also repeatedly railed against the constraints placed on “American warfighters” by the laws of war and the Geneva conventions.

Hegseth is currently under scrutiny for a 2 September attack on a boat purportedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, where survivors of a first strike on the vessel were reportedly killed in a second strike following a verbal order from Hegseth to “kill everybody”.

Hegseth has denied giving the order and retained the support of Donald Trump. The US president said Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100%”. But some US senators have raised the possibility that the US war secretary committed a war crime.

In the book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth relates a story about a legal briefing at the beginning of his service in Iraq, in which he told the men under his command to ignore guidance from a military judge advocate general’s (JAG) attorney’s guidance about the rules of engagement in the conflict.

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The allegations carry a familiar ring: Fox News aired outrageous lies that an election software company rigged votes in the 2020 presidential elections for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Behind the scenes, Fox News' controlling owners, executives and biggest stars didn't believe the wild claims from President Trump and his allies. Nonetheless, the voting tech company's officials received death threats. Its reputation and financial prospects were badly damaged.https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5627506/fox-news-smartmatic-lawsuit-election-claims-trial

These claims are contained in legal filings at the heart of a hearing that will take place in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday afternoon over whether a multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News should be allowed to proceed to a full jury trial.

The lawsuit is being brought by Smartmatic, a London-based voting technology firm that played a limited role in the 2020 race but was, nonetheless, accused on Fox shows of taking votes away from Trump and throwing them to Biden. Smartmatic is suing for $2.7 billion.

The reason these allegations are so familiar is that the company's claims closely echo those from a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News stars and their on-air guests also blamed that company for Trump's loss, as they served up a stew of baseless conspiracy theories about the election.

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The Pentagon on Tuesday scapegoated a navy admiral for the extrajudicial double-tap strike that killed survivors of a 2 September attack on an alleged drug boat and vowed to continue operations, even as lawmakers investigate whether the attack constituted a war crime.

At a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday, Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary said that the decision to re-strike the “narco terrorist vessel” was made by Adm Frank M Bradley, “operating under clear and long standing authorities to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated”. Wilson added that Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon secretary, “stands behind Admiral Bradley, 100%”.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Monday explicitly named Bradley as the officer who “directed the engagement”, distancing Hegseth from accountability despite a Washington Post report that he ordered the deaths of everyone on the boat.

Wilson dismissed critical reporting of the incident as “fake news”.

During a cabinet meeting alongside Donald Trump on Tuesday, Hegseth said: “We’ve only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean.” He defended Bradley, who is set to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers overseeing the military on Thursday, saying Trump “always has our back” and that “we always have the back of our commanders who are making decisions in difficult situations”.

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The Trump administration has threatened to suspend Snap food assistance to several Democratic-led states unless they turn over recipient data to the federal government.

The agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, said on Tuesday that the USDA could begin blocking funds as early as next week if Democratic-led states continue to reject federal requests for Snap recipient data – information that includes immigration status and social security numbers.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Rollins said the USDA needed the data from each state to “root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them, but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected”.

“Twenty-nine states said yes – not surprisingly, the red states, and that’s where all of that data, that fraud comes from. But 21 states including California, New York and Minnesota, blue states, continue to say no. So as of next week, we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and to protect the American taxpayer.”

In a separate statement to the Guardian, a USDA spokesperson said: “USDA established a Snap integrity team to analyze not only data provided by states, but to scrub all available information to end indiscriminate welfare fraud.

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Donald Trump on Tuesday called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said they should be sent back home in a rant that came as the administration is reportedly increasing immigration enforcement against undocumented Somalis in Minnesota.

In a xenophobic rant during a cabinet meeting, Trump went off on Somalis and Ilhan Omar, the congressional representative who is from Somalia and is a US citizen. He said Somalia “stinks” and is “no good for a reason”.

“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. He called Omar “garbage” and said “we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country”.

“These are people who do nothing but complain,” he said. “They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing … When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area, where most Somalis reside, would see stepped-up deportation efforts this week, focusing primarily on Somalis who have final deportation orders. It would use “strike teams” of ICE agents and other federal officers, bringing in about 100 agents from across the country, the Times reported. Other media outlets, including the Associated Press, have confirmed the reporting.

TVNL Comment:  Just when you think he can't go any lower...

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The Trump administration is backing Monsanto in its effort to get the Supreme Court to shield it from liability over cancer claims related to its Roundup weedkiller, a move that could anger the Trump administration’s allies in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

The Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that lawsuits alleging that Monsanto failed to warn consumers of the health impacts of its Roundup weedkiller are preempted by federal law.

The brief comes in support of Monsanto’s effort to get the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that the company had to pay damages for failing to warn about its product’s health impacts.

The Trump administration’s brief notes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers Roundup ingredient glyphosate not likely to be cancer causing and has approved its use.

It says that states should not be able to impose further requirements that give rise to failure-to-warn lawsuits.

“The labeling requirements imposed by Missouri’s failure-to-warn law are preempted by [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act,]” the brief states.

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The killing of two unarmed Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin has provoked international outrage after video footage of the incident went viral on Friday.

Credited to the local Palestine TV station, the footage shows two young Palestinian men surrendering to Israeli soldiers and lying on the ground in front of a garage under soldiers’ instructions. They then appear to be directed by the soldiers to go back inside the garage, where one of the troops is seen aiming and shooting at him as he lies on the ground.

Their hands were raised, they posed no threat, and Israeli soldiers murdered them anyway.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the victims as Muntaser Billah Abdallah, 26, and Yousef Asaasah, 37. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing in a statement, calling it “a war crime” and a case of “extrajudicial killing.”

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