'Beyond sad': Analyst aghast as 'big lie' Trump bought from adversary proves deadly

08/05/26 11:33 PM

Iran has broken its word to President Donald Trump and has ramped up executions under the guise of war to cover up the deaths, an analyst told CNN on Wednesday.Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad told CNN anchor Jake Tapper how the executions have impacted people inside Iran, where the United Nations has reported that at least 56 people have been executed by the regime since March. Tapper reported that the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, which was signed in June, did not include any human rights protections, which experts said has led to Iran intensifying executions. Last week, two men were executed after the Iranian regime claimed they were involved in the killing of four police officers during the anti-government riots in 2025.Alinejad told Tapper she felt "heartbroken" for Iranians living under the regime. "I'm in touch with a lot of people inside Iran, the relatives of those who have been executed," she said. "They cannot believe that the whole world stopped talking about them because the execution machine is still working, never sleeps. But as you see, barely media leaders, international community talk about the mass executions." Alinejad pointed out a concerning reality."You remember yourself that President Trump said that the Islamic Republic promised him to stop executing protesters," she added. "That was the big lie. And now it's beyond sad that teenagers are being hanged in public. And there is no TV inside Iran, no media inside Iran talking about the concern of the family members who are actually waiting for their beloved ones to be executed very soon."

'Diehard MAGA' fans have discovered the 'obvious' truth about Trump: columnist

08/12/26 2:57 PM

Supporters of the MAGA movement finally understand their needs come last with President Donald Trump, a new political analysis contends.The Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi argued Wednesday that cash-strapped conservative voters may not understand the nuances of international finance — but they can't help but see the widening gap between their incomes and the Trump's. Wrote Mahdawi, "It’s becoming more obvious to even the most diehard MAGA fan that they are being put last."While Mahdawi called out Trump for slashing USAID and sending major cash to conservative think tanks abroad, she also warned such policy shifts were unlikely to land with MAGA voters. "What does the average Trump voter, who was promised an America-first agenda, think about all this money going to 'public education' programmes in the UK instead of all the underfunded public schools at home?" she wrote before suggesting, "The short answer is: they’re not thinking about it at all."But what they are beginning to realize is that Trump's estimated $2.2 billion earnings last year had to have come from somewhere, the columnist argued. And Trump isn't doing himself any favors with his apparent lack of concern, she concluded. "Trump, for his part, has brushed off cost-of-living concerns, declaring last year: 'I don’t want to hear about the affordability,'" she wrote. "[The president] should start listening."

'Especially weird' twist uncovered in White House's leak denial: report

08/08/26 7:46 PM

President Donald Trump has been raging against possible leakers over information he gave away months ago.Trump has spent the week vowing to hunt down "treasonous" leakers over a missile shortage he was warned about and that he publicly acknowledged months before he launched his war with Iran, points out a Saturday piece by the legal blog emptywheel."Donald Trump told us on February 23, before he started this war, that he was reading the stories describing that he was warned, including about the missile shortage," emptywheel wrote. "And his response was to say that the decision was his, that if we went in spite of the warnings, the decision was his."The depletion of long-range missiles and interceptors was never a surprise, but despite that, Trump's recriminations have been building as he even turns on people within his own administration.Emptywheel noted a recent report by The Washington Post that revealed Trump laid into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Camp David meeting because of the shortages, but White House and Pentagon spokespeople have denied the report. Trump took to Truth Social to deny the missile shortage as well, writing, "The U.S. has massive amounts of 'munitions,'" but also went after "the 'leakers' of those treasonous statements" about a shortage. He said they were "being hunted down."According to emptywheel, "the especially weird part" of the White House and Pentagon denials is that they insist Trump isn't angry at Hegseth at all. "Shouldn't the President be angry with a Secretary of Defense who conducted the war in such a dumba— way, losing the war while blowing the missile reserves?" the blog asked.The blog also mentioned reporting that suggests that missile supplies are indeed dangerously low. A CNN report estimated about 80 percent of U.S. THAAD interceptors are gone, and Reuters reported, citing sources, that "virtually all" of the Army's surface-to-surface weapons have been used up.