🚨 Oh dear. – July 16 2025

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Lead: Trump Denies Asking Ukraine to Strike Moscow

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President Trump says he did not ask Ukrainian President Zelensky to strike Moscow—contrary to what the Financial Times reported.

Here’s how the FT put it:

“Trump said on a call with Zelensky: ‘Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? . . . Can you hit St Petersburg too?’

Zelensky replied: ‘Absolutely. We can if you give us the weapons,’ according to the people who overheard the call.”

According to the people"? Lol, okay.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that Trump doesn’t believe Ukraine can win the war against Russia.

No one serious does. So why would he try to escalate it? Politico says that it is out of frustration with Russia but there has to be more to it.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has officially withdrawn from an agreement restricting the use of banned munitions in warfare—though they’ve been violating its terms for years.

Congress Could Be Forced to Vote on Epstein Files—If This Petition Succeeds

Photo credit: Associated Press

Will Congress have to vote on releasing the Epstein files?

That’s exactly what Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna are pushing for with a discharge petition introduced Tuesday—forcing a floor vote to declassify what the government knows about Epstein’s network, no matter who it implicates.

Meanwhile, President Trump keeps telling Americans to “move on,” offering one of the dumbest explanations yet for why Epstein’s story should be buried.

“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It’s pretty boring stuff… only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going,” he said.

Boring? The child sex trafficking ring with ties to the world’s most powerful people? Sure. Nothing to see here.

Will the Massie/Khanna petition go anywhere? It's a long shot. It would need 218 signatures and Republicans already voted down a motion on Tuesday to even allow consideration of the disclosure bill with all Republicans present opposed.

Republican lawmakers aren’t budging—but Republican voters are demanding answers.

Democrats? A few have paid lip service to disclosure, but the waves are small and the urgency is missing. No one in power seems eager to open that vault.

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Call Gaza a Genocide? Congratulations, You’re Now a Holocaust Denier

Photo credit: Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press

“I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know One When I See One.”

That was the headline the New York Times ran Tuesday in a blistering op-ed by Holocaust expert Omer Bartov. After months of tiptoeing, the Times finally allowed the word genocide to appear in print to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza—though only in the opinion section, not in its reporting.

Bartov writes:

“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer, and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”

Even as an op-ed, this marks a seismic shift: a respected Holocaust scholar breaking ranks with institutional silence to call the atrocities what they are.

But according to the New York Post, calling Gaza a genocide makes you a Holocaust denier.

This is peak propaganda gymnastics.

Alan Dershowitz argues that recognizing genocide in Gaza somehow denies the Holocaust—because if everything is a Holocaust, then nothing is. Or something like that. It's hard to follow the logic when the point is to protect a monopoly, not the truth.

News By The Numbers

Photo credit: ConAgra/Southern Living

4. That’s how many frozen meals are now branded under Dolly Parton’s name. The singer says she’s stepping back from songwriting following the death of her husband so this is a way to keep her around your kitchen even as she steps away from the spotlight.

2,000. That is how many National Guard troops the Trump administration just ordered withdrawn from Los Angeles, cutting the federal deployment there in half.

100. That’s how many days an Irish tourist named “Thomas” was held in ICE and federal detention after overstaying his visa by just three days.

"Thank Goodness the Drunk Pervert Is Going to Be Okay,” Says Judge

Photo credit: AI-generated image (ChatGPT/OpenAI)

A man in the U.K. knocked out a drunk pervert who exposed himself to his children—and was sentenced to jail time.

The judge in the case reportedly said it was “miraculous” the man didn’t suffer worse injuries. Not the father. The flasher. The judge was concerned about the flasher.

The father delivered one powerful blow to the drunkard who was exposing himself in public in front of children. The incident unfolded on a busy street, and the man ended up with a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage. The father was sentenced to 18 months in prison but it was suspended.

So what exactly was he supposed to do in that moment? Wait for police who would almost certainly do nothing? Ask the man politely to stop? Punch him just a little bit? What would you have done?

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