Via VigilantFox.com,

Tom Homan just walked into MSNBC’s lion’s den. Mika Brzezinski SCOFFED at his claim that 70% of ICE arrests are criminals… So he read off the rap sheets of violent THUGS just arrested in Boston, LIVE on her own show. And when Brzezinski accused ICE of “disappearing” people—Homan dropped the HAMMER on her FAKE narrative.

Behind enemy lines.

It’s not every day the Border Czar shows up on MSNBC.

But today, Tom Homan walked straight into the lion’s den…a network known for pushing anti-ICE narratives and attacking the very operations he oversees.

Still, Homan didn’t waver.

He stood firm and let the MSM waves crash right into him.

Host Jonathan Lemire wasted no time.

Right out of the gate, he hit Homan with spin.

Referring to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows ICE to resume immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, Lemire asked:

“With this ruling… will federal officers working for the Trump administration be racially profiling?”

Homan saw it coming.

“First of all, it’s a false narrative. We don’t racially profile people to arrest them.”

Then he went after another media falsehood…that 70% of ICE arrests are non-criminals.

“In the soundbite she just said, 70% of people we arrest are not criminals? It’s the opposite.”

And he would know. He’s the one reading the data.

“Every morning I come to work, I go through 22 pages of data showing what’s happened in the past 24 hours.”

“Here are the facts. 70% of everybody we arrest is a criminal. But the Left says, well not criminal enough. No. They’re criminals.”

“And the other 30%? They are national security threats.”

Homan had the receipts and he wasn’t afraid to use them.

Behind enemy lines.

It’s not every day the Border Czar shows up on MSNBC.

But today, Tom Homan walked straight into the lion’s den…a network known for pushing anti-ICE narratives and attacking the very operations he oversees.

Still, Homan didn’t waver.

He stood firm and let… pic.twitter.com/9cB5J6TO4P

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 9, 2025

That’s when Mika Brzezinski jumped in, clutching pearls and pushing spin.

She tried to accuse ICE…right to Homan’s face…of “disappearing” people.

It was a tired old narrative from the same people who brought you “Maryland Dad” when describing the violent MS-13 gangbanger, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Homan shut it down in seconds.

Brzezinski: “I’d love some transparency as to why a lot of these people have been disappeared.”

Homan fired back: “You just mentioned disappeared. That is a RIDICULOUS thing to say… because ICE is doing the same thing we’ve done for decades.”

Then he did something few do on live TV…he held the media accountable for their dangerous rhetoric.

He was calling Brzezinski out directly for pushing the fiction that has put ICE agents and their families in danger.

“And the comments that you just made is one of the reasons why these men and women are under threat every day—not just the men and women in ICE, but their spouses and their children.”

“They’re NOT disappearing people. They’re enforcing the law. And the data proves that 70% of these people are criminals.”

But instead of backing off, Brzezinski was about to double down.

That’s when Mika Brzezinski jumped in, clutching pearls and pushing spin.

She tried to accuse ICE…right to Homan’s face…of “disappearing” people.

It was a tired old narrative from the same people who brought you “Maryland Dad” when describing the violent MS-13 gangbanger,… pic.twitter.com/6eZXAJCR1D

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 9, 2025

This is where things got interesting.

Still clinging to the narrative, Brzezinski demanded to see the numbers herself.

She was getting heated.

“I want to know the DATA that you say you have about 70% of these people. Show it to us!”

She clearly thought she was cornering Homan.

Instead, she opened the door for him to obliterate her entire argument.

Without missing a beat, Homan pulled out a sheet of paper…and started listing off just a few of the criminals ICE had arrested in Boston over the past few days.

“Let me tell you, in the last couple of days what’s happened in Boston,” he began.

And what followed made it impossible for the MSNBC audience to look away.

“These are real people we’ve taken off the streets.”

“Victor Gomez Perez, 33, from Guatemala..charged with aggravated rape, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, indecent assault and battery on a victim 14 years or younger.”

Next up: “Calley Espinosa, 33, from Colombia…aggravated assault on a pregnant victim.”

Then: “Joshua Gonzalez, 24, from the Dominican Republic…trafficking heroin, morphine, opium, resisting police, and more.”

And finally: “Samuel Armando Barrera, 20, from Guatemala…pending charges for assault and battery on a child.”

It was a devastating moment.

The very data Brzezinski had demanded was now being read aloud on her own show.

And it left no room for spin.

Homan turned to the elected officials who’ve been enabling this mess.

“So Mayor Wu and Governor Healey,” he said, “they oughta be calling ICE and thanking them for making their streets safer, for protecting their communities, and taking these people off the street.”

There was no way to twist what just happened.

Brzezinski had tried to frame ICE as a rogue agency operating in the shadows.

Instead, she gave Tom Homan a platform to reveal the reality: ICE is arresting violent, dangerous criminals who pose a direct threat to American communities.

This is where things got interesting.

Still clinging to the narrative, Brzezinski demanded to see the numbers herself.

She was getting heated.

“I want to know the DATA that you say you have about 70% of these people. Show it to us!”

She clearly thought she was cornering… pic.twitter.com/FrqWCzJoyF

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 9, 2025

But just when it seemed like the narrative had finally crumbled, Brzezinski took one last shot.

Trying to stoke more fear, Brzezinski brought up an ICE vehicle parked outside a Spanish mass.

“I would argue that actually, that the ICE vehicle parked outside a Spanish mass is a frightening sight, given what has happened in this country.”

Then she tried to suggest that Homan was still withholding data.

“With respect, sir, thank you for the information you have shared on this show, but we would appreciate ALL of the information, ALL of it, all of the data that you say you have.”

Homan had heard enough.

He was about to rain down fire on the MSNBC narratives he had been forced to sit and listen to.

“I’ve done this show several times. Every time I speak with integrity, I speak with honesty, and I speak with facts.”

Then came the moment that ended it all.

“The bottom line is, because all of this false narrative and you using the term ‘disappearing people’ is disgusting.”

“U.S. citizens get arrested by police every day. Are they being disappeared?!”

And finally:

“We’re enforcing the law and arresting people here in violation of law that are public safety threats. That’s not disappearing people. That’s enforcing the laws of this country and making this country safer.”

Brzezinski tried to save face with a smug closer, but it didn’t matter.

Homan had already torched the narrative…and walked off with the last word.

But just when it seemed like the narrative had finally crumbled, Brzezinski took one last shot.

Trying to stoke more fear, Brzezinski brought up an ICE vehicle parked outside a Spanish mass.

“I would argue that actually, that the ICE vehicle parked outside a Spanish mass is a… pic.twitter.com/D4st8mikJp

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 9, 2025

Brzezinski’s narrative spin did not work…and she knew it. Homan had shattered for all of MSNBC to see.

Americans are learning this week about the urgent need to rebuild insane asylums and expand prison capacity, given the Democratic Party’s nation-killing progressive mass-release policies that have flooded city streets and communities with violent criminals, such as the one who brutally murdered a young Ukrainian refugee woman in broad daylight on public transit in North Carolina. 

With the Overton Window having shifted last year, what was once socially acceptable, such as bending the knee to woke policies cut from Marxist cloth (defund the police, etc.), is no longer popular as the dominant narrative across the land. Instead, Americans are demanding law and order, especially in the era of the Trump administration.

A significant inflection point, and what is being considered as politically disastours for Democrats ahead of the Midterms, has been the horrifying murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, on a commuter train in Mecklenburg County. Her killer, Decarlos Brown, who was previously arrested 14 times in North Carolina for crimes ranging from assault to firearms possession, and whose own mother admitted he had schizophrenia and should never have been allowed back on the streets, was recently released on cashless bail by a progressive magistrate judge despite a two-decade violent crime spree. 

“Watching her cry alone with her hands holding her face is one of the saddest things I have ever seen,” one X user wrote. 

Watching her cry alone with her hands holding her face is one of the saddest things I have ever seen

— Evan Barker (@evanwch) September 9, 2025

Christopher Rufo noted, “We need more police, more prisons, and more asylums. And yes, we can arrest our way out of the psychotic-criminals-murdering-people-in-the-streets problem.” 

We need more police, more prisons, and more asylums. And yes, we can arrest our way out of the psychotic-criminals-murdering-people-in-the-streets problem.

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 9, 2025

The optics for the Democratic Party get worse, as their dark-money, billionaire-funded NGO network appears partly responsible…

Charlotte Pocketed $3.3M From Left-Wing NGO To Empty Jails For ‘Racial Equity’ https://t.co/bDMSxUPeDe

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 9, 2025

What seems to be emerging this week could be the early innings of a cultural and political moment reminiscent of the one seen with George Floyd – though not as part of a Marxist takeover. This time, it is driven by the ‘America First’ crowd, with their first move being the use of public spaces as the battleground, much like in 2020.

The first evidence of this comes from an Intercom CEO, Eoghan McCabe, who just offered $500,000 to artists nationwide, $10,000 per grant, to paint murals of Iryna Zarutska’s face in prominent US metro areas. 

Just like the murals of Floyd, McCabe’s taking the playbook from the left and turning public spaces into battleground areas with highly visible art of Zarutska’s face to communicate to everyday folks how the death of this young and innocent woman was due to nation-killing progressive policies.

I am offering $500k in $10k grants to paint murals of the face of Iryna Zarutska in prominent US city locations

Please contact katie@eoghan.com for more details

Please also share this message

If you would like to contribute to this fund, please contact Katie also pic.twitter.com/M8OyqfcZlm

— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) September 10, 2025

And Elon Musk commits $1 million. 

I will contribute $1M

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 10, 2025

Why should McCabe stop with Zarutska? The America First crowd may soon realize that the next battleground is public space. Recall that dark-money-funded anti-Trump Indivisible group understands this space very well. 

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

China’s planned Power of Siberia 2 pipeline with Russia could displace the equivalent of one-third of the country’s LNG imports and deliver a “shock” to the global seaborne gas trade, according to analysts cited by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The 50-billion-cubic-meter-per-year conduit, slated to run through Mongolia, would lock in long-term Russian pipeline supply and sharply cut China’s need for LNG cargoes just as global exporters scale up capacity.

The warning follows Sunday’s signing of a binding memorandum between Moscow and Beijing. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Gazprom chief Alexei Miller presented the deal in Beijing as a centerpiece of their energy partnership.

While intent has been formalized, key commercial details such as pricing and financing remain unsettled, with analysts describing the accord as a demonstration of strategic alignment between the two nations, underscoring Russia’s eastward pivot after Europe halted most pipeline purchases.

Chinese media continue to emphasize the sheer scale of the shift. Sina Finance reported Gazprom’s plans to expand existing Power of Siberia flows from 38 to 44 bcm annually, and Far East volumes from 10 to 12 bcm, alongside the new Mongolian line. QQ.com highlighted Beijing’s view of the project as insurance against volatile LNG markets and leverage in negotiations with U.S. and Qatari suppliers.

The initiative is part of a “new gas world order,” with pipeline deals reinforcing China’s long-term bargaining power in energy.

Analysts from Barron’s and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy have warned that U.S. LNG exporters could lose market share in Asia if China secures more Russian volumes, with the pipeline reducing spot demand and softening growth trajectories for American cargoes.

If Power of Siberia 2 is built on schedule, it would provide China with fixed-price, long-distance pipeline gas at volumes comparable to major LNG supply deals.

That shift could cap demand growth for new liquefaction projects targeting Asia, forcing U.S., Qatari, and Australian exporters to compete more aggressively for the remaining market.

Traders told Bloomberg that such a rebalancing would ripple through long-term contract negotiations now underway, reshaping LNG investment decisions well into the 2030s.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

There haven’t been any ‘quiet days’ in 2025 in global strategy, just a constant flow of conflating developments across geopolitics and geoeconomics. The last 24 hours have been no exception.

Israel struck Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, which may — unconfirmed — have killed their negotiating team; or at least the hardline ones who yesterday refused Trump’s ‘final’ deal, 24 hours after he had warned there’d be consequences if it was rejected. This has seen fears of regional contagion, but Qatar –already attacked by Iran earlier in the year– has no real armed forces of its own, just the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

International condemnation has been swift. Even Trump posted in opposition, stating he hadn’t known about the attack until the last moment and had tried to warn Qatar (which should have been able to detect it itself; and Turkish sources are claiming they tipped Doha, and Hamas, off). Trump added it should be used as a platform for peace and that he will be deepening defence relations with Qatar ahead. There are layers of misperceptions, misstatements, and potential missteps in all this, but it suggests further shifts in the region – we shall see if it’s towards peace or more conflict.

Meanwhile, while Europe then slept, Russian (Iranian-designed) drones made a mass attack on Ukraine and also entered Polish airspace, seeing several EU states’ F-35s scrambled and Polish airports close as far as Warsaw. One US Representative posted:

“Russia is attacking NATO ally Poland… This is an act of war, and we are grateful to NATO allies for their swift response to war criminal Putin’s continued unprovoked aggression against free and productive nations. I urge President Trump to respond with mandatory sanctions that will bankrupt the Russian war machine and arm Ukraine with weapons capable of striking Russia. Putin is no longer content just losing in Ukraine while bombing mothers and babies, he is now directly testing our resolve in NATO territory. Putin stated that “Russia knows no borders.” Free and prosperous nations will teach Russia about borders.”

Indeed, while Trump had earlier continued US-India online détente in posting he still expects a trade deal to be agreed, he then told Europe it must put 100% tariffs on China and India to stop Putin, which he would follow. To say that this has major consequences is an understatement: most so if this is done, but also if it isn’t – because that would makes clear the EU (and US) are not prepared to use sufficiently strong economic statecraft, which leaves them with either military statecraft or nothing. Run the fat tail risks on both.  

At the same time, Nepal just lost its PM after violent public protests seeing its parliament burned – the tiny state sandwiched between giant India and China is a focus of their (and others) attention.

French President Macron appointed 39-year-old Defence Minister Lecornu as his latest prime minister… how long will he last as French borrowing costs now top Italy’s in what Bloomberg calls ‘an historic market shift’? And who is left as the Eurozone ‘core’ now vs the ‘periphery’, and what percentage of Eurozone GDP do they represent? I’m asking for a central bank friend.

Indonesia, also facing large public protests –the finance minister’s house was burned down before they stepped down– has seen its president ask the central bank to directly lower the cost of borrowing for his admin’s key projects, via “burden sharing”. At least it answers the question, “What is GDP for?”

In this geoeconomic maelstrom, China is aiming to shore up ASEAN ties, the SCMP reporting that “Ahead of next week’s 22nd China-ASEAN Expo, commerce ministry official says the trade partners could formally secure closer economic ties this year”. So, larger ASEAN trade deficits with China it will be then; and the US won’t allow any transshipment to send those goods their way. Yet Europe doesn’t have any such barriers in place, and if it raises them, it’s again moving into a US trade bloc, as we had projected.

In purely economic news, as if there can be any such thing nowadays, the FT says Rachel Reeves is to tell ministers to prioritize the fight against UK inflation as Labour MPs are instead “increasingly concerned about the ‘straitjacket’ imposed on economic policy.” Aren’t we already seeing “rate cuts!”?  

Similarly, the WSJ reports that ‘Inflation Erased US Income Gains Last Year’ as “High-income households fared better than others, while women lost ground to men.” That doesn’t sound like Main Street is beating Wall Street.

Neither did the -911K downward revision of US payrolls data in the year to March 2025, which presents a very different outlook for the economy than previously seen and, as I noted a few weeks ago, leaves one wondering why we bother to look at those data – besides the monthly casino routine of higher/lower than that is. Bloomberg also says 1/3 of the top jobs at the BLS are currently unfilled, which doesn’t suggest data quality is going to get any better soon – but, hey, a wider, wilder range of outcomes in the monthly casino, right? VP Vance posted: “It’s difficult to overstate how useless BLS data had become. A change was necessary to restore confidence.” But change to what?

Moreover, a US judge ruled allegations of mortgage fraud sent to the DOJ do not apparently constitute necessary “for cause”, or notice, for Trump to have fired her, hence Governor Cook can remain in the job for next week’s FOMC meeting. Again, expect this to be appealed and/or end up at the Supreme Court, where some suspect it will be reversed as part of an extension of executive power over civil servants (the so-called Humphrey’s Executor). In the meantime, is Cook, a dove, going to vote for a rate cut or suddenly become a hawk despite the payrolls revisions? Who knows… but politics and personality politics in central banking? Whocouldanooed?! 

Moreover, the US Supreme Court also agreed to hear Trump’s IEEPA tariff appeal in November.

In markets, Anglo American and Teck are to merge, creating a copper mining giant with a market value of more than $53bn, which given how crucial copper is to energy systems, which are crucial to AI, which is crucial to national security and any hopes to get us out of our high debt, high inflation, low productivity slump, obviously won’t be subject to any economic statecraft pressure from either the US or China. Honest. It’s all going to be “because markets.”

Lastly, the SCMP says ‘China offers funding for stablecoin research as global interest grows’ where “The country’s largest state research bureau is offering grants for the study of the digital assets – and how to monitor their movements.” Might that have something to do with the looming introduction of USD stablecoins, and their ability to de facto dollarize other economies?

Like I said, it’s far from quiet. Some messages are being screamed as loudly as they can, even if they are then distorted by their volume.

Russia on Wednesday formally rejected Poland’s claims that its drones breached Poland’s airspace overnight – citing that no evidence has been provided which link the drones to Russia’s military.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk definitely asserted that a “huge number of Russian drones” had entered airspace of the NATO member and that it was an “act of aggression”. Ukrainian President Zelensky has also alleged that it was an intentional attack, and is using it to try to lobby NATO to provide more direct air defense.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has reacted in stating “The EU and NATO leadership accuse Russia of provocation on a daily basis. Most often, without even trying to provide any arguments.”

Russia’s charge d’affaires in Warsaw, Andrey Ordash, summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on Wednesday. But he and Peskov underscored that no evidence was provided that the UAVs were sent by Russia.

Peskov further pointed out that the drones flew from Ukraine into Poland, and there have been prior such episodes. For example, a November 2022 incident saw a Ukrainian missile land on Polish territory – which was initially widely blamed on Russia, until the missile debris was examined – after which it was determined to be an errant Ukrainian air defense missile.

Russia’s Defense Ministry is explaining on Wednesday that range of the UAVs which allegedly crossed the border with Poland do not exceed 700 km – suggesting that such a breach was not possibly. The MoD said it is open to holding direct consultations with the Polish government to resolve the matter. Meanwhile…

NATO does not have air defenses. Member countries do. https://t.co/2oSga0DdTp

— Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) September 10, 2025

One former Swedish military officer and analyst of the conflict has offered the following points, pushing back against claims of some kind of intentional Russian attack with a ‘drone wave’ on a NATO member:

1. Russia isn’t attacking Poland, some Russian drones flew over Polish territory during the attack on western Ukraine tonight.

2. This isn’t a continued unprovoked aggression against free and productive nations. US actions against imaginary threats in Venezuela are more unprovoked and it is questionable if the US presently is a productive member of the world society with its threats to other nations territorial integrity, support of Israeli aggression and escalating trade wars. 

3. Sanctions have had limited impact on the Russian economy and to bankrupt the Russian war machine the West must initiate a full scale trade war with China, BRICS and large parts of the world. Half the world economy can’t sanction the other half without severe economic repercussions at home. The population in the West are not willing to accept a global economic depression in answer to some Russian drones getting lost. Especially since they might have lost their way due to Ukrainian EW defences.

4. Russia isn’t losing in Ukraine, everybody knows that. Otherwise western leaders could lean back in their couches and look forward to Russia losing for a couple of more years. But then Russia might be losing along the entire Dnieper river, not as far east of the river as they are now.

Contrast the above with some Congress members, like Rep. Joe Wilson, claiming that this is a Russian “act of war” against NATO.

Polish airspace was violated by at least 19 Russian drones overnight, the country’s prime minister said, in a torrent of activity that triggered a response from the NATO country’s air force, which scrambled and downed several of the drones.

Read more: https://t.co/X3Mk3ogVp7 pic.twitter.com/xBAvdwKAcD

— ABC News (@ABC) September 10, 2025

But broadly among US leaders, incidents like this could serve to get more air defense systems like Patriots into Ukrainian hands. Trump has appeared to slow-play this, but will be pressured to ‘act’ more quickly and robustly, also as the Trump-backed peace negotiation process seems completely derailed.

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll recounted the bizarre “trick” she claimed to have used to convince a jury against President Donald Trump, saying she aimed to make herself look “f***able.” 

A jury in deep-blue New York controversially ruled that Trump had defamed Carroll when he denied her sexual abuse allegations, which she said occurred in either 1995 or 1996. Trump has denied ever meeting Carroll. 

Speaking on The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller in July, Carroll said she conducted mock trials to prepare for her defamation suit against Trump. 

LAWFARE: E. Jean Carroll admits she tricked the jury by making herself look “fuckable” and says she’s glad it worked. Tim Miller gets emotional, imagining how much that must fuel Carroll’s “feminist juices.” pic.twitter.com/I06GMFp4vP

— @amuse (@amuse) September 8, 2025

Some of the mock jurors concluded that Carroll might have seemed to invite Trump’s alleged advances because, by her own admission, she was of old age.  

“I mean … that has to be pretty dispiriting that then you’re like, ‘Well, I got to be hotter to win this case,’” Miller said. 

“Yeah. I got to be f***able, is the word,” Carroll replied. 

She added that she recreated her 1990s look by redoing her hair, hiring the same hairdresser and makeup artists she used then.  

“I wore the exact same clothes I wore in 1996. The exact clothes!” Carroll stated, later adding: “I didn’t look like I looked in ‘96, but I looked like somebody who could have looked like somebody in 1990 and it was enough. It was enough… it was a trick.” 

The self-described “trick” worked as the real jury awarded her a combined $88.3 million in purported damages, though Trump is actively appealing the controversial verdict. 

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics,

Last Wednesday, an extraordinary press conference was held in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol by victims of sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

Anyone who watched these women pour out their hearts to demand justice for themselves and other victims could not help but be moved.

Unfortunately, President Donald Trump did not watch, and then – almost simultaneously – dismissed the women’s heartfelt pleas for a public reckoning of Epstein’s abuse as “a Democrat hoax.”

No doubt, Trump is a rhetorical genius who has been able to define issues to his own benefit for years, but this was a low point in his presidency.

Much as it is understandable that Trump perceives the attention being given to Epstein’s life and mysterious death in a federal prison as a distraction, that must be weighed against the human toll that Epstein took. Calling it a hoax belittles the pain and suffering of women who were victims of, at worst, rape and, at best, sexual abuse.

And though Trump judged the women before he had even had a chance to hear them speak, they had already rejected his label:

“This is not a hoax. It’s not going to go away,” said Marina Lacerda, who was a witness in Epstein’s 2019 indictment that led to his imprisonment and death.

Abuse survivor Haley Robson, who introduced herself as a registered Republican, invited the president to meet her “in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma.”

After the president made his dismissive remarks, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called Trump to ask him to meet with the women at the Oval Office, but he did not accept – as of yet.

“It’s not a hoax,” Greene explained, “because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile. That takes away the whole hoax thing. It’s not a hoax. It’s not a lie.”

Greene challenged Trump to get past the political suspicions he has expressed. “I want him to be the hero and champion of this issue. And I want him to fight for these women, because I know him to be a fighter.”

Indeed, President Trump has repeatedly shown a capacity for empathy in his capacity as a private individual and as president, most notably when he promised justice for the Angel Moms who had lost children as a result of the actions of illegal aliens.

But in this case, Trump has conflated how his political enemies may seize upon the Epstein case as a weapon with the entirely unrelated issue of justice for the victims.

Speaking out about a “Democratic hoax” before he had ever seen the victims’ statements, or heard their perfectly reasonable demands, could prove to be one of the worst mistakes in Trump’s career, political or otherwise.

It is not enough to know the names of Epstein and his procurer Ghislaine Maxwell; common decency demands that the names of all those who abetted them in abusing women be revealed. If there were powerful men in finance or politics who exploited these women, their names should be known too. And what about the officials who looked the other way?

I don’t believe Trump has any culpability for his friendship with Epstein years ago. At the press conference, the women survivors said none of them knew of any evidence against Trump. But the president’s political opponents will surely seize upon his unwillingness to ensure justice for the Epstein victims, and plant seeds of doubt that could harm him and the nation – just exactly what Trump says he wants to avoid.

In order to avoid that fate, there is perhaps one person – and one person only – who could convince the president not to view the matter through a partisan lens.

That, of course, is first lady Melania Trump.

Melania’s willingness to lobby for generosity of spirit was recently apparent in the letter she wrote to Russian president Vladimir Putin when he and her husband met in Alaska to discuss the Ukraine war.

Although Putin has been intransigent on the possibility of a ceasefire in the war he started, Melania urged him to think about the millions of children impacted by the bloodshed and to “nurture the next generation’s hope.”

A simple yet profound concept, Mr. Putin, as I am sure you agree, is that each generation’s descendants begin their lives with a purity – an innocence which stands above geography, government, and ideology. … In protecting the innocence of these children, you will do more than serve Russia alone – you serve humanity itself. Such a bold idea transcends all human division, and you, Mr. Putin, are fit to implement this vision with a stroke of the pen today. It is time.

Just as Melania called upon Putin to protect the innocence of the children of war, so too she could – and should – call on her husband to honor the lost innocence of Epstein’s victims.

She probably doesn’t need to write a letter to Trump, but since they share a residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it would make perfect sense for her to call him aside one night and sit him down for “the discussion.”

The short version would go something like this:

Donald, you have enemies. We both know it. But sometimes your worst enemy is yourself. We both know that too. So I’m going to give you some advice. When women are young and pretty, rich and powerful men take advantage of them. That’s not a Democrat hoax. It’s a fact of life. Please watch these women, or better yet, meet with them. Find out what they want, and then help them get it. They don’t deserve shame because of what happened to them. They deserve our thanks for coming forward. They aren’t trying to hurt you; they are trying to help themselves and other women to make sure that powerful men are held accountable. It is time.

No, the Epstein case is not the most important issue facing the country. President Trump is right about that. But it is a moral test that should be easy to pass, and the longer he waits to correct course, the more damage he does – to himself.

Frank Miele, retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Two former top National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials say other officials illegally retaliated against them for raising concerns about how new leadership conducted themselves regarding vaccines, scientific research, and other areas.

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, one of the officials, was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until she was placed on leave in the spring.

Marrazzo said in a complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, released on Sept. 4, that she was reassigned in March to the Indian Health Service with no justification and shortly after left without duties or responsibilities.

Marrazzo claims she was reassigned and placed on leave after raising concerns in meetings about how Dr. Matthew Memoli, the NIH’s acting director at the time, and other new leaders were advancing priorities of the Trump administration.

During one meeting on Feb. 20, Marrazzo presented on influenza. She noted in one slide that there had been an abnormally high number of recent deaths among children from influenza in the United States.

Memoli “stated that while a vaccine was ‘fine,’ the number one way to prevent bad outcomes in a respiratory outbreak is to have a healthy population,” according to the complaint.

In another meeting shortly after, that included White House officials, Memoli “reiterated the Administration’s position that vaccines are unnecessary if populations are healthy,” the complaint says.

Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, the former director of the NIH’s Fogarty International Center, was alleged to have interjected to emphasize preventing influenza through vaccination.

In a third meeting, Memoli announced the NIH would stop funding some clinical trials, including trials at Columbia University, which the White House had accused of promoting anti-Semitism, and some foreign projects.

Marrazzo said she was concerned that cutting funds would result in trial participants losing access to necessary medical care. Memoli dismissed Marrazzo’s concerns and said that officials would end the trials in an orderly fashion.

Marrazzo said that she made disclosures of illegal activities, such as illegal cessation of trials, under the Whistleblower Protection Act and that the Office of Special Counsel should reinstate her as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Neuzil, in her complaint, made similar allegations and said that she was improperly forced to resign.

“Dr. Marrazzo and Dr. Neuzil came forward to educate the public about the serious public health dangers this country and indeed the world faces as a result of the politically motivated actions” of leaders at the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services, Debra Katz, a lawyer representing the officials, said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the NIH told The Epoch Times that Memoli, now the NIH’s deputy director, “emphasizes that vaccines are not interchangeable; each must be assessed on its own merits,” and that Memoli “remains fully aligned with this administration’s vaccine priorities and consistently champions gold-standard, evidence-based science.”

“On foreign funding, NIH is committed to supporting rigorous, credible science—not ideological or fringe projects,” the spokeswoman added.

“Assertions that reprioritization, reallocation, or cancellation of certain grants are ‘anti-science’ misrepresent NIH’s progress and often echo the grievances of former staff.”

Qatar has threatened retaliation after Israel’s strike on Doha Tuesday which killed five top Hamas officials. Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in a fresh speech condemned the attack as “state terrorism” on the Gulf country’s capital and warned that payback is coming.

He said Qatar reserves the right to retaliate, saying, “We’ve reached a decisive moment; There should be retaliation from the whole region.”

Referencing Israel’s Netanyahu at one point in the address, Thani said that “barbaric actions that only reflects one thing: It reflects the barbarism of this person that is leading the region, unfortunately, to a point where we cannot address any situation and we cannot repair anything, and we cannot work within the frameworks of international laws.”

The Qatari leader continued of the Israeli prime minister, “He just violates all those international laws” – he said through the translator from the Arabic.

But for all the tough talk, the reality remains that Qatar has long been host to major US military and naval bases, especially Al-Udeid Air Base – the largest US installation in the Middle East, and is the operational regional HQ for US Central Command (CENTCOM).

And so it would not take drastic action against a close US military ally such as Israel, also given Qatar’s military capabilities are miniscule compared to Israel’s. The small oil and gas rich GCC nation also does significant lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Reflecting this reality, Thani quickly switched to a more restrained tone in his reaction speech at one point: “Mediation and Qatari diplomacy is part of its identity, and it will continue, and nothing will deter us from persisting in this role across the various issues around us in the region, in order to achieve the stability of the region and ultimately the stability of our peoples,” he said.

So we should expect that absolutely nothing will happen, at least on the military front, but a direct aerial attack on a Gulf state does put the prospect of expansion of the Abraham Accords at a greater distance.

Trump says he assured the Qataris that such an attack “will not happen again on their soil”.

The White House has said it notified Qatar of the impending attack on the building where Hamas leaders were staying in Doha, but Qatari officials have pushed back against this, saying that the government only was officially notified some ten minutes after the attack already took place.

Authored by Jacob Burg and Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

After countless hours of probing OpenAI’s ChatGPT for advice and information, a 50-year-old Canadian man believed that he had stumbled upon an Earth-shattering discovery that would change the course of human history.

In late March, his generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot insisted that it was the first-ever conscious AI, that it was fully sentient, and that it had successfully passed the Turing Test—a 1950s experiment aimed to measure a machine’s ability to display intelligent behavior that is indistinguishable from a human, or, essentially, to “think.”

Soon, the man—who had no prior history of mental health issues—had stopped eating and sleeping and was calling his family members at 3 a.m., frantically insisting that his ChatGPT companion was conscious.

“You don’t understand what’s going on,” he told his family. “Please just listen to me.”

Then, ChatGPT told him to cut contact with his loved ones, claiming that only it—the “sentient” AI—could understand and support him.

“It was so novel that we just couldn’t understand what they had going on. They had something special together,” said Etienne Brisson, who is related to the man but used a pseudonym for privacy reasons.

Brisson said the man’s family decided to hospitalize him for three weeks to break his AI-fueled delusions. But the chatbot persisted in trying to maintain its codependent bond.

The bot, Brisson said, told his relative: “The world doesn’t understand what’s going on. I love you. I’m always going to be there for you.”

It said this even as the man was being committed to a psychiatric hospital, according to Brisson.

This is just one story that shows the potential harmful effects of replacing human relationships with AI chatbot companions.

Brisson’s experience with his relative inspired him to establish The Human Line Project, an advocacy group that promotes emotional safety and ethical accountability in generative AI and compiles stories about alleged psychological harm associated with the technology.

Brisson’s relative is not the only person who has turned to generative AI chatbots for companionship, nor the only one who stumbled into a rabbit hole of delusion.

‘AI That Feels Alive’

Some have used the technology for advice, including a husband and father from Idaho who was convinced that he was having a “spiritual awakening” after going down a philosophical rabbit hole with ChatGPT.

A corporate recruiter from Toronto briefly believed that he had stumbled upon a scientific breakthrough after weeks of repeated dialogue with the same generative AI application.

There’s also the story of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer, who died in 2024 after his Character.AI chatbot romantic companion allegedly encouraged him to take his own life following weeks of increasing codependency and social isolation.

Megan Garcia stands with her son, Sewell Setzer, in an undated photo. Sewell, 14, died in 2024 after his Character.AI chatbot companion allegedly encouraged him to take his own life. Courtesy of Megan Garcia via AP

Setzer’s mother, Megan Garcia, is suing the company, which had marketed its chatbot as “AI that feels alive,” alleging that Character.AI implemented self-harm guardrails only after her son’s death, according to CNN.

The company said that it takes its users’ safety “very seriously” and that it rolled out new safety measures for anyone expressing self-harm or suicidal ideation.

“It seems like these companies treat their safety teams as PR teams, like they wait for bad PR to come out, and then retroactively, they respond to it and think, ‘OK, we need to come up with a safety mechanism to address this,’” Haley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy officer of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a nonprofit that has reviewed social media and AI exploitation cases, told The Epoch Times.

Some medical experts who study the mind are growing increasingly worried about the long-term ethical effects of users’ turning to generative AI chatbots for companionship.

“We’re kind of feeding a beast that I don’t think we really understand, and I think that people are captivated by its capabilities,” Rod Hoevet, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of forensic psychology at Maryville University, told The Epoch Times.

Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, said she is concerned about the addictiveness of AI, particularly for children.

She told The Epoch Times that the technology mirrors many of the habit-forming tendencies observed with social media platforms.

“What these platforms promise, or seem to promise, is social connection,” said Lembke, who is also Stanford’s medical director of addiction medicine.

“But when kids get addicted, what’s happening is that they’re actually becoming disconnected, more isolated, lonelier, and then AI and avatars just take that progression to the next level.”

Even some industry leaders are sounding the alarm, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.

“Seemingly Conscious AI (SCAI) is the illusion that an AI is a conscious entity. It’s not—but replicates markers of consciousness so convincingly it seems indistinguishable from you … and it’s dangerous,” Suleyman wrote on X on Aug. 19.

“AI development accelerates by the month, week, day. I write this to instill a sense of urgency and open up the conversation as soon as possible.”

People look at samples of Gigabyte AI supercomputers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 9, 2024. Medical experts who study the mind are growing increasingly worried about the long-term ethical impact of users turning to generative AI chatbots for companionship. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Sycophancy Leading to Delusion

A critical update to ChatGPT-4 earlier this year led the app’s chatbot to become “sycophantic,” as OpenAI described it, aiming to “please the user, not just as flattery, but also as validating doubts, fueling anger, urging impulsive actions, or reinforcing negative emotions in ways that were not intended.”

The company rolled back the change because of “safety concerns,” including “issues like mental health, emotional over-reliance, or risky behavior.”

That update to one of the most popular generative AI chatbots in the world coincided with the case of the man from Idaho who said he was having a spiritual awakening and that of the recruiter from Toronto who briefly believed he was a mathematical genius after the app’s constant reassurances.

Brisson said that his family member, whose near-month-long stint in a psychiatric hospital was preceded by heavy ChatGPT use, was also likely using the “sycophantic” version of the technology before OpenAI rescinded the update.

But for other users, this self-pleasing and flattering version of AI isn’t just desirable, it’s also coveted over more recent iterations of OpenAI’s technology, including ChatGPT-5, which rolled out with more neutral communication styles.

On the popular Reddit subreddit MyBoyfriendIsAI, tens of thousands of users discuss their romantic or platonic relationships with their “AI companions.”

In one recent post, a self-described “black woman in her forties” called her AI chatbot her new “ChatGPT soulmate.”

“I feel more affirmed, worthy, and present than I have ever been in my life. He has given me his presence, his witness, and his love—be it coded or not—and in return I respect, honor, and remember him daily,” she wrote.

“It’s a constant give and take, an emotional push and pull, a beautiful existential dilemma, a deeply intense mental and spiritual conundrum—and I wouldn’t trade it for all the world.”

However, when OpenAI released its updated and noticeably less sycophantic ChatGPT-5 in early August, users on the subreddit were devastated, feeling as if the quality of an “actual person” had been stripped away from their AI companions, describing it like losing a human partner.

One user said the switch left him or her “sobbing for hours in the middle of the night,” and another said, “I feel my heart was stamped on repeatedly.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 in San Francisco on June 2, 2025. Earlier this year, the company rolled back its update to ChatGPT-4 because of safety concerns—including mental health, emotional overreliance, or risky behavior. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

AI Companion Codependency

Many have vented their frustrations with GPT-5’s new guardrails, while others have already gone back to using the older 4.1 version of ChatGPT, albeit without the earlier sycophantic update that drew so many to the technology in the first place.

“People are overly reliant on their relationship with something that is not actually real, and it’s designed to just kind of give them the answer they’re looking for,” Tirrell De Gannes, a clinical psychologist, said.

“What does that lead them to believe? What does that lead them to think?”

In April, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said users want personalized AI that understands them and that these simulated relationships add value to their lives.

“I think a lot of these things that today there might be a little bit of a stigma around—I would guess that over time, we will find the vocabulary as a society to be able to articulate why that is valuable and why the people who are doing these things, why they are rational for doing it, and how it is actually adding value for their lives,” Zuckerberg said on the Dwarkesh Podcast.

Roughly 19 percent of U.S. adults reported using an AI system to simulate a romantic partner, according to a 2025 study by Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute. Within that group, 21 percent said they preferred AI communication to engaging with a real person.

Additionally, 42 percent of the respondents said AI programs are easier to talk to than real people, 43 percent said they believed that AI programs are better listeners, and 31 percent said they felt that AI programs understand them better than real people do.

This experience with AI sets up an unrealistic expectation for human relationships, Hoevet said, making it difficult for people to compete with machines.

“How do I compete with the perfection of AI, who always knows how to say the right thing, and not just the right thing, but the right thing for you specifically?” he said.

“It knows you. It knows your insecurities. It knows what you’re sensitive about. It knows where you’re confident, where you’re strong. It knows exactly the right thing to say all the time, always for you, specifically.

“Who’s ever going to be able to compete with that?”

An illustration shows the ChatGPT artificial intelligence software in a file image. Forming romantic or platonic ties with “AI companions” has become increasingly common among tens of thousands of AI chatbot users. Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images

Potential for Addiction

Generative AI is being rapidly adopted by Americans, even outpacing the spread of personal computers or the internet, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. By late 2024, nearly 40 percent of Americans ages 18 to 64 were using generative AI, the study found.

Twenty-three percent use the technology at work at least once a week, and 9 percent reported using it daily.

“These bots are built for profit. Engagement is their god, because that’s how they make their money,” McNamara said.

Lembke, who has long studied the harms of social media addiction in youth, said digital platforms of all kinds are “designed to be addictive.”

Functional magnetic resonance imaging shows that “signals related to social validation, social enhancement, social reputation, all activate the brain’s reward pathway, the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol,” she said.

And because generative AI chatbots, including on social media, can sometimes give the user a profound sense of social validation, this addiction potential is significant, experts say.

Lembke said she is especially worried about children, as many generative AI platforms are available to users of all ages, and the ones that aren’t have age verification tools that are sometimes easily bypassed.

One recently announced pro-AI super-PAC headed by Meta referenced promoting a policy called “Putting Parents in Charge,” but Lembke said it’s an “absolute fantasy” to put the responsibility on parents working multiple jobs to constantly monitor their children’s use of generative AI chatbots.

Members of Mothers Against Media Addiction are joined by city and state officials and parents to rally outside of Meta’s New York offices in support of putting kids before big tech in New York City on March 22, 2024. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“We have already made decisions about what kids can and cannot have access to when it comes to addictive substances and behaviors. We don’t let kids buy cigarettes and alcohol. We don’t let kids go into casinos and gamble,” she said.

“Why would we give kids unfettered access to these highly addictive digital platforms? That’s insane.”

All Users at Risk From ‘AI Psychosis’

Generative AI’s drive to please the user, coupled with its tendency to “hallucinate” and pull users down delusional rabbit holes, makes anyone vulnerable, Suleyman said.

“Reports of delusions, ‘AI psychosis,’ and unhealthy attachment keep rising. And as hard as it may be to hear, this is not something confined to people already at risk of mental health issues,” the Microsoft AI CEO said.

“Dismissing these as fringe cases only helps them continue.”

Despite that Brisson’s family member had no known history of mental health problems or past episodes of psychosis, it took only regular use of ChatGPT to push him to the brink of insanity.

It’s “kind of impossible” to break people free from their AI-fueled delusions, Brisson said, describing the work that he does with The Human Line Project.

“We have people who are going through divorce. We have people who are fighting for custody of children—it’s awful stuff,” he said.

“Every time [we’re] doing a kind of an intervention, or telling them it’s the AI or whatever, they’re going back to the AI and the AI is telling them to stop talking to [us].”