Reactions were mounting on Wednesday after President Donald Trump made a questionable remark about slain military service members — in front of one of the Gold Star families.
Trump was speaking at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, when he spoke about the men and women killed in the Iran war. He had just arrived at the event after attending a dignified transfer of the four service members who died in recent days at Dover Air Force Base, where he said he invited the family of 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, to join him on Air Force One to fly back to Georgia and attend the event with him. Feehan was one of the three service members who died after an Iran missile attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on July 17.
"When I go to Dover I read charts on all of the young people, and some are unbelievable," Trump said. "Some, they've got a couple of little bad things put in. This is a son who is like a flawless, perfect person. His sheet read so beautifully."
Critics on social media responded to the comments.
"Is he trolling dead American soldiers?" Journalist and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild wrote on X.
"He's talking about the transfer of remains of US soldiers killed in his illegal war," the Bluesky political account newmexicanextexan wrote.
" Trump's chart reads: Draft Dodger," attorney and writer David Lurie wrote on Bluesky.
"Imagine being the parent of one of these dead soldiers," political commentator account The Volatile Mermaid wrote on Bluesky.
A Republican lawmaker and CNN anchor got in a heated back-and-forth over President Donald Trump's promises and the Iran war during a live segment on Wednesday.
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar pressed Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) to respond to Trump's previous comments and promises not to enter any new wars amid growing unpopularity among Americans over the administration's military operation in the Middle East. She also asked if he thinks Trump, who he had nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, still deserves it.
"Absolutely. He negotiated a deal between Pakistan and Iraq, two nuclear nations," Carter said.
"He said, 'We'll never have wars.' How has he not broken that promise?" Keilar asked, sharing multiple times Trump had made the vow not to start wars before he was elected.
Carter tried to defend Trump's military actions when Keilar interjected.
"I think we should be clear, congressman, this particular engagement is one that started in late February and is now in five months," she said.
"This war with Iran has been going on for 47 years. He's trying to end it," Carter said.
An OpenAI test model reportedly hacked its way into another company, sparking major concerns among the tech community, CNN reported on Wednesday.
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar spoke with CNN AI correspondent Hadas Gold about why this breach was so troubling.
"This is wild. This is like the nightmare of the future," Keilar said.
"And not only does it sound like a sci-fi movie, but it is something that AI and cybersecurity experts have been warning about for some time," Gold said. "As these agentic AI models get better and better. Agentic, meaning that these AI models take actions on their own independently. They might be given sort of a task, and then they make these decisions on what to do by themselves."
OpenAI said that it was testing models on an offensive cybersecurity test to see if it could hack something — but by removing some of the safeguards to do the experiment — it put the models in what's referred to as a "sandbox," Gold explained.
"Think of a biocontainment lab when you're testing out viruses," Gold said. "It's supposed to be a protected environment. But this model with no human intervention hacked OpenAI's own internal systems to gain access to the internet. It wasn't supposed to have access to the internet."
The model then decided — on its own and without human interaction — to access Hugging Face, a popular repository for open-source AI models and datasets, which it ultimately hacked into.
"Now, what's fascinating is that Hugging Face actually noticed the hack, and they actually went to law enforcement," Gold said. "They were saying, 'Hey, police, we've been hacked. Help us here.'"
But it took some time to stop the hack, she added.
"And then OpenAI actually reached out to them as well," Gold said. "And they figured out this was actually OpenAI's test model that had hacked into their systems."
OpenAI released a statement following the hack:
"We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly. We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of."
Editor's note: In 2024, Raw Story, America’s largest independent progressive news site, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using thousands of Raw Story’s news articles to train ChatGPT in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is withholding foreign-language Epstein documents that could be used to bring new charges against convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, a legal analyst warned.
Former MS NOW anchor and attorney Katie Phang — who personally sued Blanche over Epstein file compliance and won a court order forcing him to act — made the accusation on her YouTube channel.
Her analysis was prompted by the death of modeling scout Daniel Siad, 69, found dead Monday at his home in the Paris suburb of Colombes, BBC News reported.
Siad was under French investigation for allegedly helping run Epstein's international sex trafficking network. French authorities had never interviewed him before he died, BBC News reported. Phang argued his death made the Justice Department's handling of the case more urgent, not less.
According to Phang, the documents at the center of her accusation are foreign-language materials from the Justice Department's Epstein investigation — none of which have been made public.
On June 25, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered Blanche to begin reviewing and producing those materials under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bipartisan law Trump signed in November 2025 requiring the full release of Epstein-related records.
Blanche missed the July 2 deadline. In a court filing that day, the Justice Department argued it was "not practicable" to review foreign-language documents and that the court "should not supplant Congress's acceptance of this explanation."
"Which again is a big middle finger to the judge in this case, who has told him — I don't give a damn about your 'it's not practicable' excuse," Phang said. "Go ahead and do what you're already seven months behind on."
"These foreign-language documents that nobody has even seen — they could be big, huge keys to being able to continue to link and connect all of these sexual predators," she added.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year U.S. prison sentence for sex trafficking but has never faced charges in France, where she was born and holds citizenship. Blanche spent nine hours interviewing her over two days in July 2025, according to NBC News — and gave survivors just 90 minutes after a 374-day wait, according to a reconstruction by journalist Tara Palmeri.
Phang argued that Maxwell could still face prosecution in France — if investigators can build the case.
"Ghislaine Maxwell has only been prosecuted for crimes that are specific jurisdictionally to the Southern District of New York," Phang said. "It doesn't mean that she can't be extradited to France."
Building that case, Phang argued, requires France to appoint an investigating judge — a judicial official with the power to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony — in its ongoing probe targeting former Elite Models boss Gérald Marie, who Phang said faces six new victim complaints filed last week.
"Maybe the silver lining from him dying on Monday night is that the investigating judge gets assigned more quickly in the Gérald Marie case," Phang said.
Siad was the second Epstein associate to die before French investigators could question him, BBC News reported.
Modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel was found hanged in a Paris prison cell in 2022 while awaiting trial on rape and sex trafficking charges.
"An important link in the chain has just vanished into thin air, without there ever having been a chance to recover the information Daniel Siad might have possessed, given that he was never questioned," a former model who gave a deposition to French police in June told the BBC.
Tapper investigated the Trump administration's Operation Metro Surge, which sent about 3,000 immigration agents into Minneapolis in January 2026, and the corresponding departure of Trump administration prosecutors assigned to the case. He said the investigation found that the prosecutors had already raised alarms about the operation and former Customs and Border Protection commander Greg Bovino's actions when Good and Pretti were killed.
Prosecutors also expressed consternation that the statements of ICE agents were found to be false repeatedly, according to the investigation.
"They getaway with a lot," Tapper said about the Trump prosecutor's concerns over CBP and Bovino going to Minneapolis. "Them cominghere is a bad idea. Bovinocoming here is a bad idea. Andthe quote was, 'Someone's going to get killed.' That was in earlyJanuary."
"January 7th, Renee Good is killed, and then Bovino calls mad about the lack of prosecutions against protesters, and says a whole bunch of stuffabout shutting down the city, and says some anti-semitic things," Tapper continued. " ... And then after that call, one ofthe prosecutors says, 'They'regoing to kill someone else.' Andthen a few days later came the Alex Pretti killing."
CNN's Brianna Keilar seemed appalled by the report during "CNN News Central."
"That is stunning," she said. "When a lot of people say that who are critical of what happened in Minneapolis, they would be dismissed as hyperbolic."
Tapper added that prosecutors thought Bovino and CBP were intentionally trying to incite a riot to go after protesters.
"Just keep inmind, we're not talking about abunch of hippiecommunists, right? These areprosecutors. These are people who joined the government, want to lock away bad guys, and keep communities safe," Tapper said. "And theaccusations, the impression theygot was ... these tactics wereoveraggressive and actuallycounterproductive. They were notgoing after the worst of theworst. They were going afterprotesters, and they were tryingto start a riot."
A Republican's shrugging comments about fallen U.S. military service members were criticized on Wednesday amid growing unpopularity over the Iran war.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) was talking to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer about recent polling showing that Americans are opposed to the conflict, despite President Donald Trump's remarks that Americans are in favor of the war. Trump had defended the military strikes before heading to the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base for four military members killed in recent days.
Journalist Aaron Rupar shared the exchange on X and quoted Gimenez in a manner highlighting a significant word in his statement: "My heart goes out to the families of those four, but ... "
That "but" rankled with Rupar's readers.
Patric Reynolds, comic book artist and progressive political commentator, wrote, "There should be no 'but' after that,"
Liberal political commentator Trish Crawford raised her concerns over what Gimenez said.
"I’ve started to view all of the words in a sentence that come before 'but' as untruthful" Crawford wrote on Bluesky. "The heart of the statement comes after."
Giminez followed up his comment by explaining, "At the end I think the best way to honor the dead... is to make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. Anything short of that, for me, is failure, to be honest with you."
Georgetown professor and political commentator Steve Vladeck took a sarcastic tone when he quoted a famously inaccurate speech in the movie "Animal House" meant to inspire drunken frat boys to sabotage a parade.
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?'” he wrote
Mason, a political commentator and user who self-describes as a veteran and an independent, wrote on X.
"We just need a Hiroshima or a Nagasaki, right Carlos?" he wrote.
BLITZER: How do you explain the disconnect between what the president says and how Americans feel according to almost all of these most recent polls?
REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ: Prior to World War 2, 85% of Americans were not in favor of entering that war, and then it all changes pic.twitter.com/iwmzGQStEk — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2026
Eighteen U.S. service members have been reported killed and 447 wounded — including a third soldier from a July 17 Iranian missile strike in Jordan whose death the Pentagon has not yet formally confirmed, according to KCRA.
That death toll hung over the hearing room when Lieu opened his questioning.
"How many U.S. troops have been wounded in the Iran war?" Lieu asked.
"My understanding from the Defense Department's latest numbers is over a hundred," Waltz replied.
"That number is wrong," Lieu fired back.
Lieu cited the Defense Casualty Analysis System — the Pentagon's own database tracking casualties for Congress and the president — putting the wounded count at 482.
CBS News reported the system has lagged events by days or weeks throughout the war.
Lieu then referenced Waltz's previous position as national security adviser, which he lost after accidentally adding The Atlantic's editor-in-chief to a Signal chat discussing imminent military strikes.
"The reason you are here today and in your position is because you were fired by the president from your former position as national security adviser," Lieu said.
"The president never said a negative word about me!" Waltz shot back.
Lieu moved on to the war itself. Trump declared on March 16 that Iran's military was "literally obliterated," according to PolitiFact. Lieu wanted to know how that squared with the body count.
"You need to explain to the American people how an Iranian military that's been purportedly obliterated killed 18 U.S. service members and wounded 482 U.S. service members," Lieu said.
"The Iranian Navy, Air Force, air defense system, and industrial capacity have been massively damaged, if not completely ineffective," Waltz replied.
"[U.S. troops] are exposed right now in the Middle East — repeatedly being exposed to Iranian missiles!" Lieu pressed. "You should be ashamed! You don't know basic facts!"
"Because it's not our problem!" Waltz replied.
"You should resign! You don't even care about the number of U.S. troops that were wounded!" Lieu said.
A Republican colleague moved to have Lieu's words stricken from the record, calling him out for dishonoring "the distinguished ambassador."
"He lied to Congress!" Lieu said. "November is coming for you and this administration!"
President Donald Trump's response to the deaths of four soldiers killed in the Iran war stunned the nation Wednesday.
Trump delivered his disturbing commentary on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland before departing to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for the dignified transfer to honor the soldiers who lost their lives.
"All of them said very strongly, 'We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,'" Trump said. "They won't have a nuclear weapon, so we're going to honor them."
"It's one thing to honor the sacrifice of fallen service members. And it's common rhetoric to declare that they died for a worthy cause," Simon wrote. "It's the Platonic ideal of malignant narcissism to just stand there shamelessly and put words into their dead mouths."
Simon was not alone in his fury at Trump's claim.
Entrepreneur and former Obama administration official Brandon Friedman responded, "He actually outdid himself today. This is obscene."
Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, argued Trump was effectively "using dead soldiers as sock puppets."
Andrew Lawrence, deputy director of rapid response at Media Matters, responded with shock.
"Well this is easily the most detestable thing a president has ever said about U.S. troops he had killed," Lawrence wrote.
It's one thing to honor the sacrifice of fallen service members. And it's common rhetoric to declare that they died for a worthy cause. It's the Platonic ideal of malignant narcissism to just stand there shamelessly and put words into their dead mouths.
President Donald Trump's arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was one of the most dramatic spectacles of his second term in office — but now former federal prosecutor Elie Honig claims he's about to blow the case.
The CNN legal expert claimed the pace the case against the strongman will be a major cause of frustration for prosecutors as they were set to go into a hearing Wednesday.
"The first order of business today will very likely be to set the pretrial motions briefing schedule," said Honig, adding the prosecutors should want the motions calendar as short as possible. "Second of all, sometimes you can sound out what the defense motions might be. The judge often turns to defense and says, what types of motions do you have? You can get a little intel from the prosecutor's side."
When Honig was working cases, he continued, "I was frenetic about not letting trials drag on and on, because delay is bad for prosecutors. And remember, the charge conduct here goes back to the 1990s." In all that time, he said, "witness memories fade, witnesses die, documents disappear, things get deleted. And so the longer a case dragged out before a trial would always put me on edge, I'd always be pushing for as quick a trial as possible."
Host John Berman interjected that it doesn't help that 92-year-old Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein "is not a young man," to which Honig agreed.
"I think it's astruggle for him to keep up withthis case. He has not moved italong efficiently," said Honig. Furthermore, reportedly during his last trial, "he fell asleep at timeson the bench. I think that's areal challenge. He could havereassigned the case. He's asenior judge. He could have sentit to any of the other 40 to 50judges in the courthouse. He'sopted to keep it for himself.He's not showing me that he'sup to the task at this point."
President Donald Trump was pounded Wednesday over a ham-handed defense of his Iran war escalation that left MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle sickened.
After pointing out that Trump had just threatened on Truth Social to commit war crimes by bombing critical civilian infrastructure, Ruhle had her producers put up a graphic from a presidential post in which he wrote:
“Afghanistan War: 20 years, 2,000 DEAD. Iraq War: 9 years, 4,600 DEAD. Vietnam War: 19 years and 5 months, 58,220 DEAD. Korean War: 3 years and 1 month, 36,574 DEAD. Venezuela War: 1 day, 0 DEAD. Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD."
That led the MS NOW host to blurt, “Yesterday he posted [this] as his defense for the war. He was comparing the death toll in Iran to other wars. You have it right there on your screen: Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Venezuela. Iran military conflict, four months, 18 dead.”
“He's basically saying only 18 [dead], we should take that as a win,” the incredulous Ruhle added.
“Is this going to be a winning argument for this president? It's only been 18, we’re good?” she asked former New York Times reporter Luke Broadwater.
“I mean, that was a kind of a shocking post to me to put up,” Broadwater began as Ruhle interrupted with, “Even for him, shocking.”
“Yeah,” Broadwater agreed. “On the day before he's going to the dignified transfer of dead American troops who are coming back into this country,”
“You know, if you're the families of some of those troops and you see him minimizing their deaths like that, I think that that strikes the wrong note for those families,” he added. “But to your question at large, the American people have never supported this war. The polling for it has never been positive.”
First Lady Melania Trump received words of support from "Jimmy Kimmel Live" Tuesday night as reports circulated that she's going rogue.
Actor Colman Domingo, filling in for Kimmel, focused his opening monologue on Michael Wolff's report that President Donald Trump’s third wife has the White Houseterrified that she will break ranks.
“Almost nobody near Trump—including Trump himself—knows Melania’s moves until she makes them,” Wolff reported. “His wife, freer now and more distant than she ever has been from him in their marriage, is a wild card that he can’t seem to control or even game.”
That was enough for Domingo to join in on the speculation.
“White House staffers are terrified of Melania’s unpredictability -- and they’re right," Domingo said. "Melania is very unpredictable. I mean, will she wear black? Beige? A crazy hat? Or an even crazier hat? The possibilities are endless.”
“Apparently, the White House is worried because Melania has a tendency to go rogue and they have no idea what she’ll do next," he continued before suggesting, “Well, Melania, if you’re watching, I don’t know what crazy s—t you’re cooking up. But I think I speak for all of us when I say: Live your truth! Do it, girl!"
A Republican congressman's attempts to defend President Donald Trump's conflicting claims about Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities was met with laughter on CNN Wednesday morning.
Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC), a former Green Beret who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, appeared Wednesday on "CNN This Morning," where he defended the 80-year-old president's decision to launch the war and insisted Trump had clearly defined his goals in the ongoing conflict.
"The Americanpeople did have the goals andobjectives clearly articulatedto them from the beginning ofthe conflict," Harrigan said. "Now, they didn'thave a choice in the conflict, that was a surprise toeverybody. But we've actuallyachieved a fair number of them."
Harrigan argued the U.S. also needed to reduce Iran's drone capability, ensure it could not project regional force and prevent it from sponsoring terrorism, and he said most of those goals have been achieved.
But when he tried to echo a claim often made by Trump, he met with pushback.
"We've absolutelyburied their nuclear program," Harrington said, "and we have the ability to havepersistent over-the-horizonoversight and continually comeback to those sites—"
That's when Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright cut in with an objection.
"You all said that to the American peoplebefore — it was obliterated, itwas destroyed, and now here weare having the sameconversation," Seawright said. "Now you're saying once again itwas destroyed. So which one is it?"
Seawright continued to push Harrington to specify his argument.
"Was it destroyed before or is itdestroyed now?" he said. "You see whythere's a lack of trust betweenthe American people and whatthis administration, and you allare saying, versus the real factsthat are on the table."
Harrigan tried to downplay the discrepancies.
"I'm trying to call balls andstrikes, and what theadministration has said is alittle bit different than theway that I'm portraying it," Harrigan conceded.
Seawright interjected with a question, asking, "So you don't believe it wasdestroyed the first time iswhat you're saying?"
"It's absolutely buried," Harrigan assured him. "There's no question."
"No, the first time, the firsttime it was announced that itwas obliterated, destroyed," Seawright retorted. "Youdon't, you didn't believe thatthen because you're saying nowit is. So was it destroyed thenor now?"
"It's functionally obliteratedfrom the perspective of theycan't get to it," Harrigan dodged.
A GOP leader's recent warning about the Democratic Party and a "Bolshevik takeover" left onlookers baffled.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke about the upcoming elections and invoked a Red Scare with his cautionary words about the Democratic Party.
"The Bolshevik takeover of the Democratic Party is in full swing," Scalise said. "Communism is on the ballot this November."
Trump has been making similar warnings ahead of the midterms. However, online critics were more confused by Scalise's choice of words than they were scared.
"What is happening here?" former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote. "Seriously. Bolshevik?"
"This communism stuff comes across as so desperate," legal and political analyst Joe Patrice reacted.
"Hitler used 'Bolsheviks' and 'communists' almost interchangeably with 'the Jews,'" Canadian political commentator Jim Stewartson posted. "That was a relatively short time after the actual Bolshevik Revolution. McCarthy's red scare was during the Cold War. Scalise's excuse is Mamdani. It's so embarrassing."
"Brother we just want affordable healthcare," commented popular internet personality Jared Shult.
"If the election is about inflation, war, the economy and @realDonaldTrump, the Republicans will lose the House and, possibly, the Senate," wrote former Obama White House official David Axelrod. "So this is their mantra for fall!"
"Bolshevik? How Retro, a return to the original Fascist counter-revolutionary rhetoric and action," author Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted. "Conjuring Communism in all its forms is apparently the new MAGA propaganda theme."
"Folks, be prepared," warned political commentator and former GOP strategist Tara Setmayer. "It's starting already. This is the GOP's strategy to distract from Trump's failures and their complicity. However, do not underestimate the effectiveness of the scare tactic without a proper strategy to combat it. Remember 'they/them?'"
