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Sunday Afternoon News Updates: Strait Lies From the Trump Regime — 7/19/26
Your midday update is here
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Hi all, Ben here. It’s Sunday, and there is a lot to get through. Thanks so much for all the nice comments on my morning message earlier. And thanks again to all of you who’ve already preordered our new book, WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. If you’ve preordered, be sure to let me know in the comments!
Here’s what we’re tracking today:
The Strait of Hormuz standoff and Chris Wright’s ABC interview
Trump’s “I couldn’t care less” reaction to the war’s escalation after U.S. soldiers are killed
The U.S. Embassy in Amman evacuating Aqaba’s airport and seaport over a “credible security threat”
Israeli forces entering Syria’s Quneitra province
James Comer admitting the House is basically done working before the midterms
Mike Johnson’s “Marxism begins with no God” speech at the Family Leadership Summit
The Mamdani “babysitting” panic on Fox
Tim Dillon torching the “Deep State” excuse
Obama’s dig at JD Vance
Hunter Biden’s remarks on the state of the country
New 2026 midterm forecasting from Pete Buttigieg and the Cook Political Report
Before I go any further, if you haven’t yet joined as a paid subscriber, consider doing so now by clicking here to support our work. This is how we grow. It will give you access to all recaps like this, our exclusive Ask-the-Editor series, and more. Plus, it is the best way to help support the growth of this network.
Now let’s get into it.
Trump Sends Out The Proxies
Donald Trump’s escalation of the war with Iran has backfired, and Iran has proven it can hit U.S. air bases across the Middle East hard. Trump himself barely surfaced today. Instead, he sent out his energy secretary, Chris Wright, to go on ABC’s “This Week” and insist the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz and is the one directing traffic through it.
Host Jonathan Karl pushed back, reminding Wright that back in March he’d promised this conflict would be over in a matter of weeks. We are now nearly five months in. Wright’s answer amounted to acknowledging the military phase went longer than planned, then claiming there was a “pivot” toward simply guaranteeing oil flow without Iran’s cooperation. Karl noted that ship traffic through the strait has visibly dropped, pointing out that only eight vessels moved through on Thursday. Wright disputed that, citing a seven-day trailing average he put at just under 7 million barrels a day.
Iran isn’t just surviving this war, it appears to be adapting to it in real time, and the number of U.S. military assets it has managed to destroy over just the last week alone is staggering. I’ll walk you through the geolocated footage and the base-by-base damage in a moment.
Jordan Evacuates
While Wright was on television insisting everything is under control, the U.S. Embassy in Amman issued a warning that, due to a “credible security threat,” Aqaba International Airport and Jordan’s seaport have been evacuated entirely. The U.S. has effectively turned Aqaba’s civilian airport into a military base, one of five American installations in Jordan whose main jobs are defending Israel from Iranian projectiles and serving as a launchpad for strikes on Iran.
Iran has already hit other bases in Jordan, and the Trump regime has confirmed at least two American service members killed. I believe that number is almost certainly higher than what’s being reported. When Trump was asked about Iran walking away from its memorandum of understanding, he told a reporter over the phone that he “couldn’t care less.” When pressed on the troop deaths, the White House line was that the two killed had made “the ultimate sacrifice,” their deaths a “shame” but the mission “critical,” according to the New York Post. “Have you ever asked how many people died in Vietnam?” Trump responded in defense of the war and the mounting casualty count.
Even Fox’s Own Guests Are Confused
On her own show this morning, Maria Bartiromo had on former Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates, and Bartiromo herself sounded confused about what she was being told to sell. She noted that Centcom keeps promising outsized retaliation, yet Iran keeps hitting Gulf countries and U.S. bases, despite the Trump regime’s repeated claims that Iran’s military has been “obliterated.” MAGA commentator Matt Van Swol asked online how, exactly, the world’s most powerful military can spend four months bombing Iran and still watch Iran hit American bases. Trump said their missiles were destroyed! How is this possible?!?
MAGA is either blind to or is willfully overlooking the obvious answer. Donald Trump has been lying about this from the start, just as he lies about everything. The United States did not obliterate Iran’s military last year. If anything, Iran’s ballistic and drone capabilities appear to have grown, and its tactics have visibly sharpened. As our editor in chief Ron Filipkowski put it: maybe it’s time to consider the possibility that Trump lied. I know, hard to imagine.
According to the IRGC Navy, four tankers tried to leave the strait this morning via an unauthorized route; two were struck and disabled, two turned back. Iran also announced it shot down yet another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, this time over Ahvaz. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Iran has been shooting these down at a rate of roughly one a day. By the low estimate, that’s around 30 Reaper drones destroyed, and it may be closer to 50, representing billions of dollars in hardware, on top of helicopters and additional drones destroyed at bases in Jordan and elsewhere. The U.S. has reportedly had to shift much of its remaining regional airpower into Israel, where the Golden Dome system and Israel’s own defenses offer more protection, effectively leaving the Gulf partners who signed onto Trump’s security arrangements more exposed than ever.
The U.S. is now rushing additional advanced warplanes and support assets to the Middle East, per the New York Times, a sign that things appear to only be escalating.
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Meanwhile, in Syria, Israeli forces entered the village of al-Samdaniyah al-Sharqiyah in Quneitra province with five military vehicles, set up a checkpoint, searched civilians, and fired a mortar round and a smoke shell nearby. No casualties were reported, but Syrian state media condemned it as another incursion and demanded a full Israeli withdrawal, according to SANA.
Congress Packs Up, Epstein Files Still Buried
Back home, House Oversight Chair James Comer all but admitted his committee is done doing any real oversight before the midterms. He told Fox they have “a number of reasons” to wrap things up this week, including Congress heading into its August recess and then straight into election season. Translation: no more digging into the Epstein files, no accountability.
Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson used a speech at the Family Leadership Summit to argue that Marxism, communism, and socialism all begin from the premise that there is no God, and that once you remove God from the equation, individual dignity and freedom supposedly disappear too. It’s a rhetorical trick worth naming for what it is. Trump himself has joked he’d make “the best communist” because he’d promise everyone free things and then simply not deliver, a line that captures the actual pattern of this regime better than Johnson’s speech does. Under Trump, affordability has cratered, healthcare has been stripped away, and data centers are popping up in neighborhoods nobody asked for, while the ruling class does just fine.
The Mamdani Babysitting Panic
Naturally, with all of that going on, Fox “News” decided the real story of the day was New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani’s plan for a “Parents’ Night Out,” where the Parks Department would offer free supervised childcare at a rec center. Fox contributor Joe Concha reacted like Mamdani had proposed handing kids to strangers off the street, joking about leaving his own kids with “commie kindergarten.” This is what state-friendly media does when Trump is busy looting the country in plain sight: manufacture a moral panic over a free babysitting program.
Rebukes of Trump on the Podcast Circuit
It’s worth noting when people outside the usual progressive lane start saying the quiet part out loud. Podcaster and comedian Tim Dillon pointed out that Republicans control the White House, Congress, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, so the “Deep State” excuse doesn’t hold up anymore. It is simply them now.
Former President Obama, in a recent podcast appearance, took aim at JD Vance’s rhetoric about “blood and soil” versions of who counts as American, noting the irony of Vance, married to the daughter of an immigrant, making that kind of argument. Obama’s line was that moving from outright exclusion to hypocrisy is its own strange form of progress, since hypocrisy at least requires enough guilt to lie to yourself or others.
P.S. Remember to listen to the latest episodes of the MeidasTouch Podcast, available anywhere you find podcasts
Hunter Biden on the USA
Hunter Biden has been making the rounds lately, and his latest statement is worth your attention. He argues America isn’t naturally divided so much as it’s being divided on purpose, by an oligarchy that profits from the fighting while capturing the government, gutting healthcare, and burying the country in debt. He’s calling for a “New New Deal”: healthcare as a right, housing as a right, an end to endless war, and a dividend paid to every American from the AI economy, since he argues that economy was built on collective human inheritance, not just claimed by a handful of tech barons. He also framed accountability for the Trump family and administration as a matter of truth and reconciliation rather than revenge, and made the case that a country, like a person in recovery, can’t heal what it won’t name.
The Midterm Math Is Shifting
Pete Buttigieg told MSNOW that Democrats have a genuine shot at flipping statewide seats in Florida this November, arguing that after nearly 30 years of one-party rule, voters are recognizing it hasn’t worked for them, and that the hunger for change is showing up even in supposedly safe red states.
The Cook Political Report backs that up with real forecast movement. Ohio’s governor race moved from Lean Republican to Toss Up. Arizona moved from Toss Up to Lean Democrat. Maine went from Likely Democrat all the way to Solid Democrat, and New Mexico did the same.
Thanks for reading, re-stacking, and liking this post. And keep the comments coming if you preorder WTF America?!, the book I wrote with my brothers. I love seeing them!
