You can tell a lot about the strength of a particular argument or world view by how long it lasts before reality ends up discrediting it. There are some debates that don&#8217;t need to be settled by consulting with dozens of experts or asking ten different AI models and then comparing notes. Instead, certain events take place, and they resolve the disagreement right away. A catastrophic nuclear meltdown ended any discussion about how effective Chernobyl&#8217;s emergency shutdown mechanism was. An iceberg convinced everyone that, despite all of the marketing hype, the Titanic could in fact sink. There are limits to the ability of liars and charlatans to deceive the population, in other words. Even the most convincing fraudsters face the risk of exposure if their deception is simply too absurd to be compatible with reality. The more absurd the deception is, the faster it falls apart.
By that standard, there are few lies that are more flagrant — and obviously so — than the fiction that gay men should be allowed to adopt children, or to acquire them by paying for a woman to serve as a &#8220;surrogate.&#8221; As we saw recently, a journalist named Glenn Greenwald personally <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/glenn-greenwald-called-me-morally-deranged-then-this-happened">attacked</a> me for holding the position that children should be raised by a mother and a father. He maintained, in a very public and vitriolic fashion, that I was a terrible person for suggesting that gay adoption isn&#8217;t an ideal outcome. He presented himself as infinitely more virtuous than I am because of his decision to acquire young children. And then, within a matter of weeks, Greenwald himself demonstrated through his own conduct — on camera — why my position was correct.
That was back in June. And now, just a month later, it&#8217;s happened again. Reality has caused yet another major problem for the Left&#8217;s narrative about homosexuals who adopt children. Only this time, reality reared its head even faster — as in, within 24 hours. And the implications here are somehow even more disturbing and grotesque than they were with Glenn Greenwald&#8217;s debauchery. This is a story that makes it very clear that laws need to change, and they need to change immediately. And then people need to go to prison.
It all began on Sunday, when an Irish political activist named Derek Blighe discovered some videos that had been posted on a gay couple&#8217;s social media feeds. The videos show the two gay men, both of whom are overweight, marking monthly anniversaries with a child they&#8217;ve obtained. In every video, they blow out a candle on the cupcake. And the videos keep going, as the men seem to somehow get fatter each time. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Gay Couple" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sYxqkeV2XRQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In response to these videos, on Sunday, Derek Blighe posted simply, &#8220;Unless a miracle happens, this child has almost no chance at a normal life.&#8221;
And he was right, of course.
At a visceral level, this footage is repulsive. Everyone understands that, whether they&#8217;ll admit it or not. When a child is deprived of his mother and father, it isn&#8217;t something to celebrate. It&#8217;s a tragedy that&#8217;s inflicted on someone who cannot possibly deserve it, and who may never recover from it. And that&#8217;s especially true when, in lieu of a mother and a father, a child is obtained by two men who belong to a demographic whose behavior, in a very disproportionate number of cases, is completely incompatible with raising children, to put things as mildly as possible. It&#8217;s also a demographic that&#8217;s disproportionately interested in adopting male children. And again, everyone understands what&#8217;s going on there, though nobody will say it.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1631-the-matt-walsh-show?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=The+Matt+Walsh+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
And yet, when Blighe made this simple and straightforward observation, hundreds of thousands of Left-wing activists pretended to be shocked and horrified by what he had written. They also claimed that, in fact, it&#8217;s *better* for the child to be raised by two gay men, than by his own mother and father.
Here&#8217;s <a href="https://x.com/LouiseScot51918/status/1949441171085799511">one representative post</a>, which has more than 6 million views and 220,000 &#8220;likes&#8221; on X:
<blockquote>Makes me happy. That baby is going to be raised not to hate people and will be loved.</blockquote>
Here&#8217;s another post, from someone named &#8220;Bev Jackson&#8221; of a group called &#8220;Alliance LGB.&#8221; This came in response to Derek&#8217;s post expressing disgust at the footage: 
<blockquote>That is homophobic. If the child has two loving male parents, there is no evidence whatsoever that he or she will not prosper.</blockquote>
But Bev Jackson&#8217;s response didn&#8217;t last very long. Just a few hours later, Bev <a href="https://x.com/BevJacksonAuth/status/1949907957203751331">deleted</a> it. And a lot of people like Bev deleted their reactions, too. That&#8217;s because, in record-breaking time, the narrative took an extremely dark turn. The journalists at Reduxx decided to take a closer look at the two gay men in the video with that toddler. <a href="https://reduxx.info/gay-man-who-crowdfunded-surrogacy-journey-with-husband-revealed-as-child-sex-offender/">Here&#8217;s</a> what they found:
<blockquote>A widely circulated video showcasing a gay couple’s &#8216;surrogacy journey&#8217; has revealed that a baby boy is currently in the custody of a registered child sex offender. &#8230; Brandon Keith Mitchell is a Tier 1 sex offender in the state of Pennsylvania, and was arrested in 2016 after attempting to solicit a 16-year-old boy for sexual abuse. The victim in the case was a student at Downingtown West High School, where Mitchell had worked as a chemistry teacher. He was 30 years old at the time.</blockquote>
Here&#8217;s an image of Brandon Mitchell when he was teaching:
<div id="attachment_953911" style="width: 442px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-953911" class="wp-image-953911 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-432x576.jpg" alt="Chester County District Attorney’s office." width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-29-Jul-2025-01-40-PM-9665-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" />Chester County District Attorney’s office.</div>
According to local news reports, Mitchell was, &#8220;charged with texting obscene images and texts to a student, [and] asking for nude images of the underage student.&#8221;
Mitchell taught at this school from 2010 to 2015. And during this period, he reportedly sent more than 12,000 text messages to this student. He ended up pleading guilty to &#8220;felony child pornography possession and one count of Corruption of Minors&#8221; — because police found sexually explicit videos of the child on his personal computer — and was sentenced to nearly two years of incarceration. But he didn&#8217;t serve anywhere near that sentence. Just two months after his conviction, Reduxx reports, he was granted parole. For a crime that should&#8217;ve resulted in life imprisonment, at a minimum, he barely spent any time in jail.
The Reduxx article <a href="https://reduxx.info/gay-man-who-crowdfunded-surrogacy-journey-with-husband-revealed-as-child-sex-offender/">continues</a>:
<blockquote>Part of his conditions included that he have no unsupervised contact with minors and that he surrender his teaching license. He quickly moved on to obtain a job as a chemist at Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing in Lancaster, where he has worked for the past 9 years. &#8230; In 2021, Mitchell married Logan Riley, a second-grade teacher from Maryland, and moved to Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania. In 2023, the two launched a GoFundMe to raise money for a surrogate.</blockquote>
Of course, the GoFundMe didn&#8217;t mention the whole &#8220;convicted sex offender” thing.
In any event, the fundraiser has since been taken down. But it reportedly had a goal of $50,000, and raised just over $2,000, so it wasn&#8217;t exactly a success. Nevertheless, Riley — the husband of the convicted sex offender — reported that, in November of 2023, they had found a surrogate.
<blockquote>Our surrogate went through extensive medical and social worker evaluations in order to be approved for surrogacy. Once approved, the lengthy legal and financial process began. We are so excited that our amazing surrogate will carry one of our embryos for us, helping to expand our family.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s hard to miss the irony here. According to these two gay men, there was an &#8220;extensive&#8221; screening process for their &#8220;surrogate&#8221; — meaning, the woman whose body they were going to rent, so that she would bear a child for them, so that they could pretend to be parents. Social workers, doctors and lawyers were all involved. And yet, evidently, there was no screening process whatsoever for these two gay men. No one in the federal government, or the state of Pennsylvania, saw any problem with creating a new human life, for the sole purposes of handing the child off to a convicted sexual predator. And not just any convicted sexual predator. We&#8217;re talking about a convicted <a href="https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1949915000589443072">sexual predator</a> who specifically preyed on a child.
At first, you might think — well, there must have been some massive, very unfortunate mistake here. Surely, you&#8217;d assume, there must be a thorough vetting process for the parents of children who are born through surrogacy. And somehow, in this particular case, someone must have fallen asleep on the job. Maybe they ran a criminal records check under the wrong name or something like that.
But that&#8217;s not remotely what happened. As it turns out, there is no legal bar in the state of Pennsylvania — or many other states — for convicted sexual predators to obtain children through surrogacy. It&#8217;s completely legal. There are no roadblocks whatsoever.
Again, this is from <a href="https://reduxx.info/gay-man-who-crowdfunded-surrogacy-journey-with-husband-revealed-as-child-sex-offender/">Reduxx</a>:
<blockquote>Reduxx reached out to the division Pennsylvania State Police responsible for maintaining Mitchell’s registration, and was informed that the state does not automatically forbid individuals convicted of sex crimes from having children, gaining custody, or exercising parental rights. While Pennsylvania’s adoption law does prohibit sex offenders from adopting or fostering children, gestational surrogacy circumvents any such laws through pre-birth parentage orders.</blockquote>
You heard that correctly. Individuals who are convicted of sex crimes, including sex crimes involving children — crimes so severe that the guilty party had to agree to have &#8220;no unsupervised contact with minors&#8221; for a certain period of time — are allowed to obtain children in Pennsylvania. The only restriction is that, instead of adopting a child, they have to pay for a woman to give birth to a child. This is a policy that&#8217;s so incomprehensible, and so evil, that it&#8217;s hard to even talk about. And it&#8217;s also a policy that, evidently, a lot of officials in Pennsylvania aren&#8217;t even aware of.
One of Reduxx&#8217;s writers <a href="https://x.com/Slatzism/status/1949926492651024812">posted this</a> on social media, as she was working on this story:
<blockquote>While I was talking to the state police sex offender division, the agent actually stopped for a moment when I mentioned it was a surrogate baby and said, &#8216;But surely … there’s a vetting process for this kind of thing?&#8217;</blockquote>
Well, actually, no. There&#8217;s no vetting process for &#8220;this kind of thing,&#8221; as it turns out.
If someone is a pedophile in the state of Pennsylvania, and they’ve been convicted for &#8220;corrupting minors&#8221; and possessing child pornography, they are still completely free to obtain a child through surrogacy. And not just any child — a newborn with no known relatives, no next of kin to check in on him. And then, once they have this defenseless child in their home, he is entirely at their mercy and helpless, and no one can see what they’re doing, and there is no one who actually knows the child or cares for him. Even his mother isn&#8217;t allowed to speak to him. It&#8217;s almost as if the state went out of its way to create a loophole for pedophiles. There are no words for how dark this is.
And by the way, this is one of the many fundamental, fatal problems with relying on &#8220;statistics&#8221; and &#8220;experts&#8221; who tell you that gay adoption is completely fine and appropriate. Every single mainstream expert will tell you that gay men are just as capable as straight couples to raise children, if not more so. They&#8217;ll tell you to suspend all of your intuitions and common sense, and they&#8217;ll call you a bigot if you disagree. But the truth is, none of these experts actually knows what goes on inside these households where men are raising children that aren&#8217;t theirs.
None of the statistics can capture the reality of what&#8217;s happening, because only the parents who are caught abusing their children will actually be reflected in those statistics.
That&#8217;s why we have intuition and basic morality. And it&#8217;s why we should always pay close attention whenever activists on the other side, in a demonic kind of rage, attempt to claim the moral high ground — only for it to crumble immediately in a matter of days (or hours, in this case). There are some lies that are simply too evil and unsustainable to survive contact with reality. The fiction that gay men are appropriate foster parents for other people&#8217;s children is one of them. In recent months, we&#8217;ve repeatedly seen <a href="https://people.com/ga-couple-adopted-young-boys-filmed-sexual-abuse-house-of-horrors-8766348">glimpses</a> into the horrors that many of these children are enduring behind closed doors. The recent case of William and Zachary Zulock in Georgia is an example of two men who were sexually abusing their two adopted children. They probably would never have been caught, if they hadn&#8217;t bragged about their behavior to others.
Especially in light of stories like this, it shouldn&#8217;t be remotely controversial to say that the safety of children is infinitely more important than any gay man&#8217;s desire to become a parent. Nature has already decided that gay couples will be childless by definition. The law should follow suit. Starting with the state of Pennsylvania — which should immediately change its law and remove this particular child from this household — this very straightforward principle needs to become law. Any society that doesn&#8217;t protect its own children does not deserve to exist. Under the guise of helping children, a system has been created that allows for children to be abused in the most horrific ways imaginable. That system must be dismantled. The abusers should go to prison for the rest of their lives. And no child, no matter the circumstances, should ever be forcibly prevented from having a mother and a father ever again in this country.

Rear view of son with arm around fathers sitting on fence in yard

Gay Sex Offender Buys A Baby Through Surrogacy. How Is This Legal?

Adoption

Homosexuality

LGBTQ

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Pennsylvania

Same-Sex Marriage

Sex Offender

A Philadelphia landlord is fighting to evict squatters who broke into her rental property and have been living there for over two months.
Naydia Smith tells The Daily Wire that a couple with five young children broke into the house in April or May, at which point they began trashing the home. She was first made aware of the squatters in June, when her business partner Richard Watson’s parents received an anonymous call about the intruders.
On June 7, Watson’s parents confronted and filmed a man in the house. The man — whose documents found in the house appear to identify him as Antonio Stewart — said he had rented the property and gained entrance through the back. He had one page of a fake lease, dated April 1, 2025.
Smith and Watson rented out the house almost continuously until their most recent tenant moved out in January 2025, leaving it vacant while they considered selling or finding a new renter. They called the police but were unable to file a report, since they weren’t the legal homeowners.
On June 13, Smith visited the home with her fiancé and cousin, finding it neglected and damaged.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-952993" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/Squatter_House_Damage-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/Squatter_House_Damage-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/Squatter_House_Damage-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/Squatter_House_Damage-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/Squatter_House_Damage.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></div>
“We go inside the home, and we find that the home is in squalor, meaning that there were beds on the floor, clothes on the floor,” Smith said. “There were a lot of vermin — there were roaches outside and everything, and they weren’t there before, so clearly it’s unkempt and unclean.”
Smith said they also discovered five unsupervised children inside, ranging in age from 2 to 14.
A video provided to The Daily Wire shows children sitting on two couches while Smith and her family examine the house.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Squatters continue to be a problem across the U.S.
Meet Naydia Smith, who has been trying for over two months to remove a family of squatters in Philadelphia—two adults and five children—who forcibly broke into her house.
Full report: <a href="https://t.co/whXpoYTjDo">https://t.co/whXpoYTjDo</a> <a href="https://t.co/uweCHAM06V">pic.twitter.com/uweCHAM06V</a>
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyAkiva/status/1949886665205354615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“There were no adults there, no supervision,” Smith said. “The house was in disarray.”
Smith says she filed a report with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services about the unsupervised children.
Neither the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services nor the Philadelphia Department of Human Services replied to requests for comment.
As they explored the house, they found the back door severely splintered and damaged, with a new lock.
Alarmed by the condition of the home, Smith called the police, hoping they would arrest the squatters for breaking and entering.
“The police wanted to turn it into a squatting situation instead of a breaking and entering situation, which is exactly what it is,” Smith said. “I have illegal trespassers in the home who are squatting, who broke through the back door.”
The alleged squatters — Stewart and a woman — arrived with several friends or family members around the same time as police. Stewart presented a fake lease and a gas bill to law enforcement, but could not provide a water bill or an electric bill, according to Smith.
The electric company stated that the squatters had contacted them to restore power to the house, according to Smith. Smith asked the company not to restore power.
Squatters often use fake leases to delay removal by police, knowing that only a judge can determine their validity. As a result, police are often required to let them remain in the home until the matter is settled in court.
While in the home, Smith said she found a second fake lease with the couple’s name for a different property in Elmwood Park, dated March 15, 2025.
“One of the documents on the other fake lease was a signed document by the landlord, who was the rightful owner of the property, and Antonio, saying that they planned to leave the property on Tuesday, April 15,” Smith said. “That was sketchy, because that shows that they did not actually legally rent the place.”
Another document showed that the couple was bribed by the rightful landlord to vacate the property, according to Smith.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-953005 alignleft" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image1-1-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image1-1-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image1-1-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image1-1-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image1-1-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image1-1.jpeg 1512w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-953003 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image0-4-432x576.jpeg" alt="" width="432" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image0-4-432x576.jpeg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image0-4-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image0-4-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image0-4-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/image0-4.jpeg 1512w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /></div>
“He actually paid them $1,500 to actually leave the property, to get them out,” Smith said.
Both leases named the landlord as Bryan Pulliam, but the documents showed two different rental companies.
“The person who is on these rental companies, the Bryan Pulliam guy, uses different, fake real estate companies to generate these leases for them,” Smith said.
Smith said she does not feel safe interacting with the squatters. She believes they are “career squatters.”
“The woman who was there, who would not give her name, also said, ‘You know what you have to do. You have to go downtown and evict us,’” Smith said. “So she knows the process, and they know how to do this, and they know what they can and can’t do as a part of this process.”
The rampant squatter crisis has captured the nation’s attention in recent years, with states such as <a href="https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2025/governor-ron-desantis-signs-anti-squatting-legislation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Florida</a> and <a href="https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-passes-squatter-reform-act-impact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Georgia</a> passing laws to crack down on the issue and A&amp;E launching the new TV show “Squatters,” featuring a former handyman who became a “squatter hunter” after squatters took over his mother&#8217;s home.
A squatting map published by Newsweek <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/squatting-map-cities-highest-number-homes-1886005" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showed</a> Atlanta, Dallas, and Orlando as the cities with the most homes taken over by squatters. The survey, conducted by the National Rental Home Council in 2024, found 1,200 homes in Atlanta, 475 in Dallas, and 125 in Orlando that had been taken over by squatters.
Under Philadelphia law, Smith must let the legal process play out, which gets complicated in the case of fake leases. Homeowners are not permitted to forcibly <a href="https://phillysheriff.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PSO-Squatters-and-Evictions-Brochure-Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">evict</a> squatters by changing locks or removing belongings.
Smith filed <a href="https://fjdefile.phila.gov/efsfjd/zk_fjd_public_qry_03.zp_dktrpt_frames" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ejectment paperwork</a> with the sheriff’s office on June 13, but says serving the paperwork can take up to 30 days. Once served, the squatters have up to 20 days to file a response. If the squatters do not respond, they must be given a 10-day notice. At that point, Smith said, either the squatters will be ejected or a court date will be set.
“Where is the arrest warrant for the people who broke into the home? Arrest them for breaking and entering,” Smith said. “It’s very unfair that people break the law, and then they have rights and are protected for breaking the law. That’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Neither the city councilwoman for the district of Smith’s property, the mayor of Philadelphia, nor the governor of Pennsylvania responded to requests for comment.
The squatters, Smith said, have caused significant financial harm, since she’s losing rental income while still covering the mortgage.
“Once they leave the property, we’re going to have to do repairs,” Smith said. “We’re going to have to deep-clean and replace things in the home. On top of that, we’re also going to have to exterminate the heck out of that place.”
Smith said it is hard to find a lawyer willing to take ejectment cases.
“The fees for a lawyer to take an ejection case are $5,000,” Smith said. “Now you tell me why I have to spend all of that money to get somebody out of a property that they do not rightfully belong in.”
Now, she fears a lengthy battle to reclaim her property.
“I am the rightful owner, and I can’t understand why it’s so hard to eject someone who has no right to your place, your home, and something that you’ve worked so hard for,” Smith said.
The squatters have not responded to attempts to negotiate. Smith said she wishes she could speed up the ejection process.
“I wish the City of Philadelphia would really help,” Smith said.
Stewart did not return a request for comment.

Squatter Cover

‘You Literally Have No Protection:’ Philadelphia Squatters Take Over Woman’s House

Crime

Josh Shapiro

Philadelphia

Squatters

During a conversation on CNN on Thursday night, former MSNBC host Touré appeared to make the incredible suggestion that President Donald Trump had not really been shot in the ear during an assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was killed by law enforcement at the rally; fire captain Corey Comperatore was fatally shot when he dived on members of his family to protect them.
The discussion on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip featured Touré, Scott Jennings, Adrienne Elrod, Ben Ferguson, and Elie Honig. It centered on the White House report that President Trump had swelling in his legs, a benign condition.
“Throughout the time that we have seen him on the public stages, this is not the most intelligent person we have,” Touré insisted. “This is not the best analysis of information. He does not have a lot of information at his fingertips as far as things that he knows. So, if there is a cognitive problem&#8230;&#8221;
“They have not always been forthcoming about his health,” Elrod declared.
“He supposedly got shot in the ear,” Touré stated.
“Woah, woah, woah. Did you say &#8216;supposedly&#8217;?” Jennings said, shocked.
“Supposedly, that&#8217;s where we are now?” Ferguson chimed in.
“All I know is l went to the Republican National Convention and he had a bandage on his ear. He had blood on his face,” Jennings said, later turning to Touré and asking, “Did he &#8212; did he get shot or not? You&#8217;re saying you think he didn&#8217;t get shot?”
“Scott, I know that you want to revisit this issue,” Phillips interjected.
“I think it&#8217;s an important question. Are there still people that are truthers on this?” Jennings persisted.
“Touré, did he get shot? “ Phillips queried.
“I wasn&#8217;t there,” Touré backtracked. “I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t know. I would like to hear from his doctor. “
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
UNHINGED: Touré on CNN last night: President Trump &quot;supposedly got shot in the ear.&quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/ScottJenningsKY?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ScottJenningsKY</a>: &quot;Woah, woah, woah. Did you say &#39;supposedly&#39;?&quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/benfergusonshow?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@benfergusonshow</a>: &quot;Supposedly, that&#39;s where we are now.&quot;
Abby Phillip: &quot;Touré, he was shot in the ear.&quot;
This is where the… <a href="https://t.co/0aSOeVPtg4">pic.twitter.com/0aSOeVPtg4</a>
&mdash; Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1946187441708187652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“Roman J Israel Esquire” New York Premiere

Ex-MSNBC Host Downplays Trump Assassination Attempt: He ‘Supposedly’ Got Shot In The Ear

assassination attempt

Butler

Media

Politics

Touré

Paranormal investigator Dan Rivera, who’s been touring the United States with a supposedly haunted Raggedy Ann doll named Annabelle, died unexpectedly at a hotel, sparking a big reaction online.
Rivera, 54, was found dead in his room on Sunday at the end of his three-day stop in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of his “Devils on the Run Tour” with the doll. 
Pennsylvania State Police shared a more detailed report on Wednesday.
“Members from PSP Gettysburg responded to a hotel in Straban Township, Adams County for a report of a deceased [man],&#8221; the report <a href="https://x.com/psptroophpio/status/1945469138668773605?s=46&amp;t=mwcG9TleShkOgZ4z0YNszA">said</a>. &#8220;The decedent was discovered in his hotel room by workers.
“Nothing unusual or suspicious was observed at the scene,” it added. “This case is pending autopsy results.”
The New England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR) <a href="https://tonyspera.com/about/">described</a> this particular doll as “demonically possessed.” It was given to a nursing student in 1968, and she claimed that something wasn’t right with it.
“Almost immediately, the roommates noticed strange occurrences with the doll and they were introduced to a medium who told them the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle,” the organization reported. “The two roommates tried to accept the doll’s spirit and please it only to have it reciprocate maliciousness and violent intent.”
The society’s late founders, Ed and Lorraine Warren, kept the doll stored in a glass case in an effort to “contain the evil spirited entity.”
The movie “The Conjuring” is based on the story of the “haunted” doll Annabelle. Meanwhile, many people are skeptical of the claims that the doll is possessed. 
A statement from NESPR stated that the tour would continue. “We believe with all our hearts that Dan would have wanted the work to continue — bringing people together, sharing knowledge, and honoring the memory of Ed and Lorraine Warren,” it said. “We will carry his spirit in everything we do.”
Colleagues of Rivera also called out commenters who tried to claim that his death was in some way staged to drum up interest for the tour. 
“Ghost Hunters” star Jason Hawes shared his thoughts on Facebook, saying, &#8220;The world lost a good man. 
&#8220;Dan Rivera was an Army veteran, a father of four, a husband, and someone who truly cared about people,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;What’s even harder to see right now are the posts blaming his death on things like the Annabelle doll and attacking places like Ghostly Images of Gettysburg Tours and other locations for having events. That needs to stop.&#8221; 
 
&#8220;His family shouldn’t have to read that kind of nonsense while they’re grieving,&#8221; Hawes <a href="https://www.facebook.com/highlandpara/posts/well-said-jason-hawestaps-it-really-is-horrible-to-see-folk-attempt-to-cash-in-o/1161918589307430/">added</a>. &#8220;Some people are using his passing to push an agenda for profit, and it’s just disgusting. Dan was a family man, a respected paranormal investigator, and he left this world way too soon&#8230;Honor the man. Forget the garbage.&#8221;

Annabelle doll

Paranormal Investigator Dies While Touring With ‘Demonically Possessed’ Annabelle Doll

Paranormal Investigator Dies While Touring With 'Demonically Possessed' Annabelle Doll

Dolls

General

Toys

U.S.

United States

President Donald Trump championed over $90 billion in fresh energy and artificial intelligence investments in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
Trump led the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy &amp; Innovation Summit, accompanied by top tech and energy leaders, as well as Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and members of his Cabinet.
“This afternoon, 20 leading technology and energy companies are announcing more than $92 billion of investments in Pennsylvania,” <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1945208346836963612">said</a> Trump. “This is a really triumphant day for the people of the commonwealth and for the United States of America.”
“The investments being announced this afternoon include more than $56 billion dollars in new energy infrastructure, and more than $36 billion dollars in new data center projects. And a lot more than that are going to be announced in the coming weeks,” he <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1945212116190756879">said</a>.
The Trump administration has prioritized the development of both AI and energy in a bid to lead the world in the advance of the next major technological breakthrough. The administration has placed special emphasis on the need to compete with China in AI development.
“We’re here today because we believe that America’s destiny is to dominate every industry and be the first in every technology, and that includes being the world&#8217;s number one superpower in artificial intelligence,” the president <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1945211160107655245">said</a>.
“We are way ahead of China,” he added. “I have to say we’re way ahead of China, and the plants are starting up, the construction is starting up.”
The tens of billions in investments to pour into the Keystone State include a $25 billion commitment from Blackstone Inc. Blackstone plans to build AI centers, as well as energy infrastructure to help power those centers.
“What makes us so excited about this area is that you can co-locate the data centers next to the source of power,” Blackstone President Jon Gray <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-15/trump-hails-92-billion-in-investments-for-ai-energy-projects">said</a> Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. “The special sauce here is putting these together, because building transmission lines, pipelines — that’s really difficult.”
The Trump administration has leaned hard into increasing fossil fuel energy production in the United States to keep pace with the surging power demand of expanding AI centers. Data centers have increased the pressure on the United States’ already strained grid.
The Energy Department released a report earlier this month <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-releases-report-evaluating-us-grid-reliability-and-security">warning</a> “that blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the U.S. continues to shutter reliable power sources and fails to add additional firm capacity.”

Donald Trump

Trump Touts Over $90B In Fresh AI, Energy Investment In Pennsylvania

Artificial Intelligence

Economy

Energy

President Donald Trump is slated to meet with tech and energy executives in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, shortly after Google announced a major investment in American energy.
Executives from Google&#8217;s parent company Alphabet, along with officials from Meta, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, and other companies, will gather at the Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, where Trump is expected to join them for discussions on making the United States the world leader in artificial intelligence, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/trump-joins-tech-energy-executives-amid-ai-push-2025-07-15/">reported</a>. Trump is also expected to announce $90 billion worth of AI and energy investments in Pennsylvania in what Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) is calling &#8220;the next industrial revolution.&#8221;
&#8220;We are really creating something unique here in Pennsylvania today,&#8221; McCormick told CNBC. &#8220;There&#8217;s never been a gathering of the CEOs of energy investing and artificial intelligence coming together to talk about how we win the energy revolution and also [how] we win the AI revolution.&#8221;
&#8220;Today, we&#8217;ve got about 60 CEOs of the biggest companies in the world, we&#8217;ve got commitments of more than $90 billion of investment in data centers, in energy production, in transmission, in distribution, and investing in skilled workers,&#8221; he added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
PA is uniquely positioned to lead— we have abundant energy, an incredible skilled workforce, remarkable technologists and technology, and under President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>, we have the right leadership to move forward.
Today, we’re securing over $90 billion of investment in PA. <a href="https://t.co/bWn1bxNEvj">pic.twitter.com/bWn1bxNEvj</a>
— Senator Dave McCormick (@SenMcCormickPA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenMcCormickPA/status/1945110846390063180?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Google announced on Tuesday that it would invest $25 billion in data centers and AI infrastructure in multiple states. The big tech company also announced that it would invest $3 billion in updating two hydropower plants in Pennsylvania to support its growing AI infrastructure, CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/15/google-to-invest-25-billion-in-data-centers-ai-infrastructure-in-pjm.html">reported</a>. Asset management firm Blackstone also announced a $25 billion investment in energy infrastructure in Pennsylvania. The investments come as PJM Interconnection, the largest power grid in the United States, is struggling to keep up with the massive demand from new data centers.
As companies and the government seek a solution to the issue, the Trump administration is considering an executive order to help big tech companies more easily connect to power grids and secure land for their massive AI projects, according to Reuters.
Trump&#8217;s meeting with tech and energy executives also comes as the White House is making progress toward its goal of reducing dependence on China for rare earth minerals, another major economic and national security concern for the administration. Apple <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/apple-agrees-to-500m-deal-to-buy-rare-earths-from-american-company-reduce-china-dependence">announced</a> on Tuesday that it agreed to a $500 million deal with MP Materials to purchase rare earth magnets used in iPhones and other products from the American company.

Trump To Meet With Tech And Energy Giants After Google Announces Huge Investment In U.S.

Big Tech

Business

Pittsburgh

Trump Administration

President Donald Trump gave an official statement to the American people on Sunday — one year to the day after gunman Thomas Crooks opened fire on a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — saying as he has before that he believes God spared his life that day for a reason.
In the days that followed the shooting, a number of details came to light — from the fact that Trump had changed up his speech and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bodycam-footage-shows-law-enforcement-response-in-aftermath-of-trump-assassination-attempt">turned his head</a> at the last second to the possibility that Crooks, perhaps believing he was about to be caught, had rushed his shots — showing just how easily the situation could have been much, much worse.
Trump later said that while he did not consider himself to be a particularly religious person, he believed after that day that God had saved him — a thought he revisited in his statement on the one-year anniversary of the event.
<blockquote>One year ago today, at 6:11 pm—eight minutes after taking the stage on the grounds of Butler Farms to address thousands of Americans gathered at a campaign rally—rifle fire broke out, and an assassin’s bullet came within a quarter inch of ending my life and silencing our movement to restore American greatness.  Yet, by the hand of providence and the grace of Almighty God, my life was spared.  As we commemorate one year since the harrowing events of July 13, 2024, we reaffirm that the American spirit has and will always triumph over forces of evil and destruction.
Those who carry scars from that July evening defended our Republic during one of our Nation’s darkest hours—running to the injured amid chaos and uncertainty to provide comfort and lifesaving care.  Doctors and first responders rushed to help the wounded, rallygoers guided their fellow citizens to safety, and patriots raised their fists in the air in an outpouring of support and national pride.  These men and women arrived at the rally grounds as ordinary Americans, but left as heroes.  They represent the very best of our Nation, and we are forever indebted for their kindness and compassion.</blockquote>
Trump also took a moment to remember former fire chief Corey Comperatore, who died that day shielding members of his family from the gunfire.
<blockquote>However, one name stands above all for selfless service and ultimate sacrifice on that fateful day.  The world will never forget the tragic loss of Corey Comperatore, a firefighter, veteran, and devoted husband and father.  When gunfire erupted, Corey did not hesitate to protect his wife and two daughters.  He died a hero, and we are eternally grateful for his inspiring love, valor, and faithfulness.
It remains my firm conviction that God alone saved me that day for a righteous purpose: to restore our beloved Republic to greatness and to rescue our Nation from those who seek its ruin.  One year after the attempt on my life in Butler, our country is in the midst of a new Golden Age.  History will remember the would-be assassin for his cowardice and failure, but the magnificent legacy of the heroes of July 13, 2024, will forever be etched upon the heart of our Nation.  Today, we pay tribute to their spirit of love, unity, and resilience—and we proclaim with one voice the epic battle cry that has reverberated all across the world: “Fight, fight, fight!”</blockquote>
The White House also shared a video of Comperatore&#8217;s widow, Helen, and his two daughters as they reflected on their loss and how their lives changed that day.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
One year later, our hearts remain with the Comperatore family. Corey’s courage and love for his family reflect the very best of America. President Trump remains committed to honoring Corey’s legacy and securing justice in his name. <a href="https://t.co/NysOfoFgdV">pic.twitter.com/NysOfoFgdV</a>
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1944394197634556078?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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‘God Alone Saved Me That Day’: Trump Reflects On Near Assassination, One Year Later

'God Alone Saved Me That Day': Trump Reflects On Near Assassination, One Year Later

Trump Rallies

Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) slammed his colleagues for calling to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defending ICE agents and saying he “fully supports” the members of law enforcement.
Fetterman blasted those, including his Democratic colleagues, who have called to abolish the federal law enforcement agency, which is responsible for arresting and deporting illegal aliens.
“ICE agents are just doing their job, and I fully support that,” the Pennsylvania Senator said in a video. “People in my party might want to abolish it or treat them as criminals or anything, that’s just inappropriate and outrageous,” he went on to say. “ICE performs an important job for our nation.”
Fetterman doubled down on his comments in a statement on social media Thursday. “ICE performs an important job for our country,” the Democrat from Pennsylvania wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, as he doubled down on his message. “Any calls to abolish ICE are [100%] inappropriate and outrageous.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
ICE performs an important job for our country.
Any calls to abolish ICE are 💯 inappropriate and outrageous.
— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1943369815600644432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2025</a></blockquote>
But shortly after his comments defending ICE, Fetterman <a href="https://x.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1943389088448471531">voiced his support</a> for mass amnesty for illegal aliens, a longtime goal of Democrat politicians.
“Absolutely support amnesty for the hardworking, otherwise law-abiding migrant workers,” Fetterman said online. “Round up and deport the criminals. We must acknowledge the critical contribution migrants make to our nation’s economy.”
The statements come just after an anonymous House Democrat indicated that opponents of mass deportations must be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-demand-blood-storming-of-white-house-to-resist-trump">willing to get shot</a> while protesting ICE. “There needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public,” the Democrat said.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-fundraises-trying-abolish-ice-amid-trumps-crackdown-illegal-immigration">called</a> for ICE to be abolished in a fundraising email, in which she dubbed ICE a &#8220;rogue agency.&#8221;
Fetterman’s break with Democrat colleagues who advocate for the abolition of ICE comes as the federal agency has been hit with a wave of attacks.
A gunman was killed after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-gunman-in-tactical-gear-killed-after-opening-fire-on-border-patrol-agents">opening fire</a> on Border Patrol agents in McAllen, Texas, in what authorities say appeared to be “a purposeful ambush/attack against federal agents.” Two officers were injured in the attack.
Other radicals have set out to obstruct ICE agents as they arrest illegal aliens, or foster violent unrest at protests against the agents. Four individuals were arrested in Los Angeles upon suspicion that they laid <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/far-left-activists-in-l-a-arrested-for-targeting-immigration-enforcement-vehicles-with-tire-spikes?author=Spencer+Lindquist&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Far-Left+Activists+In+L.A.+Arrested+For+Targeting+Immigration+Enforcement+Vehicles+With+Tire+Spikes">homemade road spikes</a> in the way of law enforcement vehicles.

Abolish ICE sign

‘Inappropriate And Outrageous:’ Dem Senator Slams Colleagues For Calling To Abolish ICE

deportation

Illegal Immigration

John Fetterman

Six Secret Service agents were suspended without pay due to security failures during the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, nearly a year ago.  
Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-assassination-attempt-butler-secret-service-suspension/">told</a> CBS News on Wednesday that the suspensions ranged from 10 to 42 days, and the personnel were placed on restricted duty with reduced responsibilities upon their return to work. Quinn’s revelation came just days before the one-year anniversary of the July 13 Butler attack, when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired off eight rounds at Trump, striking him in the ear, killing one rallygoer, and injuring two others. 
&#8220;We aren&#8217;t going to fire our way out of this,&#8221; Quinn said. &#8220;We&#8217;re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation.&#8221; 
Quinn said that the department was “laser-focused” on addressing the problems that left Trump, rallygoers, and the general public vulnerable during the assassination attempt. 
&#8220;Secret Service is totally accountable for Butler,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Butler was an operational failure and we are focused today on ensuring that it never happens again and executing our strategic plan to increase technology, to improve communications, to make sure our personnel are well-trained, equipped and deployed.”
He stated that the agency was now utilizing mobile command posts to maintain radio contact with local law enforcement and had begun using new, military-grade drones. At Butler, no drones were used, and Crooks was able to climb onto a rooftop outside of the security perimeter with a rifle about 150 yards away from the stage where Trump was speaking.
ABC News<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/secret-service-agents-suspended-conduct-attempted-trump-assassination/story?id=123628351" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reported</a> that those disciplined ranged from agents at the supervisory level to the line agent level, and the suspensions had been served in &#8220;recent months.&#8221;
Reports from both the House and Senate concluded that the attack was preventable, finding that the Secret Service was woefully unprepared. 
The Senate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/secret-service-was-told-of-credible-threat-to-trump-days-before-butler-rally">report</a> found that Crooks was also able to “fly a drone 200 yards from the site, use a rangefinder capable of gauging the distance to the former president less than an hour before he began speaking, and bring two explosive devices within proximity of the site of the rally.&#8221; 
The report detailed that local law enforcement had warned the Secret Service about the potential threat posed by the roof was a possible security vulnerability, but did not allocate resources to secure it. 
Furthermore, the Secret Service was informed that Crooks was on the roof of the building at least two minutes before he started shooting, yet Trump was not moved from the stage. Prior to that, they had known that a suspicious person was hanging around the same building for at least 27 minutes before the shooting. 
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her position about 10 days after the attack, shortly after she was grilled by lawmakers about the security failures and faced calls from both Democrats and Republicans to step down.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-VOTE

‘Operational Failure’: Secret Service Suspended Six Agents After Trump Assassination Attempt

Elections

Executive

Secret Service

President Donald Trump laughed off loud pops that surprised his rally in Iowa on Thursday evening, telling the crowd that the noise was only from “fireworks – I hope.”
The pops interrupted the president as he was discussing the damage the unprecedented wave of illegal immigration under the Biden administration had done to the United States, and the Trump administration’s crackdown on the border that has led to historically low levels of illegal immigration.
“Don’t worry, it’s only fireworks – I hope,” the president joked.
“Famous last words. My famous last words: Trump said, ‘Don’t worry it’s only fireworks.’ You always have to think positive. I didn’t like that sound either,” Trump remarked as members of the audience chuckled.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The sound of apparent fireworks briefly disrupted President Donald Trump&#39;s speech Thursday night during the America250 rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. &quot;Did I hear what I think I heard?&quot; he asked. <a href="https://t.co/K7P4Rq8FmN">pic.twitter.com/K7P4Rq8FmN</a>
&mdash; KCCI News (@KCCINews) <a href="https://twitter.com/KCCINews/status/1940942672769794480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 4, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Trump survived an attempted assassin’s bullet nearly a year ago at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One man in the Iowa audience apparently recalled the event, yelling during the president’s riff on the pops, “Fight, fight, fight,” a reference to how Trump reacted to assassination attempt in Butler.
On July 13 of last year, Thomas Crooks was able to set up a sniper’s nest on a nearby building overlooking Trump’s rally stage. Crooks fired eight shots toward Trump, who was then a candidate for president. One shot grazed Trump’s ear. One audience member, 50-year-old volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore, was killed.
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The assassination attempt ignited a firestorm of criticism around the Secret Service that failed to secure the perimeter of Trump’s Butler rally and allowed Crooks to obtain an unobstructed view of the president’s platform.
Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-recounts-assassination-attempt-i-had-god-on-my-side">recounted</a> the attempt on his life during a speech about a month later at the Republican National Convention.
“I wanted to do something to let them know I was okay,” Trump said, referring to the crowd in Butler that witnessed the attempt and Trump buried under a pile of Secret Service agents. “I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting, and started shouting, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’”
“Once my clenched fist went up, and it was high into the air – you’ve all seen that – the crowd realized I was okay and roared with pride for our country like no crowd I have ever heard before. Never heard anything like it,” Trump said. “For the rest of my life, I will be grateful for the love shown by that giant audience of patriots that stood bravely on that fateful evening in Pennsylvania.”

‘Don’t Worry, It’s Only Fireworks – I Hope’: Trump Laughs Off Pops At Iowa Rally

assassination

Iowa

The following excerpt is taken from the new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Butler-Untold-Assassination-Americas-Heartland/dp/1546009140/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38ZQJ31BTXE78&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yBjqsViUcuzSmJ0JQfFO_9pbEehSi-8OfBIfkv9uv-Eg2YesGVnshEb31LRcm_VyNV90yUlv9buV5-Eg4h3ANjvLeboA5BuUjGHF1yBXHxfXZoSn8Vchp7NkJJKFCPPN0JdICFPkw8GWPPCc2BBMMPqe_qSkBWh_hh_CkKUxGhVJA_Ayn3SjyWBemTcvmDq42l4iaEdSi5Ih0Lab_rtq0w.UQCO-toWBwgEMYzS_IK8UvoFWqL6oOP4CgnKEYfwSsE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=salena+zito+butler&amp;qid=1751464363&amp;sprefix=salena+zito+butle%2Caps%2C170&amp;sr=8-1">Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America&#8217;s Heartland,&#8221;</a> by Salena Zito (July 2025, Center Street/Hachette Book Group)
* * *
<h3>They Shoot Presidents in Butler</h3>
George Washington was less than pleased.
It was December 26, 1753, well past dusk and the temperature had dropped dramatically as darkness fell. Thanks to the drop in temperature, the mix of sleet and snow would make travel perilous in the deeply forested wilderness of what is now present-day Butler County.
But Washington and his guide Christopher Gist were left with little choice; they had to move, and move quickly.
They needed to make their way to the forks of the Ohio River. Days later, Washington, then a young major in the Virginia militia, would write in his journal that fear coursed through his veins and spurred the urgency of their flight after he was nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet that whizzed past his ear just hours earlier.
Both he and Gist knew his assassin would be back to finish the job.
<div id="attachment_942151" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/salena-zito/butler/9781668649909/?lens=center-street"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-942151" class="wp-image-942151 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-407x576.jpg" alt="Cover credit: Center Street/Hachette Book Group" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-09-02-AM-8755-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /></a>Cover credit: Center Street/Hachette Book Group</div>
At twenty-one years old, Washington was on his first diplomatic mission, with direct orders from the Crown tucked in his saddlebag to basically tell the French to get off King George II’s land or face war with England.
In 1753, the British and French Empires were in the early stages of clashing over their colonial possessions. Britain’s North American colonies were mostly packed along the Atlantic coastline and then moved westward toward the Allegheny Mountains.
France’s colonial holdings were in the center spine of the country that began in New Orleans and ran up along the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes region toward the St. Lawrence River. Both empires claimed control of the vast expanse of what was then known as the Ohio Country, which began in present-day western Pennsylvania and West Virginia and spread due west across the states of Ohio and Indiana.
Washington was at the center of that clash of royal aspirations, which were largely spurred by greed in the form of an immense royal grant to the Ohio Company, whose largest investor was Robert Dinwiddie, Virginia’s royal (lieutenant) governor and the man who sent Washington on the mission.
The young Virginian’s destination was Fort Le Boeuf, just fifteen miles south of Lake Erie. In Washington’s possession was a note from London, signed by King George II, that read: “If the French were found to be building forts on English soil, they should be peacefully asked to depart. If they failed to comply, however, we do hereby strictly charge and command you to drive them off by force of arms.”
The trip from Virginia had been a daunting 250 miles of untouched wilderness. It involved scaling high ice-crusted ridges, slogging through thick brush, swamps, and dense forests with mounds of heavy snow, and navigating icy waterways. The journey was as difficult as one could imagine, not just because of the terrain but also because of a weather system that had pummeled Washington and Gist the entire way.
Washington arrived at Fort Le Boeuf on December 11. The fort system was rudimentary at best, made of scrap bark and planks and consisting of four buildings. The young soldier and French commander Capt. Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre had a cordial, diplomatic conversation despite Washington’s delivery of the Crown’s demand that the French vacate the Ohio Valley immediately.
Saint-Pierre made clear that he was not intimidated by the British and retained every right to arrest their traders who were poaching on French territory. “As to the summons you sent me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it.”
Four days later, Saint-Pierre handed Washington a sealed message for Dinwiddie. It was then that Washington discovered that, although Saint-Pierre had filled Washington’s canoe with a generous amount of supplies for the journey home, the French commander had also bribed Washington’s Indian guides with food and drink to stay behind.
Washington was furious. He had not only been deceived by Saint-Pierre; he had also observed enough during his four-day wait for the commander to respond to Dinwiddie to know that France was building a large-scale fort system throughout the disputed territory. He also observed that they were building a formidable military operation, which was prepared to defend the land the French would take over.
Washington and Gist set off, anxious to deliver the news to Dinwiddie. However, their horses were so debilitated by the journey to Fort Le Boeuf that the men had to abandon them and continue on foot.
On the journey toward the outpost known as Murdering Town (in present-day Butler), they were heavily burdened by their backpacks. Along the way, they encountered several French Indians who quickly — probably too quickly, in hindsight — offered to help get them to the forks of the Ohio River. The battering snow and sleet, freezing cold, and rough terrain had worn Washington down, and when one of the Indian guides offered to carry his backpack, he took him up on it.
Gist, a skilled surveyor and frontier guide, immediately sensed something was off about the situation. He wasn’t wrong. As soon as the group came to a clearing, one of the Indians sprinted ahead of them into a meadow and then turned to face the two men before firing point-blank at Washington from fifteen paces.
The exact amount by which the French-aligned Indian missed Washington is unclear. Washington’s diary entry is vague, but the intent was obvious. The Indian guide wanted the young Virginian dead.
If muskets had contained rifling — grooves inside the barrel to make a bullet travel more accurately — 270 years ago, everything in the world would have changed at that moment.
There would have been no skirmish several months later in present-day Fayette County, Pennsylvania, between Washington’s regiment and French soldiers — a skirmish that led to the first shots fired in what would quickly escalate into the French and Indian War. It was a war that ultimately led to the Revolutionary War, when the British Crown tried to tax the colonists to pay for debt incurred during the first true world war.
There would have been no General Washington, no President Washington, and we might not have the country we call America today if that bullet had been only an inch closer.
* * *
Salena Zito is a veteran political reporter with more than twenty years of award-winning experience in print and broadcast journalism. With her trusty Jeeps that have clocked well over 400,000 miles on their odometers and a refusal to travel on interstates, Zito is a reporter who harkens to an older generation of journalism, one who listens to the stories of everyday Americans in places far outside the artificial bubbles of Manhattan and the Beltway. One of the last scribes of middle America, she famously popularized the root cause of their failed coverage and underestimation of Donald Trump by the phrase coined by Brad Todd saying, “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” Zito is a national political reporter for the Washington Examiner, and a special contributor to the Washington Post. She has been a columnist for the New York Post and has contributed to The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Excerpted from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Butler-Untold-Assassination-Americas-Heartland/dp/1546009140/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38ZQJ31BTXE78&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yBjqsViUcuzSmJ0JQfFO_9pbEehSi-8OfBIfkv9uv-Eg2YesGVnshEb31LRcm_VyNV90yUlv9buV5-Eg4h3ANjvLeboA5BuUjGHF1yBXHxfXZoSn8Vchp7NkJJKFCPPN0JdICFPkw8GWPPCc2BBMMPqe_qSkBWh_hh_CkKUxGhVJA_Ayn3SjyWBemTcvmDq42l4iaEdSi5Ih0Lab_rtq0w.UQCO-toWBwgEMYzS_IK8UvoFWqL6oOP4CgnKEYfwSsE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=salena+zito+butler&amp;qid=1751464363&amp;sprefix=salena+zito+butle%2Caps%2C170&amp;sr=8-1">Butler,</a>&#8221; by Salena Zito. (Copyright 2025) Used with permission from Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA – July 13: Former president Donald Trump r

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President Donald Trump said on Friday that U.S. Steel will partner with the Japanese company Nippon Steel, and remain headquartered in Pittsburgh.
The partnership comes after Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-revives-possible-sale-of-u-s-steel-to-japans-nippon-steel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ordered</a> a review of the possible sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel in April. Former President Joe Biden blocked the $14.9 billion sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel, citing national security concerns and risks to U.S. supply chains. Now, the two companies will form a &#8220;planned partnership&#8221; that will result in 70,000 jobs, according to the president.
&#8220;I am proud to announce that, after much consideration and negotiation, U.S. Steel will REMAIN in America, and keep its Headquarters in the Great City of Pittsburgh,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;For many years, the name, &#8216;United States Steel&#8217; was synonymous with Greatness, and now, it will be again. This will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70,000 jobs, and add $14 Billion Dollars to the U.S. Economy.&#8221;
U.S. Steel is facing major losses, reporting a net loss of $116 million in the first quarter of 2025, but the steel industry remains an important part of the economy in America, <a href="https://www.zippia.com/steel-worker-jobs/demographics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">employing</a> over 44,000 people.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=memorial&amp;utm_content=editorialmemorialday" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Memorial Day Sale – Get 40% Off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
In December, one month before Biden blocked the deal, Trump said he also opposed the sale to the foreign company, vowing to &#8220;make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again.&#8221; The White House confirmed that Trump received a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviewed the proposed deal between the American and Japanese steel companies, Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-23/trump-backs-us-steel-nippon-partnership-following-cfius-review" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Trump reportedly spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba over the phone on Friday, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Japan&#8217;s top trade negotiator to discuss tariffs. It&#8217;s unclear if either of those conversations included talks about the U.S. Steel-Nippon deal. Trump added that he will speak at a &#8220;BIG Rally&#8221; in Pittsburgh on Friday, May 30.
&#8220;The bulk of that Investment will occur in the next 14 months. This is the largest Investment in the History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,&#8221; Trump added. &#8220;My Tariff Policies will ensure that Steel will once again be, forever, MADE IN AMERICA. From Pennsylvania to Arkansas, and from Minnesota to Indiana, AMERICAN MADE is BACK. I will see you all at US Steel, in Pittsburgh, on Friday, May 30th, for a BIG Rally. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!&#8221;
Tim Pearce contributed to this report.

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