Category: Uncategorized

  • Trump’s flailing Pentagon reportedly seeks ‘creative and unconventional’ tips on Iran strategy

    President Donald Trump’s deadly war with Iran, which he vowed would be quick and easy, is not going according to plan.

    As of yet, aside from Trump’s public tantrums, one of the clearest signs of this failure is that the Pentagon is reportedly opening its suggestion box in search of “creative and unconventional” ideas to help end the war.

    According to CNN, U.S. Central Command sent an email last week to military analysts soliciting feedback. From the outlet:

    The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.

    “We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

    The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable — options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms.

    MS NOW hasn’t independently confirmed the email, but the Pentagon isn’t denying it. Here’s what CENTCOM told CNN:

    “U.S. Central Command has a long history of thinking and working in innovative ways,” Capt. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesperson for CENTCOM, said in a statement. “Admiral Cooper, in particular, reaches out to members of our great team, regardless of rank, to achieve the highest levels of operational performance possible.”

    Keep in mind that back in March, Trump absurdly claimed that resolving the geopolitical crisis he created would be “easy” compared with fixing college sports, something in which he has seemed far more interested. So CENTCOM officials may want to portray this hunt for ideas as something typical or even praiseworthy, but the problem for them is that it contradicts Trump’s rhetoric. 

    Imagine you work at a company and the CEO says you’re two weeks away from being profitable. If — five months later — he put a suggestion box outside his door seeking “creative and unconventional” ideas about how to reach profitability, that would seem to make it abundantly clear he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. 

    And the same seems true for America’s commander in chief as his deadly war — which is being used to enrich his family — endures.

    The post Trump’s flailing Pentagon reportedly seeks ‘creative and unconventional’ tips on Iran strategy appeared first on MS NOW.

    From MS Now.

  • Prince Harry and Meghan’s charitable arm urges Congress to act on AI deepfakes: ‘More bills are sitting, waiting’

    From The Hill

    Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s charitable organization, Archewell Philanthropies, is urging lawmakers to act on legislation involving AI deepfakes as it calls out Big Tech for what it describes as retaliation “against basic safety measures to keep children safe.” A statement recently posted on the couple’s website titled, “Can we all…

  • ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ Cashes In Best Performance In A Year For Ben Affleck & Jamie Ding Victory

    EXCLUSIVE: Ben Affleck and Jamie Ding didn’t just secure $1 million for Eastern Congo Initiative on Who Wants to be a Millionaire last week, the pair also helped boost ABC to a ratings high. The series boasted its best performance in a year with 4.22M live + same-day viewers tuning in for the July 29 […]

    Source: Deadline.

  • Nene Leakes Hasn’t Been Offered ‘RHOA’ Return Contract

    Nene Leakes and the other stars of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” have NOT been offered contracts for Season 18 … despite a report claiming Bravo is trying to bring Nene back … TMZ has learned. Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … no…

    From TMZ.

  • ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Helmer Stephanie Laing To Direct ‘Runaway Wedding’ For Working Title

    EXCLUSIVE: Stephanie Laing, the two-time Emmy winner behind Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors and the recent true-life Rose Byrne drama Tow, is set to direct Runaway Wedding for Working Title Films, sources tell Deadline. Reps for Working Title declined to comment. Runaway Wedding follows underage lovers Matt and Anna, who elope to the chagrin of their parents, who chase them across […]

    Source: Deadline.

  • President Trump is in a bind of his own making

    This is the August 3, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.

    President Trump is in a bind of his own making. He began the Iran war believing it would take a handful of days, a few weeks at most, and never made his case for the conflict to Congress or the American public. 

    And now that the war has bogged down, he is unable to escape. 

    With the midterms fast approaching, the president doesn’t want to escalate an already deeply unpopular war. Yet, were he to cut and run, he’d be leaving behind an empowered and embittered regime in Tehran that now knows it can inflict deep pain on the global economy.

    Part of Trump’s problem — and why the war continues to lurch along — is that he never truly understood his opponent. As Nancy A. Youssef and I write in The Atlantic:

    The Trump administration’s greatest mistake in the Iran war may be its persistent failure to understand Tehran’s priorities and motivations — and how much punishment the regime is willing to absorb to prevail …

    Part of the confusion may stem from the fact that Trump himself appears to be of (at least) two minds about how he wants to proceed. He has vacillated between backing more military action and giving peace talks a chance. 

    The U.S. cannot begin to understand its enemy if it has yet to settle on its own aims — or how to achieve them. 

    Trump backed away from yet another strike over the weekend and claims that talks have restarted in earnest. Iran denies that. And Trump remains in that bind. 

    Read the full piece in The Atlantic

    CHARTS

    WHAT THEY SAID

    Ed Luce on Iran

    “The Iranians aren’t backing down, which makes it all the more odd that Trump thinks threats of the biggest bombing campaign since World War II will deter them. Tehran’s calculus is that the higher the cost it imposes on Trump and America’s allies — in the Gulf, beyond the Gulf, on the world economy — the less likely this war is to resume. The bluster isn’t working, but he keeps throwing spaghetti against the wall.” 

    David French on the weaponization fund order

    Todd Blanche has been the president’s hatchet man on his political vengeance tour. The suspension of the fund is good, but it is woefully incomplete — and it shows the extent to which Trump has a hammerlock on this Republican Senate.” 

    CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE

    The post President Trump is in a bind of his own making appeared first on MS NOW.

    From MS Now.

  • Author La Plante banned from driving for six months

    The best-selling crime author is disqualified from driving despite saying a ban would end her career.

    Source: BBC.

  • Author La Plante banned from driving for six months

    The best-selling crime author is disqualified from driving despite saying a ban would end her career.

    Source: BBC.

  • If regime change isn’t the goal, then why fight Iran again?

    From The Hill

    The author argues that the United States lacks a coherent long-term strategy toward Iran beyond temporary military escalations and failed transactional diplomacy.

  • ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ Trailer Showcases Mahershala Ali’s Dramatic Chops … And ‘Blade’ Skills

    Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures on Monday released the trailer for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, the dramatic action thriller starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali and written and directed by Bassam Tariq. The pic was recently set to have its world premiere in the Special Presentations section of September’s Toronto Film Festival, ahead […]

    Source: Deadline.

  • ‘The damage is enormous’: Ukraine grapples with record-breaking Russian strikes

    Russia set new wartime records for the rate and scale of its missile strikes on Ukrainian cities in July, according to data published by the Ukrainian air force.

    Source: ABC News

  • France hits out at Reform UK plan to return migrants using Navy

    It comes after the party said it would override French objections to return migrants to France.

    Source: BBC.