Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Trump Throws Pete Hegseth Under the Bus as Iran War Spirals

Trump publicly suggested Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed him into the Iran war, a familiar blame-shifting move as the administration sends mixed signals about escalation and diplomacy.

Iran War

Mar 23, 2026

Sources

https://newrepublic.com/post/208073/trump-blames-pete-hegseth-iran-war

Summary

At a March 23, 2026 event in Memphis, President Trump recounted calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others and implied Hegseth was an early voice urging military action against Iran. The source frames the remark as Trump “throwing Hegseth under the bus,” while offering limited on-the-record proof that Trump is actually assigning responsibility (versus retelling a decision process) and leaning on social-media reaction. The story matters because public blame assignment inside a war can shape accountability, civil-military decision-making, and whether the public gets a clear explanation of who chose what and why.

Reality Check

Trump’s quote shows him publicly attributing advocacy for action to Hegseth, but it does not, by itself, prove a formal blame shift for the war’s outcomes; it’s a single rhetorical passage that could also be read as Trump narrating who agreed with him in the moment. What is independently corroborated is that Trump announced a five-day pause on strikes against Iranian energy/power targets while claiming “productive” talks, and that Iranian officials publicly disputed that negotiations were happening. Those verifiable facts are more solid than the article’s insinuations about motive (scapegoating) or “market manipulation,” which are not evidenced in the provided text.

Media

View media post

Detail

In Memphis on Monday, March 23, 2026, Trump described calls with “Pete” (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) and “General Caine,” presenting Iran as near a nuclear weapon and arguing for a “journey into the Middle East” to “eliminate a big problem.” Trump quoted Hegseth as saying “Let’s do it” and used that recollection to suggest Hegseth was “the first one to speak up” in favor of action. The article pairs that quote with a comedic/social-media reaction (Jon Favreau on X) as evidence of perceived scapegoating. Separately the same day, Trump announced a five-day pause on U.S. strikes against Iranian energy/power infrastructure while claiming diplomatic conversations; multiple major outlets reported Iranian officials denied negotiations. The piece raises (without substantiating) “rumors” of market manipulation tied to Trump’s claims about talks and policy shifts. Key missing context: what the “50,000 up to 55 and 60” reference is (troops? casualties? something else), whether the quote was edited for clarity, and what actual documented decision chain led to the Iran campaign and the specific “pause” order.

Norms Impact

Pop Star Tells White House ‘Perverts’ to Stop Using Her Song

The White House is turning official channels into a meme engine for war imagery—collapsing the boundary between public authority and propaganda-by-provocation.

Executive

Mar 3, 2026