Monday we woke to the news that Iran tried to kill President Trump last month while he was visiting Turkey.
To avoid possible assassination, Trump boarded Air Force One in full view of television cameras then snuck off the plane in a catering truck. The Secret Service moved Trump to an Air Force C-32A with a handful of staff and Air Force One took off as a decoy with many White House staff and journalists on board.
American and Israeli intelligence sources have long claimed that Iran wants to assassinate Trump. The US droning of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 allegedly put Trump at the top of the IRGC hitlist. The FBI arrested a man in Houston in 2024 for attempting to build a cell with the goal of killing Trump. During his trial, the man claimed Tehran had blackmailed him into doing it. Also in 2024, an Afghan man told an undercover FBI agent that he was building a cell to kill Trump at the behest of Iran.
Former national security advisor John Bolton is also on Iran’s list of targets. A long time advocate of war with Iran, the IRGC blamed Bolton for the assassination of Soleimani. Federal authorities once offered a $20 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of an IRGC official who was attempting to kill Bolton. Around the clock Secret Service detail protected Bolton due to the ongoing threat, but Trump ended it in 2025. Bolton had become an outspoken critic of Trump after leaving his position as national security advisor in 2019.
“We’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?” Trump said after ending Bolton’s security detail.
A state-backed news agency in Iran posted a picture on X mocking Trump’s flight. It depicted Trump lying prone in a catering cart underneath a pile of Tacos and Diet Coke.
Trump took only four people with him when he left Air Force One. Pete Hegseth, body man Walt Nauta, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, and a personal assistant named Natalie Harp.
8/10/26
The Washington Post broke the news about the decoy plane.
The United States, Israel, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced they had brokered a secret deal with Syria to remove nuclear material from the country. The material is yellowcake — powdered uranium that has to be enriched further to be used in reactors — and it’s left over from an Assad-era nuclear power project that was stopped after Israel hit the site with an airstrike in 2007.According to Axios, Israel detected movement at the site and was on the verge of bombing it again before the US and IAEA stepped in and negotiated a deal to remove the yellowcake.
One of Iran’s demands to end the War is reparations for damage America did to the country. Trump demanded payments of his own in a post on Truth Social.
8/11/26
Both Military Times and Stars and Stripes reported that sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln had attempted suicide by jumping overboard in recent weeks. “He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that. That’s not fair, that’s not right. That’s not what he should be worrying about right now,” Annabelle Loma, the wife of one of the sailors, told Military Times.
The USS Lincoln has been at sea a long time and the family members of the sailors on board are starting to talk. The aircraft carrier and its 5,000 sailors were first deployed in November 2025 to support the war in Iran. The Navy extended that deployment in May and has not said when it will end. The ship has not been back to port for more than 200 days.
Concern about the sailors on the Lincoln has been building for days now as the loved ones of those on board have been pushing lawmakers and Pentagon officials for answers about what they say are shocking conditions on the ship. In a San Diego town hall on August 6, the families of the Lincoln sailors confronted acting Navy secretary Hung Cao and demanded answers.
Cao would not tell the families when the sailors were coming home.
8/12/26
Karoline Leavitt announced she was stepping down as White House Press secretary. Leavitt, who gave birth to a second child in May, said she was leaving the position to spend more time with her family.
“Being a mother and welcoming a new baby while working in one of the most demanding jobs in the world has been the most rewarding yet challenging season of my life, to say the least. The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life,” Leavitt said in a post on X.
As of this writing, the White House has not announced Leavitt’s replacement.
8/13/26
CENTCOM announced Task Force Falcon Strike, a “multinational attack drone task force.” According to the CENTCOM press release, Falcon Strike “will employ one-way attack drones consisting of unmanned systems from above, on, and below the sea operated by military support staff from the United States and regional partners.”
Independent journalist Laura Jedeed (who once exposed how easy it is to get a jobe with ICE by applying for a position herself) reported on The Patriot Games.
The Patriot Games, for those who do not obsessively follow the Trump administration’s every move, was an athletic competition in which 100 kids between the ages of 14 and 17 competed for two $125k scholarships—one for each of the two state-approved genders—courtesy of Trump’s Freedom 250 bribe pool. To volunteer as tribute, all these kids had to do was fill out an application with their social media handles and a video submission that answered questions like “What does being an American mean to you?” and “Describe a moment when you felt especially grateful to be American.” Those selected then travelled to Geneva, Ohio for three days of games at the Spire Olympic Training Facility, which is where I found myself on Tuesday, August 11th, a few hours before the finale took place.
Following public backlash and pressure from lawmakers, the Pentagon announced it would pull the USS Lincoln home and replace it with the USS Washington.
8/14/26
During a press gaggle before boarding a flight to New York, a journalist asked Trump about the complaints from the families of sailors aboard the USS Lincoln.
“Family members of US servicemembers are concerned about conditions on board the USS Lincoln,” the journalist said.
“No they’re not,” Trump said. “That ship is moving right now or very shortly and is being replaced with another very similar ship.”
“Has the deployment gone on too long?”
“No no no no. Not nearly long enough.”
The New York Times reported that the poor conditions aboard the Lincoln are likely tied to regional military bases that Iran struck early in the war.
The Navy needed a Plan B to continue feeding the sailors working around the clock to keep warplanes flying strike missions, and later to maintain a blockade of Iran’s ports.
With the threat of Iranian attacks at other ports in the region, the Pentagon looked to a base under British command on the island of Diego Garcia as its supply hub, which is south of the Maldives and roughly 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.
The loss of the hub in Bahrain has contributed to a host of reported problems on carriers supporting operations against Iran, as Democratic senators raise concerns about the Lincoln’s 5,000 sailors and their nearly nine-month deployment.
8/15/26
Iran and Oman announced they had finalized talks about safe shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz. All that was left was for the United States military to end its blockade, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Trump and Hegseth have managed the War in Iran so poorly that America’s Middle Eastern allies are complaining to US newspapers. Anonymous officials from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait dished to The Washington Post.
The Gulf states lack an immediately viable alternative to their decades-long security partnerships with the United States. As the conflict continues, the Gulf official said, their only choice is to double down on their alliances with Washington.
“Whatever we do,” he said, “we cannot say no to the United States.”
Douglas Silliman, a U.S. ambassador to Kuwait and Iraq under President Barack Obama and Trump, said he heard frustration with Washington on a recent visit to the region. But in recent weeks, he said, he is also hearing growing anger at Tehran for its continued attacks on infrastructure and refusal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
8/16/26
Sundays are usually sleepy in the American political news cycle, but two events occurred on the sixteenth that set up everything that would happen the following week. The first was a campaign rally held by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in Atlanta.
Not yet 40, Ossoff is a rising political star in the Democratic party who won a Georgia Senate seat in 2021. He’s up for re-election in November and is on some analyst’s shortlist of presidential contenders. Ossoff has said he has “zero interest in running for president in 2028.”
During the Sunday night rally, Ossoff took shots at Trump and dropped a line that would dominate the political press for the next week. “He doesn’t wanna do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar,” Ossoff said.
Ossoff was referring to Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant since 2025. The political press and true weirdos have known about Harp for some time. She’s featured in the new book Regime Change and has been attached to the Trump political machine since 2020, but Ossoff’s comment and the Republican reaction to it launched her into mainstream fame.
The other moment that set the tone for the coming week was a post from Trump on Truth Social about North Korea.
