US President Donald Trump looks on as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers remarks during a joint news conference at the White House on September 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The Venezuelan ambassador accused the Trump administration of “killing everyone who is on the sea working.”
Venezuelan United Nations Ambassador Samuel Moncada on Thursday delivered a scathing denunciation of US President Donald Trump’s drone attacks on purported drug boats off the coast of his country.
While holding up a copy of Thursday’s edition of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, which highlighted two Trinidadian citizens who were killed by a US drone strike while on a boat, Moncada lambasted the Trump administration and compared it to a serial killer.
“There is a killer roaming around the Caribbean!” he declared. “He’s bloodthirsty! He’s killing everyone who is on the sea working! And people from different countries—Colombia, Trinidad, etc.—are suffering the effects of these massacres!”
🇻🇪 At the UN, Venezuela alerts of “a killer roaming around the Caribbean” committing massacres@SMoncada_VEN displays today's @GuardianTT newspaper, which reported that two Trinbagonians were murdered in the latest U.S. strike on a boat in the Caribbean pic.twitter.com/ztIBxawWQk
According to Reuters, Moncada this week also sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council asking it to rule on the legality of the US strikes, while also releasing a statement affirming Venezuela’s sovereignty.
The two Trinidadian citizens mentioned by Moncada were killed in a Tuesday drone strike that also reportedly took the lives of four other men.
In interviews with the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, friends and relatives of 26-year-old Chad Joseph, one of the men killed in the strike, denied that he was involved with any drug trafficking.
“I find it wrong because it have—people will be innocent and they will still do and say otherwise,” Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, told the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. “The sea law is they supposed to stop the boat and intercept it, not blow it up like that.”
With the Tuesday strike, the total number of people killed by the Trump administration’s attacks on suspected drug boats totaled at least 27.
The administration carried out yet another boat strike on Thursday, and Reutersreported that at least two crew members had survived the attack, marking the first time that an attack on suspected drug vessels had left any survivors.
Reuters noted that “the development raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody, possibly as prisoners of war.”
The Trump administration so far has provided no legal justification for the strikes on boats, nor has it provided any evidence that any of the boats it has targeted were involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs.
Many legal experts believe that the strikes on the boats would be illegal even if they were found to have been carrying drugs, however, and some criticshave accused the Trump administration of extrajudicial murder.
Moncada said Thursday that the Trump administration, which has also reportedly approved “lethal operations” by the CIA in Venezuela, is “looking for wars.”
“Everybody knows what’s going on here,” he said. “They are fabricating a war. The emperor is naked. Stop pretending this is complicated.”
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President Donald J. Trump and President of Argentina Javier Milei at the White House on Oct 14. Photo: White House
The Milei-Trump meeting secured a USD 20 billion financial bailout for Argentina’s unstable economy. Trump made future aid conditional on Milei winning the upcoming elections.
On October 14, Argentina’s right-wing president, Javier Milei, met with his US counterpart, Donald Trump in Washington. Milei, who arrived in the US capital in the early hours of the morning, hoped to secure a strategic financial bailout of almost USD 20 billion that Trump would sponsor to stabilize the economy, which has been struggling under Argentina’s libertarian government.
Traveling alongside Milei were Karina Milei, the president’s sister and secretary general of the presidency; Patricia Bullrich, minister of security; and Santiago Bausili, head of the Central Bank. Among the topics discussed were the trade relationship between the two countries and China’s influence in Argentina.
He described Argentina’s economic crisis as a “moment of acute illiquidity” in an otherwise “prudent financial strategy” that only the United States can and must save from collapse.
The South American nation has “strong economic fundamentals” and the structural reforms already underway will “generate significant dollar-denominated exports and foreign exchange reserves,” Bessent said.
The treasury secretary noted that the IMF also supports Milei’s economic policy.
Additionally, Bessent affirmed: “We have finalized a USD 20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank. The US Treasury is prepared, immediately, to take whatever exceptional measures are warranted to provide stability to markets. I emphasized to Minister Caputo that President Donald Trump’s America First economic leadership is committed to strengthening our allies who welcome fair trade and American investment … The Trump administration is resolute in our support for allies of the United States, and to that end, we also discussed Argentina’s investment incentives and US tools to powerfully support investment in our strategic partners.”
Thus, the United States hopes to save the Argentine economy, which – despite the promises of Milei, an economist who for years has become an ideologue of the most radical neoliberalism – is faltering due to a lack of dollars. The orthodox program of reducing the size of the state, privatizing public companies, and cutting back on public policies has managed to improve certain economic indicators, such as the fiscal deficit, but for now it has run into a snag that, apparently, only the prodigious help of the United States can save.
Argentina has lost a large amount of money, causing several investors to begin selling their assets and, consequently, triggering a crisis of monetary illiquidity. With the agreement, Milei secures a historic injection of dollars that the IMF could not have offered him so quickly, considering that last April it already loaned Buenos Aires several billion.
This is of particular interest in view of the upcoming elections in Argentina on October 26; it should not be forgotten that Milei’s party already lost the last elections to Peronism (likely the most significant political force in Argentina over the last 70 years based on social justice, nationalism, and sovereignty) by a landslide. This was acknowledged by President Trump himself at a bilateral press conference, who made future economic aid conditional on Milei’s election victory: “The elections are coming very soon, and it is a very big election that will be watched by the world because [Milei] has done an incredible job, and with that comes some pain. I think the victory is very important … If a socialist, or in the case of New York City, a communist, wins, you feel a lot different about making an investment … If Milei doesn’t win … we will not be generous with Argentina if that happens.”
Trump has received heavy criticism for sponsoring Milei’s bailout, especially from some of his supporters who hoped that the slogan “America First” would materializein an opposite scenario. In addition, several US farmers have complained about Trump’s support, as Argentine soybeans compete with their production and, with this agreement, large landowners based in Argentina could benefit.
For his part, Milei, who has aligned his foreign policy almost mimically behind Washington’s, posted on X: “Thank you very much, President Trump, for receiving me at the White House. Since before becoming president, I have maintained that the Argentine Republic should be a strategic ally of the United States of America, and now that the Argentine people have entrusted me to guide the destiny of our country, fulfilling that promise is another step in the direction we set out on December 10, 2023: Make Argentina Great Again (MAGA). The support that you and your great country have given us is vitally important for the continuity of the long road of reforms we have embarked upon. Argentines know that the world’s leading power will continue to support us unless we return to populism. The situation is crystal clear: if the country strays from the path of freedom and returns to populism, the United States will cease to support our country. Otherwise, they will continue to stand by us.
Without a doubt, Milei’s hope is that long-awaited economic stability will translate into political stability that will allow him to get through the upcoming elections. However, this will be difficult for the government, given the latest polls showing growing discontent among the population over the rising cost of living, the latest corruption scandals (involving Milei’s own sister), and spending cuts that are already affecting millions of students, retirees, single mothers, etc.
Thus, Milei has bet big on Washington, just as Trump and his administration have bet big on the libertarian president. It will soon become clear whether this bet will allow Washington to maintain a totally loyal ally in South America or whether, on the contrary, Milei’s neoliberal project will be undermined by Argentina’s social and economic reality.
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A US Army soldier watching a burning oil well at Rumaila oil field in Iraq in April 2003. Photo: US Navy
With the suspension of dialogue between the US and Venezuela, the sighting of US B-52 bombers in Venezuelan airspace, and the further lethal US strikes in the Caribbean, the US seems to be accelerating its drive towards war with Venezuela
The mood in the Caribbean grows increasingly tense, as the United States intensifies its military threats. Beneath the deceptive shroud of the “war on drugs,” the United States is actively executing a blueprint for military intervention in Venezuela, employing lethal force and projecting power in a manner that legal institutions and regional leaders have condemned as a profound threat to international order. This aggression is not a law enforcement operation; it is the negation of law, a neocolonial revival of the Monroe Doctrine, designed to shatter the sovereignty of Venezuela, seize control of the world’s largest oil reserves, and install a compliant regime.
A license to kill: the precedent of state murder
A chilling adoption of extrajudicial violence has marked the current escalation. The Trump administration has ordered unilateral military strikes against private vessels near the Venezuelan coast, allegedly to stop drug trafficking. To launch these alarming attacks, the US military has deployed a massive naval force of warships, drones, and special operations forces.
These strikes have resulted in the summary execution of at least 27 people as of recent reports. The most recent lethal strike in the Caribbean resulted in the “elimination” of 6 more people. This is not law enforcement; it is extrajudicial murder and a campaign that now stands as part of a war plan against Venezuela. The administration has characterized the victims, without credible proof, as drug traffickers and “terrorists,” a claim that, even if true, provides no legal authority for the US president to execute whomever it decides.
Legal and human rights organizations have been unequivocal in their condemnation of this profound and dangerous policy, which replaces established law enforcement procedures with premeditated lethal force. The New York City Bar Association (NYCBA), a key voice on international legal ethics, has strongly denounced these actions. The NYCBA stated explicitly that “Because the recent attacks on Venezuelan vessels and their crews were unauthorized by US law and in violation of binding international law, they were illegal summary executions – murders.” They further argued that these actions violate the fundamental international principle that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life” under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The US government possesses ample legal authority for the Coast Guard to interdict and search vessels suspected of carrying narcotics, followed by prosecution in US courts according to due process requirements. However, in the case of the Venezuelan vessels, the Coast Guard’s Congressionally authorized police function was bypassed; instead, the crews were simply targeted and executed by overwhelming military force. Regional leaders, including Colombian President Gustavo Petro, have condemned the extrajudicial killings, highlighting the profound anxiety across Latin America over a return to unilateral US military action under the cover of anti-narcotics policy.
Beyond the lethal strikes, the US government has engaged in significant military posturing that amounts to a direct challenge to Venezuelan sovereignty. The sighting of US B-52 bombers in Venezuelan airspace, flying in close range, is a significant escalation. This warmongering has nothing to do with the “war on drugs” and everything to do with regime change to plunder Venezuela’s oil. This reckless push for war is a criminal act of international aggression.
The Trump Administration’s unilateral drone strikes in the Caribbean, combined with the White House’s termination of all negotiations with Venezuela, appear as a precursor for a full-scale regime change operation. This is a critical moment. We must sound the alarm: there is a risk of a new, catastrophic conflict in the region.
The US government’s own officials continue to escalate the crisis with bellicose rhetoric and actions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a key architect of the regime-change policy, has consistently refused to rule out a military option, asserting that the Maduro regime has become a “threat to the region and even to the United States.”
Venezuela’s response has been one of principled defense of its sovereignty. Ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the global stage, arguing that the US military deployment in the Caribbean is a massive propaganda operation that seeks “excuses to fabricate a conflict” to seize the country’s oil wealth. Moncada affirmed that, “The United States believes that the Caribbean belongs to it because it has been using the expansionist Monroe Doctrine for over 100 years, which is nothing more than a remnant of colonialism.”
President Nicolás Maduro has called on Washington to resume dialogue, stating, “Our diplomacy isn’t the diplomacy of cannons, of threats, because the world cannot be the world of 100 years ago,” while simultaneously mobilizing national defense exercises to ensure the country is prepared for any direct assault. The NYCBA warned that attacks against Venezuelan vessels and reported threats against the Venezuelan government violate the nation’s obligations under the United Nations Charter, with the risk of escalating to open hostilities.
Parallels with the Iraq War: oil, ideology, and deception
The current situation is chillingly reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In that case, the Bush administration justified unilateral action on the basis of “weapons of mass destruction,” but this was a pretext. The true objectives were not limited to oil, but also included achieving profound ideological and political goals – overthrowing a government to reshape Middle Eastern politics and assert dominance.
Washington must learn the lessons of this history. The Bush administration promised a quick victory in Iraq. Instead, the invasions and occupation claimed countless Iraqi lives, resulted in tens of thousands of American soldiers killed or wounded, and destabilized the region. The notion that the US can carry out military invasions into the heart of Latin America without a massive blowback is outlandish.
In the case of Venezuela, the “war on drugs” and the labeling of the government as a “threat” serve as the new rhetorical pretexts. The US interest is multifaceted: it involves securing the world’s largest proven oil reserves and achieving the ideological and political goal of overthrowing a socialist government to assert dominance and reshape Latin American politics. The US seeks to dismantle the Bolivarian Revolution and eliminate a major center of anti-imperialist politics in the hemisphere.
The current escalation is not about law enforcement or counter-narcotics; it is about regime change and plunder. While members of Congress from both Democratic and Republican parties, as well as key voices of public opinion, are increasingly speaking up about the illegality of these strikes and the absence of credible information from the administration, this situation requires much more urgency, once the escalation ladder is climbed, there may be no going back. The international community must recognize this aggressive campaign for what it is: a criminal act of international aggression. The world must stand against this threat of a new, catastrophic conflict.
Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).
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Federal agents, including members of the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and the police, attempt to keep protesters back outside a downtown US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility on October 5, 2025, in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The incident comes as immigrants’ rights advocates warn ICE’s tactics in US cities are growing increasingly violent.
Amid report after report of increasingly aggressive tactics used by federal immigration enforcement, a pair of Portland medical workers say that an agent threatened to shoot them as they tried to transport an injured protester last week.
According to publicly archived dispatch records reported by Willamette Week, an ambulance crew was attempting to transport a protester with a broken or dislocated collarbone from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southern Portland on October 5.
The facility has been a flashpoint in recent weeks as the site of several small but persistent protests, which the Trump administration has attempted to characterize as violent provocations by “antifa” in order to justify its deployment of military troops.
After entering through the facility’s front gate around 9:19, the two medics were able to load the patient into the ambulance without issue. But at 9:40, the driver reported to dispatch that “we are still not being allowed to leave by ICE officers.”
ICE agents deployed to Portland, Oregon, apparently blocked EMS from leaving and then threatened to shoot the ambulance driver… https://t.co/DkDWL9nVoV
Confidential incident reports filed by each of the two medics, and obtained by WW, describe in more detail what was happening at the scene.
Each of the drivers’ separate reports says the agents had demanded to ride along in the ambulance en route to the hospital. The driver replied that without arrest paperwork, they were not permitted to ride along. Agents continued to insist that the vehicle would not be allowed to leave until an officer was permitted to accompany them.
“I repeated again,” the driver said in their report, “that no officer is permitted to ride in the ambulance and that they can meet us at the hospital and that we needed to be let out of the facility. Officers then began walking away from me whenever I spoke. At that point, a group of 5-8 civilian-dressed men walked into the garage and just stared at me. No identification on any of them. I walked back to the ambulance and got into the driver’s seat. I flipped the emergency lights on and put the car into drive. I inched forward slowly out of the garage.”
A man described as being in civilian clothes and a neck-wrap then stepped in front of the vehicle and ordered the ambulance not to leave, according to the report. As more agents amassed about 15 feet in front of the vehicle, the driver assumed they were preparing to escort the ambulance off the property and continued to slowly inch the vehicle forward. But agents continued to obstruct the ambulance’s path. As of 9:39, a dispatch report said there were “50-60 fed agents completely blocking the road.”
At this point, the crew member in the passenger’s seat exited the vehicle to attempt to reason with the officers. After putting the vehicle into park, the driver began to exit as well. They said that as they opened the side door, “I looked up and suddenly the entire group of officers… were crowded around the open car door, some of them leaning forward towards me, inches from my face.”
The driver recalls that an agent “pointed his finger at me in a threatening manner and began viciously yelling in my face, stating, ‘DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN, I WILL SHOOT YOU, I WILL ARREST YOU RIGHT NOW.” The vehicle had rolled forward slightly after the driver put it in park, apparently leading the agents to believe the medics were attempting to hit them.
“I was still in such shock,” the driver later wrote, “that they were not only accusing me of such a thing, but crowding and cornering me in the seat, pointing and screaming at me, threatening to shoot and arrest me, and not allowing the ambulance to leave the scene. This was no longer a safe scene, and in that moment, I realized that the scene had not actually been safe the entire time that they were blocking us from exiting, and that we were essentially trapped.”
The ambulance was finally allowed to leave after being delayed for more than 20 minutes. An unmarked vehicle followed the ambulance to the hospital, where several men in civilian dress exited and walked in.
The incident reports provide the latest account of what Portland city officials described to WW as a pattern in which “federal agents have in several cases needlessly intensified situations that might have easily remained far more calm.”
Over the same weekend, peaceful demonstrators and journalists were ambushed with pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, and rubber bullets without clear provocation. In one viral incident earlier that week, a demonstrator who danced at protests in an inflatable frog costume had pepper spray shot directly into his air intake vent by an officer as he attempted to help a fellow protester who was injured.
The reports come as experts say ICE has been intensifying its tactics around the country, which have been captured in several videos taken by bystanders.
One video in Hyattsville, Maryland, shows an officer who dropped his gun while pinning a man to the ground, before picking it up and pointing it towards onlookers.
In another video from Alamosa, Colorado, agents were filmed hopping out of a car and immediately pointing their weapons at a young couple whom they’d boxed in at an intersection. As the woman in the car shouted that the driver’s 1-month-old baby was riding in the back seat, an officer in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hat used his baton to smash open the car’s driver’s side window, spilling glass into the vehicle.
ICE stops family at gunpoint—smash car window on top of newborn baby.
"I was screaming that there was a baby. But they didn’t care," cried mother.
“I covered my baby with my body—I was so scared he was going to be hurt because glass was landing on him."
Another video from the Chicago area, where President Donald Trump has surged ICE as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” shows agents firing pepper spray upon a pastor who was speaking outside a facility.
And a recent photo shows a masked agent in the passenger’s seat of an unmarked van pointing a weapon at a woman who was attempting to film him from the neighboring car.
On October 4, CBP agents in Chicago shot a woman, 30-year-old Marimar Martinez, whom they similarly claimed had provoked them by ramming them with her car. Body camera footage would not only contradict this claim, but show that the agents had in fact plowed into Martinez’s vehicle after one of them shouted “Do something, bitch.”
Prosecutors said Martinez had a licensed gun in her car. But her attorneys say she did not brandish the weapon, and she was not charged with any weapons-related offense. She was the second person shot by immigration agents in the area in less than a month—the other was also unarmed.
In the meantime, the Trump administration has attempted to describe peaceful demonstrations against ICE’s behavior as acts of “terrorism,” with deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller calling those in Portland “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers.”
Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told NPRthat the latest spate of attacks by federal agents “are just the tip of the iceberg.”
“This administration,” he said, “overall seems more interested in heightening the tensions instead of trying to ramp them down.”
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The Democratic National Committee sponsors a billboard about then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and Project 2025 at 12th & Vine Streets on September 9, 2024, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for the Democratic National Committee)
“A Trump denial is not a fact,” said one media critic.
As President Donald Trump openly embraces Project 2025, mainstream media outlets are facing criticism for their role in helping him downplay his ties to the wildly unpopular far-right governing playbook in the lead-up to his reelection last year.
After she became the Democratic nominee in July, former Vice President Kamala Harris made the Heritage Foundation’s over 900-page manifesto for “the next conservative president” central to her case against Trump during the 2024 election, often referring to it as “Trump’s Project 2025.”
She and other Democrats warned that if he retook power, he would swiftly enact many of its most extreme and unpopular proposals and dramatically expand executive power while doing it.
Among those proposals were steep cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the “mass deportations” of millions of immigrants, the elimination of the Department of Education, new restrictions on abortions, the gutting of climate protections, and the replacement of career civil servants with political appointees, among many others.
Democrats amplified the plan’s danger at the Democratic National Convention and in campaign ads, and Trump began to distance himself from the platform. Despite the fact that as many as 140 people who’d worked in his first administration—including Paul Dans, Heritage’s director of Project 2025—had a hand in its creation, Trump said: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”
This was demonstrably untrue, even at the time. Media Matters for America dug up a clip from as far back as May 2023 of Dans stating that “President Trump’s very bought in with this,” speaking of the program.
🚨 In video published by Media Matters, Project 2025 director says "President Trump's very bought in with this."
Trump recently claimed to know "nothing" about the plan for his second term but added that he "wish[es] them well" pic.twitter.com/i8hgpcdvZd
Project 2025 was almost inconceivably unpopular. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that while 57% of registered voters viewed the plan negatively, just 4% viewed it positively.
But in the critical months leading up to the election, many media outlets took Trump’s denial at face value, publishing fact checks and other commentary that painted Democrats’ warnings about his connection to the plan as alarmist or misleading.
Last year, CNN ran a “fact check” of Kamala HQ that claimed we were lying for saying Trump’s plan is Project 2025.
Responding to a social media post in July stating that “Trump has made his authoritarian intentions quite clear with his Project 2025 plan,” a fact check by USA Todayrated the statement “false,” because, as the headline said, “Project 2025 is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, not Donald Trump.”
In September, after Harris confronted Trump about Project 2025 at the first and only debate between the two, the paper published another fact-check with the headline: “Harris repeats claim that Project 2025 is Trump’s plan. That’s still not right.”
In response to Harris’ claim during the debate that Project 2025 was “a detailed and dangerous plan… that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, whose coverage received a fair bit of criticism during the 2024 cycle, reported in bold text that “Project 2025 is not an official campaign document.”
A CNN fact check of the Harris campaign’s social media in September remarked that one account “frequently invokes Project 2025,” before caveating that “Project 2025 is not Trump’s initiative, and he has said he disagrees with some of its proposals.”
In an October interview on CBS‘s“Face the Nation,”anchor Norah O’Donnell, Harris attempted to warn about Project 2025, before O’Donnell responded: “You know that Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025. He says that is not his campaign plan.”
After nine months back in power, the website Project 2025 Tracker estimates that Trump has already implemented approximately 48% of the objectives outlined in the policy document.
In addition to his key campaign promises many of his second administration’s policies are highly specific to Project 2025, such as his pledge to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), his efforts to privatize the National Weather Service (NWS), his reconfiguration of Title X funding to promote pregnancy, and his elimination of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Trump is no longer hiding his connection to Project 2025, having brought in many of its hiring picks and authors to staff his administration almost immediately after his victory last November.
This week, he began to boast about it openly. As his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, Russ Vought, one of Project 2025’s architects, began using the current government shutdown to unilaterally cut off funding to infrastructure projects in blue states and cities, Trump lauded him as “he of PROJECT 2025 Fame.”
“This was always the plan,” Harris responded on social media.
This was always the plan.
Project 2025 was Donald Trump's blueprint to seize unchecked power within the federal government and restrict Americans' freedoms. And he is implementing it right in front of our eyes. pic.twitter.com/rsU6So6tyN
While many commentators expressed outrage that Trump blatantly lied about his connections to Project 2025, others dredged up old clips of newspapers and anchors taking him at his word.
“All those 2024 media fact checks that said, ‘Donald Trump and the Trump campaign deny any connection to Project 2025’ look pretty ridiculous right now,” saidMeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski. “A Trump denial is not a fact. You just used his lies to ‘debunk’ a reality that was obvious to anyone paying attention.”
Mehdi Hasan, the founder of the independent media company Zeteo, highlighted the CBS interview, saying Trump’s embrace of Project 2025 was “embarrassing not just for Norah O’Donnell but a whole host of leading American anchors and reporters who echoed Trump’s false denials.”
“Nothing showed the difference between mainstream and independent media better than the response to Trump’s obvious lie about not knowing anything about Project 2025,” said David Pepper, author of the book Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual. “Most mainstream media started fact-checking those who claimed a connection to be somehow false. Others ‘both sides’ed’ it. Far more in independent media called it out as a whopping lie.”
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