Popular shoe brand Crocs is siding with the woke gender mob…
Watch Amanda fill you in on the latest controversy:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The U.S. Supreme Court is in a sorry state of affairs.
One liberal-leaning justice just can’t seem to shake this obsession with race… and the implications are dangerous for the country.
Watch Amanda break down the problem below:
ANALYSIS – During his recent NBC interview, former president Donald Trump called Florida’s recently passed six-week abortion ban “terrible.” The ban was signed into law by his 2024 Republican campaign rival Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
Trump believes that picking six weeks as the line to draw for abortion banning is not politically viable nationally. He argued that both liberals and conservatives should agree on a compromise solution — a compromise number of weeks.
And to clarify, Trump said the six-week ban was: “terrible. A terrible mistake.”
He was saying that, politically, passing a six-week ban was a mistake, because it charges up the pro-abortion activists, and alienates moderate women needed to win nationally.
Like it or not, exit polls in 2022 showed that the rush to ban abortions outright by some states just after Roe vs Wade was reversed, scared away a lot of independents and moderate suburban women, contributing to the extremely weak results for Republicans in the last midterm elections.
Trump, the ever-ready wheeler dealer, also predicted that: “both sides are going to like me,” adding, “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months, you’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy.”
Here I think Trump made a terrible choice of words. You don’t want the left to like you, even if you are trying to disarm them. But that’s the way he thinks and speaks.
The former president also said that he would be “a mediator” between both sides to come up with a policy that is “good for everybody.”
I take that to mean a compromise timeline on the number of weeks for banning abortion nationwide, and what exceptions to make.
Some pro-lifers immediately bashed Trump for his comments. The Christian Post reported on the backlash:
Trump’s criticism of Florida’s law that bans abortion once a heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks of gestation, did not sit well with pro-life activists
Lila Rose, the founder and president of the pro-life group Live Action, took to X to describe the former president’s remarks as “pathetic and unacceptable.”
“Trump is actively attacking the very pro-life laws made possible by Roe’s overturning,” Rose wrote. “Heartbeat Laws have saved thousands of babies. But Trump wants to compromise on babies’ lives so pro-abort Dems ‘like him.'”
And then there was conservative culture warrior Matthew Walsh, with whom I usually agree, who called Trump’s remarks as “an awful answer from a moral perspective” and “also stupid politically.”
In his post on X (formerly Twitter) Walsh said that “there is no compromise on abortion that everyone will like.”
“It’s delusional to think otherwise. And contrary to Trump’s claims, almost all Democrats are indeed extreme on this issue,” he added. “You will be hard pressed to find more than maybe two or three on the national stage who don’t want abortion until birth or beyond. You can’t win over Democrats by going squishy on this issue. Republicans have tried that brilliant strategy for decades and accomplished exactly nothing by it.”
But is Trump wrong?
A six-week ban based on a fetal heartbeat sounds very reasonable to me. And is fine for Florida.
But I know that won’t wash with many other folks across the country who aren’t extreme but prefer another timeline for banning abortion. GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is staunchly pro-life, doesn’t believe a 15-week national ban is realistic either.
As governor of South Carolina, Haley signed a 20-week ban, joining 12 other states back then with bans.
Polls have shown that many, if not most, Democrats believe in some restrictions on abortion. Most, if not all Republicans will make exceptions for rape, incest, and health of the mother. Many would be happy with any reasonable ban, whether six, eight or ten weeks.
And Trump isn’t the only one who argues that taking a strident no compromise stance on abortion will hurt Republicans nationally. As the Christian Science Monitor reported:
At a closed-door conference meeting in the Capitol earlier this month, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave Senate Republicans a briefing that seemed intended to serve as a wake-up call. The Dobbs decision has “recharged the abortion debate and shifted more people (including some Republicans) into the anti-Dobbs ‘pro-choice’ camp,” the political action committee’s report stated. Some senators reportedly left the meeting brainstorming potential new labels, such as “pro-baby,” that could replace the increasingly fraught “pro-life.”
Unlike in the past, when conservative candidates could simply identify themselves as “pro-life” without having to be specific, they are now being peppered with questions about real policy choices: Should abortion be banned at the state or federal level? After how many weeks? With or without exceptions? What about abortion pill restrictions?
At one end of the 2024 spectrum are Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who have strongly leaned into an anti-abortion message. Both candidates have endorsed a national 15-week abortion ban.
By contrast, Mr. Trump, in his “Meet the Press” interview, declined to explicitly endorse a 15-week ban, drawing a rare rebuke this week from Senator Scott. Ms. Haley has outright dismissed a national 15-week ban as unrealistic – one of the “hard truths” that she has been delivering to voters across New Hampshire and Iowa. She says the Supreme Court was “right” to send abortion back to the states.
While I understand and appreciate the 100% pro-life stance, I also want to win the White House and Senate, and expand our lead in the House, so conservatives can keep pushing on this and other issues important to us.
So, Trump may not be wrong. We need to be more tactically flexible to win the bigger war.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Barbie was released in cinemas worldwide on July 21. Since then, according to Warner Bros., the colorfully controversial, left-leaning, gender-bender, fantasy-comedy movie has drawn in $459m so far in the U.S. and $572m internationally.
That means it has already topped $1 billion overall. This is a huge global smash. But what does it say about us?
Oscar-nominated Barbie writer and director Greta Gerwig also became the first female filmmaker to surpass the billion-dollar benchmark as a solo director, Warner Bros. said.
Other female directors have helmed films that have surpassed the $1bn-mark, but they were working with others. Frozen, the animated blockbuster, and its sequel have generated more than $1.4bn in box office takings and were co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck.
Meanwhile, Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson and co-directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, generated more than $1.1bn at the box office.
But what is the very pink themed movie, starring Margot Robbie (the primary Barbie) and Ryan Gosling (the primary Ken), about? What is its messaging?
The feminist comedy with a PG-13 rating’s plot hinges on Barbie leaving her fake but perfectly idealized world behind and, like Pinocchio before her, becoming “real.”
That’s when it gets political and goes straight into lefty social issues like ‘the patriarchy,’ and gender confusion-fusion.
Elon Musk mocked the film on ‘X,’ formerly known as Twitter, saying: “If you take a shot every time Barbie says the word ‘Patriarchy,’ you will pass out before the movie ends.”
Conservatives have derided the Barbie movie’s anti-male themes, and inclusion of a trans-gender actor/actress playing one of the Barbies. The critics include journalist Piers Morgan and commentator Ben Shapiro. Newsweek reported:
“If I made a movie mocking women as useless dunderheads, constantly attacking ‘the matriarchy,’ and depicting all things feminist as toxic bulls***, I wouldn’t just be canceled, I’d be executed,” Morgan wrote in his columns for British newspaper The Sun and The New York Post after seeing the Barbie movie.
Shapiro meanwhile went as far as to burn a Barbie and Ken doll on Saturday, after seeing the movie the night before. The following Monday he claimed he had received death threats for his stunt.”
Writing for the New York Post, Morgan added: “the movie achieves exactly what it wanted to achieve and that is to establish the matriarchy as the perfect antidote to the patriarchy when in fact it’s just the same concept that they asked us all to detest in the first place.”
The movie “forgets its core audience of families and children while catering to nostalgic adults and pushing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender character stories,” wrote a contributor to Movieguide, a site with a conservative Christian bent.
Ginger Gaetz, wife of conservative Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, posted on ‘X’ that at the premiere, she saw “disappointingly low T from Ken,” referring to testosterone, and she also called him a “beta” male, not an alpha.
Less politically, Time said: “Barbie never lets us forget how clever it’s being, every exhausting minute.”
Mattel has a lot riding on its $100m Barbie movie, the first of a planned slew of films from the toy-making behemoth that include Masters of the Universe, Barney, Hot Wheels and Magic 8 Ball, to name but a few.
The Barbie doll was launched by Mattel in 1959, when the toy-maker itself was only 14 years old, and has sold over a billion units over six decades.
Today, Barbie is still considered Mattel’s crown jewel, driving about a third of its $5 billion annual revenue.
Since 2018, Mattel has been working on a strategy to license its intellectual properties to Hollywood, to reverse a sales decline over recent years. The new movie was a big gamble for Mattel Films.
A hit would boost toy sales, a flop would have done the opposite – threatening other projects currently in pre-production. But the gamble has clearly paid off.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – During Joe Biden’s two-year term in office, the number of illegal migrants swarming into the U.S. has swelled to its highest number in decades.
Many of these illegals have serious criminal records and Team Biden can’t confirm how many or who they are.
So, what does the administration do?
Rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Joe Biden’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus was forced to resign over the weekend by Department of Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas.
While Magnus, an incompetent leftist ideologue, failed miserably as CPB chief, his firing was purely political, making him a scapegoat for Team Biden’s broader border and immigration disaster.
Analysts believe Magnus was forced to resign to avoid him testifying at future GOP-led House committee hearings.
The real villain here is Mayorkas who really needs to go.
As a Senate-confirmed cabinet official, he has been derelict in his constitutional duties to protect the U.S. homeland.
He needs to resign or be impeached by the GOP House next year.
As Senator Ted Cruz,( R-Tx.), told Fox News Digital:
The Biden administration found their fall guy for the chaos at the border. Responsibility for the border crisis lies with Joe Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and real accountability starts with Mayorkas being impeached. Every moment the border continues to remain open only heightens the present humanitarian and national security crisis.
Other GOP lawmakers echoed Cruz’s remarks. Fox News reported:
“The Biden administration has completely failed to protect our borders, and now it’s trying to find a scapegoat,” Burchett said. “Mayorkas should be the one to resign.”
“When Republicans take over the House, we’re gonna bring some rational thought back to our border security operations,” he continued.Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger also called on Mayorkas to hit the road, telling Fox News Digital the DHS secretary tried to use Magnus’ departure as a cover-up of his own “failures.”
And Texas congressman Lance Gooden tweeted about Magnus’s resignation: “Accountability would be DHS Secretary Mayorkas joining him.”
Now, GOP lawmakers with the House Homeland Security Committee confirmed that Mayorkas cannot guarantee that no convicted criminals are among the roughly two million border crossers and illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. since Joe Biden took office.
Breitbart News reported:
During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) grilled Mayorkas over the roughly 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens that have been released into American communities since February 2021, as well as the 600,000 illegal aliens who are known to have successfully crossed the southern border in Fiscal Year 2022.
“Now can you answer definitively … that none of the 600,000 individuals who are now in the United States amongst our communities that got away are gang members or criminals?” Cammack.
“Your question highlights precisely why we have sought to prioritize national security and public safety threats in our Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehension and removal efforts,” Mayorkas said, evading the question.
Breitbart continued:
Mayorkas also did not provide data on how many of the nearly 30,000 convicted criminal illegal aliens apprehended in Fiscal Year 2022 went on to claim asylum after arriving at the southern border.
Cammack pressed Mayorkas on whether criminal records exist for those released into the U.S. under the Biden administration thus far.
“In Fiscal Year 2022, you have now released 1.4 million into the United States and my question to you now is can you guarantee that none of those people have criminal records?” Cammack said, to which Mayorkas did not answer directly.
This failure to respond by Mayorkas, and failure to account for, and confirm the identity and whereabouts of a large number of criminal illegal aliens in the U.S. under his watch, is cause for impeachment.
As Breitbart noted: “In April, Mayorkas failed to guarantee to lawmakers that none of the illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorism Watch List or No-Fly List, apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border at the time, had been released into American communities.”
For all these reasons, and many more, Mayorkas has failed in his constitutional duties and he should be the first Biden cabinet official to go when the GOP takes over Congress in January.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – We are just one day away from a major electoral shift with the Republicans expected to retake the House and possibly the Senate too.
That will put a hard brake on Joe Biden and the left’s radical agenda and make Biden more of a lame duck than he already is.
It may even put an impeachment target on his back.
So, what can we expect from a GOP-led Congress in January?
According to current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the top priority of a Republican-led House would be addressing the horrible migrant crisis at the southern border.
CNN reports: “The first thing you’ll see is a bill to control the border first,” McCarthy told CNN, when asked for specifics about his party’s immigration plans.
“You’ve got to get control over the border. You’ve had almost 2 million people just this year alone coming across.”
Newsmax reported McCarthy as saying:
“There’s a number of different ways” Republicans could tackle the migrant crisis, McCarthy added that party lawmakers would not present a bill to fix the broken immigration system until the border is secure — something that would help stem the flow of fentanyl.
“I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” said McCarthy, referring to the Trump administration’s policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting their immigration proceedings in the U.S.
In fiscal year 2022, U.S. border encounters with illegal migrants topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.
Most recently we saw a clash between flag-wielding and rock-throwing Venezuelan migrants attacking U.S. Border Patrol agents who in-turn fired pepper balls at the charging crowd.
But tackling Biden’s border fiasco is just one of several GOP priorities.
The GOP to-do list also includes tackling Democrat-enabled, out-of-control crime and runaway inflation,
Republicans will also be investigating the hell out of Team Biden.
And there is so much that needs investigating
Newsmax added that “McCarthy said Republicans also would perform oversight and conduct investigations into administration behavior concerning the disastrous troop pullout from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in dealing with parents and school board meetings.”
I would also hope FBI and DHS politicization gets a top spot for oversight as well. Much needs to be done in that highly concerning area.
And then they should dig into the increasingly ‘Woke Pentagon,’ and the extreme ‘Trans’ agenda.
So, expect investigations galore, and Hunter Biden’s laptop and shady international business dealings will also take center stage.
But what about impeaching Joe?
While McCarthy insisted, “We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” he left the door open to launching eventual impeachment proceedings, when he added: “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”
Biden should walk on eggshells for the next two years, if he makes it that far without having the 25th Amendment invoked to remove him for senility.
The political power pendulum is about to swing back to the right, and karma is a b*tch.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Decades after the infamous Roswell incident captivated Americans, the House of Representatives has convened a landmark panel on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), also known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
In what would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, the hearing is the most serious acknowledgment yet that the mysterious sightings require scrutiny at the highest levels of government.
The debate about UAP has become a hot topic in recent years following multiple leaked photographs and video recordings from the U.S. Navy showing UAP craft operating at high speed over American airspace, often with no visible propulsion and maneuvering in ways that baffle aeronautics experts.
A leaked navy video, captured in July 2019, for example, shows a sphere-shaped unidentified object flying over water near San Diego before apparently disappearing into the ocean.
At the hearing, three witnesses testified under oath about their experiences with UFOs. Significantly, former military and intelligence officials testified to the panel Wednesday that they have seen UFOs and said they could pose risks to national security.
All three witnesses said the UAP may be probing for weakness in the U.S. military system.
The highly credible former officials called for the U.S. government to share what it knows about the phenomena.
But the Pentagon’s UAP task force, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, says it hasn’t been able to substantiate claims that any federal programs have possessed or reverse-engineered extraterrestrial materials.
Still, during two hours of testimony on July 26, three witnesses shared their encounters with flying objects that they say defy explanation:
1) David Grusch, an ex-Air Force intelligence officer, claims the U.S. has been running a secret program to retrieve and reverse engineer UAPs for decades, and has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.
Grusch said he believes the U.S. government is in possession of UAP based on interviewing 40 witnesses over four years with direct knowledge of the program.
Perhaps more sensationally, in response to a question regarding aliens, he replied “biologics [life forms] came with some of these [UAP] recoveries.”
2) Ryan Graves, a former navy fighter pilot, testified his squadron repeatedly encountered mysterious flying objects which could remain stationary despite hurricane-level winds – claiming he saw them off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on one sighting:
Graves said his aircrew saw UAP during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. Two jets encountered “a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere” and the object came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft, he said. It was estimated to be 5 to 15 feet in diameter, he said.
3) Retired U.S. Navy commander David Fravor recounted a 2004 encounter with a “Tic Tac” shaped UAP that moved in a way that baffled aviators. Fravor said it had no visible rotors or wings.
It was “moving very abruptly over the white water, like a ping-pong ball,” he added, noting that he flew his aircraft closer to get a better view of the UAP, but “it rapidly accelerated and disappeared.”
But this is only the latest and most significant public inquiry into the UFO threat.
In 2021 the U.S. intelligence agencies were called to deliver a report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) to Congress.
The first unclassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) made public what the Pentagon reportedly knows about UAP, renewing interest in the mysterious objects which have grown into a modern myth in American society.
ODNI produced a second UAP report in 2022.
Whether UAP is the result of advanced foreign technology or from a more otherworldly source, government officials are now demanding to know more about them. And so is the public.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Highlighting the real domestic security threat by China, the FBI is apparently ‘very concerned’ about, and investigating, the alleged Chinese Communist (Chicom) police stations likely set up illegally in New York, among other cities.
This is yet another domestic security failure by a Biden administration obsessed with Jan 6 and persecuting conservatives instead of combatting real foreign threats to the nation.
I have written about these dangerous and repressive Chicom police outposts in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere before.
While ostensibly run by China’s Ministry of Interior via its police forces, and using ‘volunteers,’ the feared Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) – which is both an intelligence and security service – is likely heavily involved with this effort.
China claims the outposts are merely police service centers to help Chinese ex-pats living abroad.
But if you believe that, there is also a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
These outposts are mostly being used to monitor, coerce, and sometimes forcibly remove Chinese dissidents living overseas.
The heightened scrutiny on them follows a September report by Safeguard Defenders, a Europe-based human rights organization, that revealed the existence of dozens of Chinese police ‘service stations’ in major cities around the world, including New York.
Safeguard Defenders reported that China has set up at least 54 “overseas police service stations” around the world, including one in New York City and three in Toronto. The group said its list was based on official statements, but the actual number may be higher.
While tasked with cracking down on Chinese-related illegal activities overseas, the police stations represent “the latest iteration in [China’s] growing transnational repression, where it seeks to police and limit political expression far beyond its own borders,” the report said.
While congressional Democrats obsessed myopically on Jan 6, Republicans in Congress have taken this Chicom threat seriously, requesting answers from Team Biden administration about their legality and influence.
And finally, we see some response.
As Reuters reported, Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers at the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that he is “very concerned about this. We are aware of the existence of these stations.”
However, Wray declined to detail the FBI’s investigations into this threat.
Wray added:
I have to be careful about discussing our specific investigative work, but to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.
When asked by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., if such stations violated U.S. law, Wray said the FBI was “looking into the legal parameters of it” and had talked to the Justice Department and the Department of State about unsanctioned operations.
Wray added that the United States has indicted a number of Chinese government assets involved in harassing, stalking, surveilling, and blackmailing opponents of China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping who are living in the United States.
Many of these indicted assets were involved in a notorious Chicom effort to repatriate Chinese dissidents back to China known as “Operation Fox Hunt.”
“It’s a real problem and something that we’re talking with our foreign partners about, as well, because we’re not the only country where this has occurred,” Wray said.
According to AP most of the Chinese overseas police stations are concentrated in Europe.
The Irish government said last month it had asked China to shut down a police station operating in Dublin. The Dutch government said it was looking into whether two stations named in the report were established in the Netherlands.
In the two months since the Safeguard Defenders’ report was released, at least 14 governments, including those of Britain, Canada and Germany, have opened investigations into the operations, according to Safeguard Defenders.
VOA News reported that:
In response to China’s increased use of transnational repression, the Biden administration has adopted a whole-of-government approach that includes visa restrictions, export controls, and the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators, Uzra Zeya, undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, told a congressional panel in June.
These are all good first steps, but much more needs to be done to neutralize China’s extraterritorial repression in the U.S. and allied nations.
And do so quickly.
Among additional moves, Team Biden must pressure all the nations listed as having extraterritorial Chinese police stations. This includes Germany, which sees no issues with the Chicom police outpost there.
But as with its meekness in facing Russia, Germany has a history of turning a blind eye to the threat posed by the Chinese Communists as well.
It’s time the U.S. makes a very public example of ‘delinquent’ Germany, as President Trump did earlier.
But don’t expect this current administration to do much.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigating the federal government’s response to the January 6, 2021 incidents at the U.S. Capitol now reveal that a pair of pipe bombs planted at the Capitol Hill offices of the Republican and Democrat parties may have been a diversion to distract law enforcement from other events.
They also reveal that while the bombs contained live explosives, it does not appear the timers were operable, and the FBI may not even have interviewed the witnesses who discovered them.
In response, Chairmen Thomas Massie (R-KY), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray “revealing new information surrounding the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs placed near the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) on January 5, 2021,” the Judiciary Committee reports.
“On June 7, 2023, the Committee on the Judiciary conducted a transcribed interview of Steven D’Antuono, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO),” the Committee announced.
“In that role, Mr. D’Antuono oversaw the WFO’s investigations into the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including the placement of pipe bombs near the headquarters of the DNC and RNC on January 5, 2021. Mr. D’Antuono’s testimony provided new information about the FBI’s investigation into the pipe bombs and reinforces our concerns about the FBI’s handling of this matter,” the Committee revealed.
In his transcribed interview, Steven D’Antuono “suggested that the FBI could not even determine whether the placement of the pipe bombs was a ‘diversionary’ tactic for the events of January 6,” the Committee also revealed.
D’Antuono testified:
MASSIE: Are you familiar with the diversion thesis, that these were set up to be a diversion?
D’ANTUONO: Yeah, I’ve heard people say that, but if you watch – I’ve done a lot of media reports. I was trying to get the information out there, tips and stuff like that, right. I will not speculate. I’m not going to speculate on that. I think that’s speculation, at best, when people say that it’s a diversionary tactic. We’ll never know until we find the person that actually did – or persons that actually did it. So I can’t speculate on that. Could it have been? Yes, that’s one theory. Obviously, it’s one theory. But is it the only theory? I don’t – I really don’t know.
MASSIE: It looks like the head Capitol Police [sic] believes it was a diversion.
D’ANTUONO: So Steve Sund, chief of police, yes. I believe he wrote that in his book. Again, it’s pure speculation. There’s no intelligence – look, I ran the investigation for 2 years until I stepped out. We don’t know. We don’t even know the gender at this point as to – we could speculate, and there’s a lot of people that are speculating as to the gender.
MASSIE: How confident are you that the individual depicted in the surveillance footage on January 5th set both of those pipe bombs in place?
D’ANTUONO: So the video that we saw, I feel confident that by the video that we have, that that person planted those.
D’Antuono also testified on the “viability of the pipe bombs, which, according to reporting, were deemed to be ‘inoperable,’” the Committee reports.
“D’Antuono referenced a report from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, that the pipe bombs were viable, and ‘they could explode, and they could cause harm or death,’” the Committee notes, adding. “D’Antuono also acknowledged that the timer used on the pipe bomb could not have detonated the pipe bomb given the time already elapsed between placement and discovery.”
He testified:
MASSIE: Well, let me ask you this: Do you think it was technically possible for a kitchen timer . . . that has [a] 1-hour duration . . . to detonate a bomb 17 hours later?
D’ANTUONO: No, I don’t. And I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off. We can’t—we don’t know. We honestly don’t know, and that’s some of the pain . . . .
D’Antuono’s testimony “provided additional details about the FBI’s use of geofencing technology to identify the pipe bomb suspect,” the Committee revealed.
He testified:
D’ANTUONO: So the – there’s a lot of phone data that came in. Yes, I’ve seen the same video. I’ve watched the same video. We put out the same video. It looks like a phone. Was it a real phone, a not a real phone, was it a ruse? Was it a – you know, I picked up my phone several times at meetings going, oh, yeah, I got to take this call, and walk out, right. The phone’s not on, right. So was the person just sitting there trying to pretend like they’re on a bench taking a phone call? We don’t know until we find the person, right, and ask them those questions.
We did a complete geofence. We have complete data. Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure – I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that – that data wasn’t corrupted – and it wasn’t purposely corrupted. I don’t want any conspiracy theories, right. To my knowledge, it wasn’t corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don’t have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.
D’Antuono also testified that he did not definitively know if the FBI had interviewed the individual who discovered the pipe bomb at the DNC.
He testified:
MASSIE: So just to . . . put a fine point on it, you do not know whether they interviewed the person that discovered . . . the [bomb] at the DNC?
D’ANTUONO: I don’t know.
The Committee notes “D’Antuono conceded that it would be ‘investigation 101’ to interview the individuals who discovered the bombs, yet he was unable to confirm whether the FBI had taken this basic investigative step.”
He explained:
MASSIE: So – but the person who found – you either haven’t identified the person who found the second pipe bomb, or did you?
D’ANTUONO: I – honestly, sir, I don’t know the granularity of everything my agents and analysts did in that matter. It’s just – it’s a whole host of stuff that’s going on. As the [Assistant Director in Charge], as like any senior leader, I’m getting briefed on things, and that part never came up, so –
“D’Antuono’s testimony raises concerns about the FBI’s handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee’s requests for a briefing regarding the investigation,” the Committee concludes.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Time Magazine Denies Nazi-Era Echo In Trump Cover Image
Photographer’s nod to controversial 1963 portrait fuels speculation.
WASHINGTON — Time magazine is facing backlash over its latest cover photo of President Donald Trump, after online critics and media outlets pointed out a visual similarity to a portrait the magazine used 60 years ago featuring convicted Nazi industrialist Alfried Krupp.
The image, shot by photographer Stephen Voss, shows Trump looming over the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, dramatically lit from below. According to a report by The Daily Beast, the composition bears a striking resemblance to a 1963 photo of Krupp taken by the Jewish photographer Arnold Newman — a photograph widely studied for its chilling and deliberate framing of a man convicted of facilitating some of history’s most heinous crimes.
The Historical Background
Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach inherited control of the Krupp industrial empire from his father, Gustav Krupp, who had supported Adolf Hitler and helped finance the Nazis’ rise to power. Under Alfried’s leadership during World War II, Krupp factories supplied the Third Reich with armaments and heavy machinery vital to its war efforts, including tanks, submarines, and artillery.
After Germany’s defeat, Krupp was tried by the U.S. Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg Krupp Trial (officially The United States of America vs. Alfried Krupp, et al.), which took place from 1947 to 1948.
He was convicted primarily for:
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and had his property confiscated.
Newman’s portrait of Krupp is iconic in photographic circles. In the image, Krupp is seated at a desk under harsh lighting, his posture and setting portraying him as both powerful and ominous, reminiscent of a devil or a fiendish creature. Critics argue that Time’s Trump cover bears such a resemblance to Newman’s portrait that it cannot be a coincidence.
Photographer Reacts on Social Media
Voss, the photographer behind the Trump image, has not publicly commented on the comparison. However, he reportedly “liked” social media posts highlighting the resemblance — a move many interpret as a subtle acknowledgment of influence.
A spokesperson for Time magazine rejected the claims outright, telling The Daily Beast that “any suggestion of an intentional reference is completely untrue.”
Why This Matters
The controversy cuts across political and cultural lines:
What’s Still Unknown
A Larger Media Question
This episode adds fuel to a long-running debate over how the media portrays political leaders — especially those it opposes editorially. It also highlights the power images have in shaping public perception.
In an era when symbolism is parsed as carefully as language, even a magazine cover can carry profound consequences.
Sponsored
JD Vance has a question for YOU! The only thing at the forefront of his mind is serving America-loving patriots. What are the most important issues facing our great country today? [Respond to the Vice Presidential Survey HERE]