Free Republic

A top adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been relieved of duty following the discovery of several anti-Israel social media posts. U.S. Army Col. Nathan McCormack was removed from his advisory role on Israel-related matters following the discovery of the posts. According to his LinkedIn profile, McCormack served as the Levant and Egypt branch chief within the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s J5 planning directorate. He reportedly posted several inflammatory comments on his X account, including calling Israel a “death cult” and referring to its government as “Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies,” according to the Jewish News Syndicate. A...

Military Summary Channel produces 2/day briefings and map updates on the war in Ukraine. I've noticed the western press continues to pump out gibberish that is simply disconnected from reality. By contrast there is a small industry of military analysts who post regular updates on the war in Ukraine that gives an immeasurably better sense of the actual situation. You can find pro-Western analysts like Deep State and pro-Russian mappers, but it doesn't make much difference because these guys have to stay anchored to reality in a way the news media does not. (The MSC is from Belarus and takes...

President Trump announced Friday that he is “immediately revoking” former President Joe Biden’s security clearances and access to daily intelligence briefings – telling The Post he doesn’t “trust” his predecessor with such sensitive information. Trump, 78, argued in a Truth Social post that the former president set the precedent when he barred him from receiving access to the same briefings four years ago, citing Trump’s “erratic behavior.” “There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Trump wrote. “Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances, and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings,” the president...

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he’s revoking former President Joe Biden’s access to government secrets and ending the daily intelligence briefings he’s receiving in payback for Biden doing the same to him in 2021. Trump announced his decision in a post on his social media platform shortly after he arrived at his Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Palm Beach for the weekend. “There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information. Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances, and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings,” Trump wrote....

President-elect Donald Trump is now privy to intelligence briefings at his Mar-a-Lago estate as he waits to officially come back to the White House — after promising to clean house at some of the executive branch agencies that dogged him during his first term. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) began to provide Trump, 78, with briefings after his decisive victory earlier this month against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Washington Post first reported. A spokesperson declined to tell The Post specifically whether Trump has received briefings, but confirmed, “ODNI is acting consistent with the tradition, in...

Kamala Harris worked to inject the themes of “equity” into every aspect of her work as vice president — from COVID-19 to hurricane relief, a new report says. And she started with intelligence briefings, according to the New York Times. Soon after taking office, Harris reportedly had a problem with how two female world leaders were allegedly being described in intelligence reports, which she groused “used adjectives … rarely used to describe male leaders.” The newly sworn-in veep sprang into action, ordering officials to scour years of intelligence agencies’ briefing reports for evidence of bias. They turned up nothing besides...

WASHINGTON, DC: Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Turner pressed the White House to clarify if Hunter Biden is aware of classified briefings. This comes after the first son made a surprise appearance at the Executive Mansion this week in an attempt to bolster his father's flagging reelection campaign, according to the New York Post. Turner wrote to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, "White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has confirmed that Hunter Biden is attending official White House meetings involving the President and his staff." He added, "An immediate response is requested, please notify the Committee...

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he hopes the intelligence community will “dumb down” former President Donald Trump’s briefings once he has the nomination. Anchor Kristen Welker said, “Let me ask you about this development. This weekend, U.S. intelligence officials are planning to provide briefings for Donald Trump. One will see if he officially secures the nomination despite the fact that he’s facing 40 felony charges for his handling of classified documents as the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Do you think it’s appropriate for him to receive intelligence briefings,

The White House on Friday struggled to explain to reporters why it suddenly stopped holding coronavirus briefings after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its latest masking guidance. “Why are the doctors not here in the briefing to take our questions?” asked NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell during the White House press briefing on Friday. White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended not having a briefing with the federal health officials, noting President Joe Biden himself spoke to the American people about the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday. “He gave a more than 30-minute speech,” Jean-Pierre argued, adding...

Governors have become frustrated because President Joe Biden has not attended a single weekly COVID briefing. Vice President Kamala Harris has only attended one so far. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, of all people, has taken charge of the briefings.....

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that there was “no circumstance” under which President Donald Trump should receive intelligence briefings once he leaves office. Schiff said, “There is no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing, not now, not in the future.” He added, “I don’t think he can be trusted with it now, and in the future, he certainly can’t be trusted. Indeed, there were any number of intelligence partners of ours around the world who probably started withholding information from us because they didn’t trust the president...

Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation with the transition of President-elect Biden, shocking officials across the Defense Department, senior administration officials tell Axios. Behind the scenes: A top Biden official was unaware of the directive. Administration officials left open the possibility cooperation would resume after a holiday pause. The officials were unsure what prompted Miller's action, or whether President Trump approved. Why it matters: Miller's move, which stunned officials throughout the Pentagon, was the biggest eruption yet of animus and mistrust toward the Biden team from the top level of the Trump administration. What happened:...

President Trump on Monday said he will resume giving regular coronavirus briefings this week, reviving a practice that is controversial among some aides as infections surge across the United States. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office he would deliver a briefing at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. It would mark his first time participating in a coronavirus briefing since late April.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton criticized on Sunday President Trump’s response to reports that Russian military operatives offered bounties to Afghan militants to kill U.S. troops – saying Trump’s decision-making is “not connected to reality” and bashing the president for denying that he was aware of the bounties. The comments by Bolton, whose upcoming memoir about his time in the Trump White House has drawn the ire of the president, come as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling on action to be taken against Moscow following reports in the New York Times that a Russian spy...

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that “everybody” enjoyed his White House coronavirus briefings — including himself — and vowed they will be back, just not daily. In an Oval Office interview with The Post during which he predicted a strong economic rebound from the coronavirus crisis by the end of the year, and offered his opinions on presumptive Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s best pick for a running mate and the sex-assault allegations facing the former vice president, Trump said the briefings were must-see TV. And he credited his frequent clashes with reporters for making engaging content.

President Trump plans to pare back his coronavirus press conferences, according to four sources familiar with the internal deliberations. He may stop appearing daily and make shorter appearances when he does, the sources said — a practice that may have started with Friday's unusually short briefing. Why this matters: Trump's daily press conferences — televised to a largely homebound population — have dominated the public discourse about the coronavirus.Behind the scenes: A number of Trump's most trusted advisers — both inside and outside the White House — have urged him to stop doing marathon televised briefings. They've told him he's overexposed and...

I have vociferously defended the news value of the White House Coronavirus Task Force daily press briefings, shoving back hard against the embarrassing, anti-journalism demands of anti-Trump media figures insisting that they be censored or boycotted. I will continue to do so. But that doesn't mean that I believe that the pressers are being wielded or executed properly or wisely by the president, or that their format shouldn't be revamped. In a Thursday house editorial entitled "Trump's Wasted Briefings," the Wall Street Journal's editors argue that Trump is too often squandering these news conferences by allowing them to descend into...

Has Trump manhandled the media in any way other than criticizing it for comical, biased overreach? Are reporters fearful of being arrested for their coverage? Has Trump put any unprecedented restrictions on the flow of information? No, no and no. Instead, he holds daily press conferences on the current pandemic, the most recent one lasting more than two hours. Meanwhile, media outlets are either ignoring these pressers or pretending they’re a substitute for the recent Trump rallies. Has he forced private businesses to do the government’s bidding? Mostly, no. He did tap the Defense Production Act to spur GM, already...

“The sessions have become a boring show of President vs. the press.“

Freedom of the press isn’t something we can take for granted and in the White House briefing room, it doesn’t even exist anymore. One America’s Pearson Sharp explains how the biased Press Corps is trying to shut down news organizations like OAN for not pushing their left-wing narrative.