What Happened Today - 16 Dec 2025
What Happened Today – 16 December 2025
BBC Lawsuit and Trump’s Media War
Weapon of Mass Destruction - Fentanyl
Future of Noem
Pulitzer Board—Discovery….let’s see the record Trump
Military Re-structure…
Jobs Report
Brown Shooter Still at Large…but let’s Podcast Kash
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BBC Lawsuit and Trump’s Media War
The BBC lawsuit stunt
He’s hit the BBC with a whopping $10 billion lawsuit, claiming their Panorama‑style documentary about January 6 “defamed” him by splicing two different parts of his Ellipse speech together to make it sound like one seamless call to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” His lawyers are pushing this as “election interference,” whining that the edited segment aired right before the 2024 election and supposedly wrecked his reputation and cost him money, which is hilarious coming from a guy who’s made a career out of lying on TV.
The punchline is the BBC already admitted the edit was an “error of judgment,” apologized, and conceded it gave a misleading impression, but they’re very clear it wasn’t malicious and they’re not paying him a dime. Defamation law in the U.S. sets the bar sky‑high for public figures, and legal experts are already saying he’s going to have to prove not just that it was wrong but that the BBC knowingly misled people—which is a brutal standard he’s unlikely to clear, so this reads more like a political intimidation play than a real case he expects to win.
How it fits his media war
This suit is straight out of his “I’m the victim, media are the enemy” playbook: sue big outlets for absurd sums, scream “fake news,” and feed the base a story where he’s being persecuted for telling “beautiful” patriotic truths, not for riling people up before a violent attack. He’s even out there claiming they “put terrible words in my mouth” and maybe even used AI, trying to spin this like some futuristic deepfake conspiracy instead of a very human, very sloppy edit that the broadcaster already owned up to.
The timing is no accident either: this lands right as his approval is sliding and more coverage is zeroing in on his second‑term extremism, so he’s turning the BBC into the new punching bag to distract and remind his people who the “real enemy” is. If he can chill big foreign outlets by making an example of the BBC, that’s a bonus for him—win or lose in court, the spectacle is the point.
The Rob Reiner smear
On top of that, he chose the darkest possible moment to be himself about Rob Reiner: right after Reiner and his wife were found stabbed to death and their son was taken into custody, Trump jumps online and basically blames Reiner’s anti‑Trump politics for his own killing. In his Truth Social rant he called Reiner “tortured and struggling,” claimed he had a “mind‑crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” and suggested the couple died “due to the anger he caused others” with his supposed obsession with Trump—just gross, even by his standards.
What makes it even slimier is he never acknowledges any personal connection—even though Michele Singer Reiner literally shot the cover photo for “The Art of the Deal”—and then he doubles down at the White House, calling Reiner “deranged” and saying he thought Reiner was “very bad for our country.” Republicans on the Hill, including conservatives who normally swallow everything he does, are openly calling the post “inappropriate,” “cruel,” and “beneath the office,” which tells you how far over the line he went if even his own side is flinching.
Why this combo matters
Taken together, the BBC suit and the Reiner smear are the same instinct playing out in two different arenas: punish the storytellers, dehumanize the critics, and never, ever admit fault. On one side he’s trying to financially bludgeon a major broadcaster into caution, on the other he’s using a family tragedy to mock a dead opponent and turn “Trump derangement syndrome” into a branding moment for his base.
Even some Republicans are basically begging him to act like a normal president in the middle of a homicide investigation and a giant international legal fight, and he’s choosing the most spiteful, petty version of himself every time because the cruelty and spectacle are the point, not any serious defense of his “record.”
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Weapon of Mass Destruction - Fentanyl
basically using the fentanyl crisis and his own staff as props in the same strongman routine: crank up the war footing, ignore the people who actually know better, and keep feeding the base red meat instead of real solutions.
Fentanyl as “weapon of mass destruction”
He just signed an executive order slapping a “weapon of mass destruction” label on illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals, which lets him drag the Pentagon and intel community even deeper into what should be treated first as a public‑health disaster, not a forever war. The order explicitly frames fentanyl as a national‑security threat on par with chemical warfare and gives the military and spy agencies broader authority to support “counter‑WMD” style operations against traffickers, on top of DOJ and DHS tools he already had.
This comes after he already branded cartels “terrorist organizations” and greenlit U.S. strikes on “narco‑terrorist” boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing alleged smugglers and calling them “unlawful combatants” to justify treating them like battlefield targets. Legal and drug‑policy experts are pretty blunt: militarizing this harder—airstrikes on suspect boats, WMD framing, terrorism labels—is great optics for him but isn’t going to do much to stop a cheap, hyper‑potent powder that can be made in a dozen places and shipped in tiny quantities through normal trade and mail.
Why experts say it won’t fix overdoses
People who actually study fentanyl point out that overdose deaths are being driven by a poisoned, unstable street supply and lack of treatment and harm reduction, not some single cartel convoy you can bomb into oblivion. They’re warning that pushing this into WMD and counterterrorism lanes mainly diverts attention and resources away from things like medication‑assisted treatment, safe‑supply strategies, and overdose prevention programs that actually cut deaths.
On top of that, turning fentanyl into a “WMD” story just gives him more excuse to treat Latin America like a military playground—he’s already talking about more operations aimed at Venezuela, Colombia, and even “inside Mexico,” while offering nothing serious on regulating U.S. prescribing, tackling poverty, or funding addiction care at scale. So he gets the macho speeches—“no bomb does what this is doing,” “they’re trying to drug out our nation”—and regular people still watch friends and family die because the street supply is toxic and the safety net is trash.
Susie Wiles and the Jan. 6 clemency fight
Inside the building, even his top political hand Susie Wiles is trying—softly—to pump the brakes, and he’s just plowing right through her. She’s warned him not to spray blanket clemency on the worst January 6 defendants—the ones who beat cops and led the violence—because it looks like pure impunity for his own shock troops and freaks out suburban and business‑class voters he actually needs. He’s already handed out high‑profile pardons to some of the rioters and keeps flirting in public with the idea that the “patriots” deserve “full pardons,” which makes her job of pretending there are lines he won’t cross basically impossible.
Same story on tariffs: Wiles and a big chunk of his economic team begged him to pause or scale back his big new tariff announcement last spring because there was “huge disagreement” internally and CEOs were melting down over what it would do to prices and markets. She literally told him to wait for the full policy package and not just blurt out headline numbers, but he went ahead anyway, then even she admitted later that the fallout—market hits, recession talk, business panic—was “more painful than I expected.”
A president who ignores his own “grown‑ups”
The through‑line here is simple: even his so‑called guardrails aren’t actually controlling anything; they’re just there to mop up after the fact. Wiles is getting calls from panicked executives and quietly telling reporters she tried to stop the worst ideas—mass Jan. 6 clemency, tariff spasms, deportation screwups—while Trump keeps chasing the most dramatic, punitive move in every lane because it plays best with his people.
So you end up with this combo: fentanyl treated like sarin gas, boats getting bombed, cartels rebranded as terrorists, markets rattled by tariffs he was warned about, and a president still flirting with rewarding the very people who tried to keep him in power by force —over the objections of the one person in his inner circle who actually thinks about political consequences.
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Future of Noem
Kristi Noem is politically damaged, not dead. She’s badly dinged, boxed in, and probably done as a MAGA “next big thing,” but not fully out of the game yet.
Where she stands right now
Kristi Noem is still sitting in Trump’s Cabinet as Homeland Security Secretary, running point on his mass‑deportation and border agenda and keeping herself visible with speeches, summits, and Hill hearings. But inside Trump world, people are already gaming out possible replacements, because there’s frustration over her management of DHS, budget chaos, FEMA and disaster money drama, and ugly turf fights with border czar Tom Homan and the Corey Lewandowski circus she let grow inside the department.
The dog‑killing baggage
Nationally she’s never really recovered from the “I shot my dog and bragged about it” book fiasco; big polls showed about two‑thirds of Americans disapproved, and even a lot of Republicans thought it was gross, which basically nuked her as serious VP material. In South Dakota and nationally, that story turned her from “tough ranch girl” to “psycho dog shooter” in a lot of people’s minds, and it still hangs over every conversation about her future, including 2028 chatter.
MAGA future vs. 2028 dreams
On the plus side for her, Trump did rescue her from post‑dog‑scandal limbo by handing her a marquee Cabinet job, and she’s still listed in the pack of potential 2028 Republicans because she’s a loyalist sitting on a big, high‑profile portfolio. On the minus side, that same DHS job is exactly where things go sideways in every Trump administration—think Kirstjen Nielsen—and people are openly saying her political future is “uncertain” and tied to whether this deportation machine blows up on her watch.
The “is she done” verdict
Right now the buzz in DC is that she’s “likely” to leave DHS in the not‑too‑distant future, with names like Glenn Youngkin and Jason Chaffetz already getting floated as possible replacements, which is never a good sign for your clout. That doesn’t mean her career is over, but it does mean she’s shifted from “rising MAGA star, maybe VP” to “damaged Cabinet secretary who might bail early and try to rehab herself for 2028” territory—alive on paper, but way off the A‑list.
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Pulitzer Board—Discovery….let’s see the record Trump
This isn’t some random “let’s see Trump’s charts” case; it’s his own defamation stunt boomeranging back on him, and there’s a real shot a judge forces at least some level of disclosure or a showdown over it.
What the lawsuit is actually about
A while back, Trump sued the Pulitzer Prize Board and a bunch of its members over the 2018 Pulitzers given to the New York Times and Washington Post for their Russia reporting, claiming their statement defending those prizes was defamatory and hurt his reputation. That case is crawling forward in Florida state court, and it’s past the early “can this even exist” stage—the appeals court let it proceed, the Florida Supreme Court refused to bail him out, and the trial judge has been treating it like a normal civil case since he’s the one who chose to file it.
Now the Pulitzer side has hit him with discovery: they served formal document requests demanding his tax returns going back to 2015, plus records about his “medical and/or psychological health,” including physicals, psych evals, and prescription meds from 2015 to now, arguing that if he’s claiming reputational and emotional harm, his finances and health are fair game. In plain English: he opened the door by suing them, so they’re trying to rummage through the closet he most wants to keep shut.
Will we actually see his medical records?
Right now, he’s been given roughly 30 days from December 11 to respond to those requests, which means his lawyers either have to: turn things over, fight in court to narrow or block them, or quietly try to settle and make this all go away. Under Florida civil rules, discovery can be very broad—anything “reasonably calculated” to lead to admissible evidence—but it’s still limited by privilege and privacy, so his team will absolutely argue this is a fishing expedition and push for protective orders or redactions.
So “will it happen” breaks down like this:
• A judge forcing him to produce something privately to the other side is very plausible, because that’s how civil discovery usually works when you’re the one who sued.
• The odds that the public gets to see full, unredacted medical files are lower, because even if production is ordered, it would likely be under seal or protective order unless the judge decides some specific piece is relevant enough to show up in open court filings or at trial.
Why they want the health info
The Pulitzer lawyers are basically trying to test and undercut his damages story: if he’s claiming their statement wrecked his reputation and caused personal harm, they want to know what his baseline health, mental status, and stressors looked like before and after. They can also argue that his own public bragging about acing cognitive tests and being in “perfect health” makes his mental and physical condition a live issue, especially given years of questions about his age, stamina, and truthfulness around those Walter Reed visits.
If this ends up in front of a jury, they’d love to be able to say: look, you’re hearing about his supposed “reputational harm,” but here’s what his actual life, health, and finances looked like—was this really caused by a Pulitzer statement or by his own behavior and existing problems? That’s why the ask is so broad: taxes, assets, liabilities, medical and psych records, meds—the whole picture of how he’s really doing, not the TV version he sells.
How this could play out for him
Politically, this is exactly the nightmare he keeps creating for himself: he sues to “own the libs,” the case survives, and suddenly he’s staring at the choice between coughing up the secrets he’s guarded for years or backing down from the big macho lawsuit. If he produces records and anything looks bad—cognitive issues, heavy meds, undisclosed conditions—it feeds the narrative that he’s not the ironman he pretends to be; if he stonewalls or drops the suit, it looks like he blinked to protect his own vulnerabilities.
There’s a very real legal mechanism on the table to pry into his medical history because he dragged the Pulitzer board to court, and unless a judge sharply narrows or kills those requests, he’s going to have to choose between transparency, a bruising privilege fight, or quietly trying to slink out of the case.
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Military Re-structure…
What Hegseth is trying to do
Hegseth has the Pentagon drawing up a huge shake‑up that would cut the number of unified combatant commands from 11 down to 8 and slash four‑star billets so fewer top generals and admirals report directly to him. Under the draft, Central Command, European Command, and Africa Command would be shoved under a new “U.S. International Command,” and Northern Command and Southern Command would be merged into a new “U.S. Americas Command,” while Indo‑Pacom, SOCOM, Cybercom, Spacecom, STRATCOM, and TRANSCOM stay as‑is.
He’s already ordered big structural changes in the Army—merging major commands, cutting headquarters billets, divesting some armor and aviation units—and has been firing or forcing out senior officers, telling the rest to “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like Trump’s line. The sales pitch is “leaner, more lethal, less bureaucracy”; the reality is he’s consolidating power at the top and reshaping the force to match Trump’s politics and his own TV‑warrior fantasies.
Why he says he’s doing it
Publicly, the justification is:
• cut “bloated headquarters” and free money for warfighters
• simplify chains of command
• focus more on China and “homeland defense” and less on sprawling regional staffs, especially in Europe and the Middle East.
Conservative think‑tank types have been pushing versions of this for years—fewer geographic empires, more global, China‑centric structure—and Hegseth is grabbing that language to cloak a purge of brass he sees as “woke” or insufficiently loyal. He’s also under fire for those lethal anti‑drug‑boat strikes in the Caribbean, including a follow‑up strike on survivors that’s under congressional investigation, so flexing with a giant “reform” push conveniently shifts the storyline.
How it could do real damage
Done carefully, some command consolidation might be fine; done Hegseth‑style, it’s risky as hell:
• Alliances and forward presence: Folding EUCOM and AFRICOM into a generic “International Command” and shrinking the European footprint sends a big “you’re downgraded” signal to NATO and African partners right when Russia and China are probing everywhere. Lawmakers are already moving to force the Pentagon to spell out costs and alliance damage and to delay funding for any big changes for at least 60 days.
• Strategy and readiness: Ripping up long‑standing command lines while you’re running wars, striking “narco‑terrorist” boats, and playing chicken with China is how you end up with confused authorities and slow decision‑making in a real crisis. You can’t just mash three huge theaters into “International Command” and pretend the politics, intel, and day‑to‑day realities of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are one neat package.
• Internal morale and professionalism: He’s already purged or sidelined dozens of senior people, brought back old‑school “psyops” branding, and is leaning into culture‑war rhetoric that Black vets and others say is making the military feel less safe and less professional. Slashing four‑star jobs primarily to get rid of voices he doesn’t like turns this into a loyalty test, not a serious force‑design exercise.
Bottom line: there is a legitimate debate to be had about trimming HQ fat and updating the command plan, but what Hegseth is pushing looks a lot more like a political power grab and ideological purge than a careful modernization—and if he forces it through at speed, it risks screwing up alliances, crisis response, and morale right when the world is already on fire.
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Jobs Report
The new numbers basically say the job market is cooling off, not collapsing: hiring slowed way down, unemployment ticked up again, and revisions show the summer/fall were weaker than advertised.
Headline numbers
• Employers added 64,000 jobs in November, a small gain but better than the roughly 40–45k economists were expecting.
• The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the highest in about four years and up from 4.4% in September, with roughly 700,000 more people unemployed than a year ago.
October was ugly in the background the economy actually lost around 105,000 jobs that month, mainly because the federal government shed about 150–160k jobs as buyouts and resignations from Trump’s downsizing push finally hit the payrolls.
Where the jobs are (and aren’t)
Health care did the heavy lifting, adding roughly 45–46k jobs in November—more than 70% of the total gain—with social assistance up around 18k and construction up about 28k, especially in nonresidential and data‑center type projects.
Transportation and warehousing slipped, with about 18k jobs lost, and earlier months showed manufacturing and mining continuing to shed jobs, in part thanks to higher input costs from Trump’s tariffs.
Private‑sector indicators line up with the slowdown story: ADP’s report showed the private sector lost about 32,000 jobs in November, with small businesses getting hit hardest.
Bigger picture
Compared with the post‑pandemic boom, this is a clear downshift: job openings are drifting lower, hiring is modest, and layoffs are still relatively low but creeping up as firms sit on their hands instead of expanding.
The Fed has already cut rates three meetings in a row, and this report reinforces the narrative that the labor market is weakening under Trump’s tariff chaos and spending cuts but isn’t in free‑fall yet—more “slow leak” than sudden crash.
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Brown Shooter Still at Large…but let’s Podcast Kash
The Kash–Katie–girlfriend circus
Katie Miller – Stephen Miller’s wife – dropped a teaser for her podcast featuring FBI Director Kash Patel and his much-younger country-singer girlfriend Alexis Wilkins, and it’s pure cringe: they’re giggling about when he’s going to propose, long‑distance logistics, and conspiracy nuts calling her “Mossad” instead of anything remotely related to his job. The whole thing is framed like a lifestyle puff piece — “Where’s her ring?” “How do you make it work?” — and is clearly aimed at rehabilitating their image after stories about Kash using FBI jets and SWAT protection as a personal dating service.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum: Patel has already been under fire for repeatedly taking government aircraft to see her, assigning an FBI SWAT team to act as her security and even sending those agents to chauffeur her drunk friend, which is why this cutesy interview landed like a middle finger to everyone who expects the FBI director to act like an adult. Even some MAGA media have turned on him over the “girlfriend protection detail” and the perception that he’s more interested in clout and romance content than running a serious federal law‑enforcement agency.
Brown shooter still at large
All of this is blowing up precisely because of the timing: Katie pushed the teaser out while the FBI and local cops are still hunting the Brown University shooter who killed two students and wounded several others in a campus classroom. The manhunt has dragged on for days, they’ve already wrongfully detained and released one “person of interest,” and right now they’ve got grainy surveillance, a reward, and a campus community still rattled and on edge.
So the director of the FBI is out here laughing on video about his love life while parents are watching their kids shelter in place at an Ivy League school and wondering why the shooter is still walking around. People online — including plenty who aren’t liberals — are furious because it looks like he cares more about clout and vibes than catching the guy who just turned a classroom into a war zone, and it feeds the bigger story that this whole crew treats serious jobs like a reality show set.
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This is day 330 of the hostage situation….lol. Hang in there guys.
Speak Truth! Keep speaking TRUTH!
Don’t Give up the Ship!
Go Cause Good Trouble, with Your Elbows Up!
These are facts that I researched and verified – AI helped put together some sentence structure, but the words and tone are mine. These are my views based upon facts, research and thoughtful consideration using logic. I own the copyright to any images used. I’m comfortable to stand alone to uphold truth. Feel free to check me, but do not attack me. I am only causing good trouble.