Sebastian Smith

Trump: 'looking' to ban top US media & 'treason charges' for 'fake' footage of Iran hitting US ships NYT & NY Post confirm this Iran deadly strike on US ship is real

An objectively wild career move and one I couldn’t be happier with or prouder of. The world needs more local reporters more than it needs more national ones and even if I go back to national reporting one day, I’ll be a much better reporter for this experience.

Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not. And frankly, changing course is in their own business interests since trust in legacy media has now fallen to an all time low of just 9% and are ratings disasters. The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves. It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news. When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen. Time for change!

Jaw dropping comments on the Iran war by the Trump administration’s AI czar David Sacks earlier today on the All In podcast. Warns a faction is trying to get Trump to escalate in Iran, says it could render the Gulf uninhabitable and Israeli nuclear use. Calls for a negotiated settlement. Some quotes below. Link in next post. “we should try to find the off-ramp.” “This is a good time to declare victory and get out,” “You are seeing, however, a faction of people, I'd say largely but not exclusively in the Republican Party, who want to escalate the war.” “So if the Iranians get hit, if their oil and gas infrastructure gets hit, they've already said they're going to engage in tit-for-tat retaliation against the Gulf States. And we saw there was recently, the Iranians blew up this giant oil depot in Oman.” “Furthermore, there's an even worse, I think, scenario from there, which is the region is very dependent on desalination plants. I think something like 70% of Riyadh gets their water from desalination.” “I think it's something like 100 million people on the Arabian Peninsula that get their water from desal. I mean, it's basically a desert, right? And those desal plants are soft targets.” “If you see that type of destruction continue, you could literally render the Gulf almost uninhabitable.” “If this war continues for weeks or months, then Israel could just be destroyed” “Then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon, which would truly be catastrophic.” “if escalation doesn't lead anywhere good, then you have to think about, well, how do you de-escalate? De-escalation, I think, involves reaching some sort of ceasefire agreement or some sort of negotiated settlement with Iran.”