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THE BIG PICTURE
A president who can't end the war he started is melting down in public, and even his own team is saying so. The institutions supposed to check him — the Pentagon's numbers, the press corps' access, his own party's opposition — are all bending instead of holding. Meanwhile the people meant to stop him are either broke or busy laughing with his enforcer. Happy Monday.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS
1. Trump's Iran war is breaking him — and his aides are saying so out loud
The president who started a war he can't end spent Sunday posting 43 times in six hours on Truth Social — AI slop, "Trump 2028" fantasies, and a doctored image of CNN's Kaitlan Collins transposed onto the body of a transgender influencer — while his own aides described him to the New York Times as more "erratic" than usual, struggling to find a "face-saving" exit from the Iran conflict as prices rise and public opposition grows.
The White House Correspondents' Dinner speech he delivered Friday — widely panned, including by his own former communications director, who said on CNN that "he bombed" — apparently required 43 posts and a golf round to process. This is what a cornered man looks like when the corner is a war he started.
2. The Pentagon quietly updated its Iran war death toll while everyone was at brunch
The Pentagon has rolled out a new trick to obscure the full human cost of Trump’s war.
The Defense Department updated its casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 newly wounded service members and introducing a fresh accounting category for personnel killed and wounded "starting July 7" — a bureaucratic move that conveniently separates the new phase of the war from the old one.
The official toll for Operation Epic Fury now stands at 14 killed and more than 400 wounded; the total across all categories eclipses 600. Common Dreams puts the Iranian civilian toll at over 3,500 killed and 26,500 wounded, with fresh water infrastructure destroyed.
3. The DNC is $2 million in debt and its chairman is unraveling
DNC Chair Ken Martin is privately asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterms, according to the New York Times, as the committee sits on $2 million in debt.
Trump's super PAC has $400 million.
The RNC had $109 million on hand in March — a 7-to-1 cash advantage.
Two dozen current and former Democratic officials described Martin as isolated and scrambling. The party that needs to win in November to stop a second term's worth of damage is going into the stretch run broke, leaderless, and begging for extensions — while a conservative super PAC is separately sounding the alarm that 1 in 5 reliable GOP voters in swing states is considering staying home or flipping. The Democrats don't need luck. They need a functioning party.
4. Mamdani tells Netanyahu he's not welcome — Netanyahu responds by proving the point
MYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani said last week that if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to New York for the UN General Assembly in September, he should be arrested on the International Criminal Court's war crimes warrant — and that while the city lacks the legal authority to execute it, he was calling on the federal government to act.
Netanyahu's response was to accuse Mamdani of “fomenting hate.”
Quite rich coming from a genocidal maniac.
If you missed Mamdani’s powerful video, it’s worth a watch.
Netanyahu says he plans to show up in NYC anyway. Mamdani is the first sitting American mayor to publicly call for the arrest of a foreign head of state on war crimes charges, but expect more to follow. Netanyahu just made sure everyone knows it.
5. Kristen Welker laughed it up with Stephen Miller — and the internet noticed
NBC's Kristen Welker is catching heat after a clip went viral showing her laughing and chatting with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller at the rescheduled White House Correspondents' Dinner on Friday. Viewers were not charmed.
"Yucking it up with the guy that would happily revoke your citizenship is crazy," one person wrote online.
This is the same Welker whose interview with Trump ended with him ripping off his mic and storming off after she pushed back on his lies about California's primary being "rigged."
So she'll go toe-to-toe with him on air — then laugh it up with his enforcer at dinner.
Some defended her as just doing access journalism. Others said she's "one of them." The footage doesn't settle the debate, but it's not a great look for a press corps already struggling to convince anyone it's not captured.
Was Kristin Welker doing her job as a journalist, or showing us she's "one of them"?
KEPT OUT OF YOUR FEED
What the algorithm buried:
The Pentagon quietly erased the names of four soldiers killed in Trump's Iran war — then put them back under a new category called "Overseas Operations."
Here's the Democrat who might actually flip Lindsey Graham's Senate seat — and she's a pediatrician, not a politician
Troy Jackson won the Democratic nomination in Maine after Graham Platner dropped out of critical senate race
‘The real welfare queen': Bernie Sanders accuses Walmart of stiffing its workers
How AI wealth could be distributed to all Americans
A Republican senator says someone told her that McConnell is "clear-minded" and "just needs to get stronger" — which tells us almost nothing about why the 84-year-old has vanished from public view
Before his death, Lindsey Graham said he doesn't trust Trump's Iran negotiators — and someone got it on camera
Here's why even Trump's own former aide called his White House Correspondents' speech "the most offensive thing" — and it's not what you think
Trump is celebrating a highway named after him — there's just one problem
Katy Perry is deeply appalled the White House used her song to celebrate bombing Iran
The FBI just used an AI-generated Stan Lee voice to hype up Kash Patel, and it's exactly as embarrassing as it sounds
NOTICE POLLING
Last week, we asked Do you think Jon Ossoff should run for president in 2028?
87% OF YOU SAID YES:
“Articulate, informed, states facts not misinformation like the current administration, would be a fresh voice and offer a fresh perspective for the Democratic Party!”
- vjmininni
“No — I think we need him right where he's at.”
-callajr.jc
“He should definitely run for president in 2028. I expect that there will be a lot of Democrats in the race, as well as a a number of Democratic Socialists. Altogether, there will a big field of left-leaning candidates who will vie for the job, and Ossoff will be one of the top contenders. I look forward to seeing the GOP candidate being eviscerated in a debate by someone like him!”
- cdmalin
“Yes and No- It would be great to find the best person to run for president. That rarely happens. What is most important is to have the person with the best chance at winning run. We need to rid ourselves from this orange scourge and build upon that.”
- a15anaya
“Yes, he should run, if he wants to. Let the people who vote decide who they want to run in the general election. That is the democratic process. We aren't supposed to crown someone the winner before the race even starts, and I want the media to stop endorsing people. THEY, more than anyone else interfere in our elections. People should pay more attention to their candidates, do their own research and go to the candidate's websites to get their information. Be responsible, people.”
- twoasps
That’s all for today — we will see you tomorrow!
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