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‘Feels Like’: Fox Host Spins Conspiracy Theory of Government Network ‘Trying to Stop Trump’

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Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo is spinning a baseless conspiracy theory, saying that to her, “it just feels like” there is a network attached to U.S. government law enforcement agencies, along with the media, “trying to stop” Donald Trump, before she asked a sitting U.S. Senator to “stop the free press.”

Bartiromo in her Wednesday interview with U.S. Senator Rand Paul went as far as to suggest top tech firms including Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, had intentionally censored a photo of Donald Trump taken just after the assassination attempt earlier this month. Her remarks led the Kentucky Republican lawmaker to explain the First Amendment to the veteran journalist after she asked that Congress “do something” to prevent tech platforms from censoring certain posts or information.

“It just feels like there is a network in place in all these corners, whether it be government, FBI, Secret Service or media, that is trying to stop Trump,” declared Bartiromo, a staunch supporter of the ex-president.

Bartiromo, who has been called a “conspiracy theorist,” was named in Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox Corp. A Washington Post 2020 profile noted she had employed “the parlance of election conspiracy theorists,” and noted that Bartiromo “was one of the few to offer her solid approval of Trump’s disastrous August 2017 news conference in which he insisted there were ‘some very fine people on both sides’ of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.”

READ MORE: ‘Love, Support, Golf Memberships’: Eric Trump Outraged Over Cousin’s Kamala Harris Endorsement

“I mean,” Baritromo continued Tuesday, “look at, look at what Trump said about Meta and Google and, you know, go try to Google ‘Trump assassination attempt.’ President Trump said that Meta and Google are censoring information about the assassination attempt on his life, saying that they made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about the heinous act. Google responded to the allegations and claimed that its auto complete search tool was not showing results for the Trump assassination attempt.”

“It says there was no manual action taken and that its systems have protections against auto complete predictions associated with political violence. It also says that its chatbot Gemini refusing to answer questions about the assassination attempt because of a previous policy which restricted questions on election related issues.”

Bartiromo then sounded stunned that Google could deem the attempted assassination of an ex-president running for re-election, speaking to supporters at a campaign rally, “election-related.”

“Are you serious?” she asked. “This is election related? Now, an assassination attempt on a former president is election-related? Meanwhile, Meta says it’s working to update its AI assistant after it was telling users that the assassination attempt was fictional. Facebook also says that it was an error to censor the iconic photo of Trump pumping his fist in the air after getting shot. We have that photo. There it is. Why were they censoring this photo? Senator?”

Senator Paul responded, declaring, “well, well, all I can say is, thank God for Elon Musk, who exposed how terribly biased these people were. And by taking over Twitter. Twitter now is an objective platform where you can post things now.”

Last year The Atlantic declared Twitter “is now a right-wing social network,” while Foreign Policy warned, “Elon Musk’s Twitter Is Becoming a Sewer of Disinformation.”

READ MORE: What Project 2025 Shutting Down ‘Policy’ Operations Actually Means: Expert

As the interview continued, Bartiromo appeared increasingly agitated.

“You’re an elected official. Can’t you stop the so-called free press from censoring information and do something to ensure that these companies are in fact, you know, living up to the letter of free press?”

“The First Amendment’s very clear,” Senator Paul replied, “that Congress, government shall make no law restricting freedom of press or freedom of speech. It doesn’t say that private entities, so for example, The New York Times doesn’t have to print my op-eds. Neither does The Washington Post. In fact, they really don’t ever print my opinion. And they have a right to, it’s a privately-owned newspaper. It’s the same way with social media.”

“But you can leave, and you can force them to expand their horizons if they you vote with your dollars and go somewhere else. And so this is the way the marketplace works. But if we set up a government entity to say to Google and to Facebook, ‘you have to publish this,’ my fear is that people who will populate that government entity making these speech decisions will be people who end up being people who don’t like my opinion either. I don’t want the government involved or any kind of committee involved from government with choosing and enforcing free speech, because I think they’ll just enforce it another rule on speech that I’m not particularly in favor of,” Paul explained.

“OK, well,” Bartiromo asked, “what about taking away their freedom of liability, for anything? What about that? Is there nothing you can do as an elected official to try to make sure these companies are reporting truth?”

“If you let people sue Facebook because someone said they don’t like someone else on their Facebook post, it’s going to destroy the internet. So liability protection is important for the internet to work. Look, I don’t like their left-wing politics and I oppose them, I speak out, I boycott these people, and I’ll do it to my last breath. But I don’t want the government involved with breaking up big tech. If you break up our big tech, guess who takes over” China’s big tech. So I’m not for breaking up American big tech.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Flails as Fox News Forces Him to Defend Picking Vance: ‘He’s Not Against Anything’

 

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CRIME

Anti-Black Hate Crimes Per Capita Highest in Pacific Northwest Than Rest of U.S.

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June 16, 2026

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seattle black lives matter garden

All three states considered to be the Pacific Northwest of the United States are ranked in the top 10 when it comes to anti-Black hate crimes.

The new study produced by the Mendoza Law Firm, which specializes in immigration, ranked all 50 states based on the average number of anti-Black hate crimes per 100,000 members of the Black population. While Vermont ranked No. 1 in the study with 240.6 crimes per 100,000 people, there are only 7,316 Black residents of the state.

Of the Pacific Northwest states, Oregon ranked the highest—No. 2 overall—with 121 crimes per 100,000 people. Idaho ranked No. 4 with 91 crimes per 100,000 people, and Washington state ranked No. 9 with 44.4 crimes. However, Washington had the highest Black population out of the top 10 states with 311,435 residents. Oregon has the second-highest of the top 10 with 82,453 residents.

READ MORE: DeSantis Using Same White Nationalist Rhetoric as El Paso Mass Shooter Who Slaughtered 23 in Anti-Hispanic Hate Crime

Conversely, many southern states ranked at the bottom. Mississippi has the lowest number of anti-Black hate crimes with just 0.9 crimes per 100,000 people, followed by Arkansas and Florida with 1.6, and Georgia and Louisiana with 1.7. Though these southern states have much larger Black populations—for example, of the bottom five, all but Arkansas have well over 1 million Black residents with Georgia and Florida both having over 3 million—the number of hate crimes in those states is also lower than both Washington and Oregon.

The study looked at FBI anti-Black hate crime statistics between 2021 and 2025. The number of hate crimes over these five years was then averaged and compared versus the average Black population between 2020 and 2024.

While things may look bleak for the Pacific Northwest, it’s worth noting that in Washington, the number of hate crimes has steadily dropped over the past five years. Washington had 185 crimes in 2021, which dropped to 107 crimes in 2025. Oregon and Idaho’s numbers stayed relatively steady, however; Oregon had between 94 and 105 crimes during that five-year span. Idaho had a low of 7 crimes in 2021, but that jumped up to between 13 and 18 for the following four years.

Washington state is in the process of starting a hate crime hotline. The service will fully launch at the start of 2027, however, the pilot program launched in July 2025 will continue until the end of this year, according to Cleveland Jewish News. The hotline is designed to provide support to victims rather than receive incident reports. It’s under the purview of the state’s Attorney General’s Office, which does not have the authority to investigate crimes. However, it can provide victims assistance in reporting hate crimes to police. Police are also compelled to provide victims the hotline’s number and website for support.

Image by Seattle Department of Transportation via Flickr.

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Activist Minister Slams Regal Movie Theaters for Running War ‘Propaganda’ Before Films

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2 hours ago

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June 16, 2026

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The Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie, an activist minister with the United Church of Christ, has called on the Regal Entertainment chain of movie theaters to stop running a Department of Defense promotional video before films.

In an open letter posted to social media, Currie says that when he went to see the latest Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day at a Portland, Oregon theater, he was “forced to watch an advertisement touting the leadership of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the so-called Department of War.”

“It was like we were at a movie theater in Russia or North Korea. Democracies do not do this. The audience loudly booed,” Currie wrote.

READ MORE: Trump Promotes Chilling Iran War Op-Ed Warning of What Could Be Coming Next

“We routinely see videos at Regal promoting careers in the military. This was not that,” he continued. “This was an advertisement promoting the political views of Donald Trump. It was not promoting our military. It was not promoting America’s greatest strength: our diversity. This was a MAGA campaign commercial highlighting a fake cabinet agency, the Department of War, which is actually called the Defense Department, and the MAGA America First platform.”

The video run before the film was likely this video first released to YouTube on Saturday. The video description calls it the first advertisement by the DoD since it was re-christened the Department of War. The clip touts President Donald Trump’s “Peace Through Strength” slogan. It features footage of soldiers intercut with images of Trump while audio of a speech by the president plays in the background.

The video was also shown during Sunday evening’s Freedom 250 UFC Fight at the White House.

“Regal’s decision to show this video can only be construed as an endorsement of Donald Trump, his failed war in Iran, and the white Christian nationalism advocated by Secretary Hegseth,” Currie wrote. “Again, I must demand that Regal stop showing this video immediately. Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Currie has been an outspoken progressive activist for years. In 2019, he even received death threats for his work, according to the Oregonian. Florida dentist Richard Glenn Kantwill told Currie, as well as other public figures, he would torture and kill him. Kantwill also called Currie an “immoral degenerate” and a fraud.

In 2025, Kantwill was sentenced to two years in prison for making the threats after pleading guilty in court.

Image by Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel via the U.S. Army.

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‘I Feel So Bad for Him’: George Conway Trolls Trump Amid White House Attack

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19 hours ago

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June 15, 2026

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Longtime Never-Trump critic turned Democratic congressional candidate George Conway is mocking President Donald Trump in a campaign video and a social media post while the White House targets him in a highly critical attack.

“Hi, Donald, it’s me, George Conway,” Conway, a conservative attorney, says in his video. “I cost you 88 f —— million dollars, and I’ve only just gotten started.”

“I know you like putting your name on everything from your plane to the Kennedy Center,” he continues. “But the only thing your name is gonna be left on when I’m done with you is the orange jumpsuit you’re going to have to wear in prison.”

“And you see that building back there?” he says over an image of Congress. “That’s where we’re gonna hold your third and final impeachment trial. The one that’s gonna put you away for good. And I’m gonna enjoy every minute of that.”

“We’ve got a lot of serious problems in this country, including, and especially, the price of gas — which is hitting $6 a gallon in some places, and that’s all because of you, Donald Trump. We can’t fix those problems until we impeach you and convict you. And that’s why I’m running for Congress.”

In a statement to Fox News, the White House blasted Conway.

“Lightweight George Conway is a stupid person’s idea of a smart person,” a spokesperson said. “His severe and debilitating disease known as Trump Derangement syndrome has melted his brain and made him crazy in the head.”

Conway is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project and was considered for a post as Trump’s Solicitor General at the start of his first administration. Conway withdrew his name from consideration.

On social media, Conway further mocked President Trump.

“Here’s our TV ad that poor wittle Donnie (@realDonaldTrump) didn’t wike and had to compwain to Fox ‘News’ about,” Conway wrote. “Sad! I feel so bad for him.”

Conway is running for a reliably blue seat in Manhattan.

“Conway, who previously lived in Bethesda, Md., before launching his congressional campaign, faces an uphill battle in the race for the heavily Democratic seat vacated by longtime Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who is retiring,” Fox News reported.

Earlier this year, Conway warned, “The way things are going in America, it should be clear we don’t have much time.”

“We certainly don’t have three years,” he said in February. “We need to help ourselves by pushing for impeachment and removal as hard as we can and carrying it out as soon as humanly possible.”

 

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