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‘Font of Misinformation’: Reporter Explains ‘Major Discrepancies’ in Texas Police Account of Uvalde Shooting

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MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday examined the “major discrepancies” in the police account of the roughly one hour that a teenage gunman spent at the Texas elementary school where he killed at least 19 children and two teachers.

The Texas Department of Public Safety defended the response by Uvalde police, but “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist said the changing narrative of what happened and how officers reacted was jaw-dropping, and he asked NBC News correspondent Ken Dilanian to explain what was so troubling about the law enforcement account.

“It’s really astonishing,” Dilanian said. “Let’s remember, the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is conducting the briefings, they did not respond to this incident. Their whole job here was to investigate and find out what happened and tell the public. They’ve really been a font of misinformation, including from the head of the agency, who sat next to the governor of the state and told the world in a very confident voice that there was a school resource officer who encountered the subject as he came into the school. Then yesterday, we learned that that person didn’t exist. There was no such school resource officer.”

“Then we learn other, new information, that the shooter actually exited his grandmother’s truck, which he crashed outside the school, then fired shots at onlookers across the street, and then essentially was lingering outside the school for 12 minutes, firing shots, before he entered through an unlocked door, also new information, unimpeded, unobstructed, nobody confronted him,” Dilanian continued. “Then we learned in this new — and, again, all this information is coming from the same agency that has provided misinformation. We should take it all with a grain of salt. But according to the latest account, some local police officers, Uvalde police officers, immediately rushed in, which is what the doctrine of mass shooting says they should do. They were met with a hail of gunfire from the 18-year-old with an assault rifle, AR-15, a weapon of war. They were armed, presumably, with handguns. A couple were shot and wounded, the police are saying.”

READ MORE: CNN reporter refuses to accept Texas official’s claims about Uvalde shooting: ‘Why don’t you clear all of this up now?’

“Victor Escalon said they made entry, didn’t make entry, retreated,” Dilanian added. “Bottom line, they were out-gunned, treated, then we have this mystery. We have this decision by the police to wait 60 minutes for a Border Patrol tactical team. There’s a lot we don’t know and don’t understand about that, so we should be a little careful. There were police inside the school, we were told, evacuating children, in other parts of the school. But the account is, somehow, the gunman had barricaded himself. They use the word ‘barricade.’ It was two adjoining classrooms.”

“Now we’re learning … that dead children were found in four separate classrooms,” he said. “That’s a thing we don’t understand but, as you know, the doctrine for police response to mass shootings really changed after Columbine. The rule now is go in with whatever force you can. This is a policy from the Texas Police Chief Association, a manual says the first two to four officers should form a team and immediately enter the building. That’s what they did initially. Then, for whatever reason, they didn’t follow up with that. They waited for essentially federal agents, a group of Border Patrol and other police who formed a team, a stack as they put it, went in with a ballistic shield in front, took fire from the shooter — incredible act of bravery — and killed the shooter. There were local police officers involved in that, we’re told. These videos we’re seeing and the accounts of parents screaming for the police to go in while they were standing outside, that has to be explained. There is just no good explanation for why they waited 60 minutes when the doctrine calls for them to go in immediately.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

 

 

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‘Crazy’: RFK Jr. Is a Top Global Public Health ‘Expert’ Claims Miller, Sparking Mockery

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17 hours ago

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August 29, 2025

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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an environmental lawyer, former leader of a children’s anti-vaccine organization, and a promoter of conspiracy theories — is being praised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as a “foremost” global health expert and a “crown jewel” of the Trump administration.

Kennedy has no medical degree or formal training, nor does he hold any degrees in public health.

Secretary Kennedy’s challenges this week include his attempt to fire the newly confirmed Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and announcing that most Americans will not be eligible to receive COVID vaccines without a doctor’s prescription and at least one underlying health condition. (Future CDC advisory panel regulations may alter that landscape.)

Kennedy was assailed by medical experts this week when he declared that, while walking through an airport, he could see the “mitochondrial” illness and inflammation of children, which he claimed he could detect “from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection.”

READ MORE: ‘Glass Jaws’: Democrats Cast Ernst Exit as Harbinger of Weakening GOP

Miller, who also holds no medical degree, told reporters on Friday (video below) that “the CDC’s credibility was shattered during the COVID era.”

“CDC used to be, of course, seen widely around the world as a premier health agency, and much of the world discovered in the last few years, that CDC was actually staffed by a lot of very partisan, and very political bureaucrats who weren’t at all concerned about public health and weren’t actually very knowledgeable about public health,” he baselessly alleged.

“And we are working hard, and more importantly, Secretary Kennedy — one of the world’s foremost voices, advocates, and experts on public health — is working hard to restore the credibility and the integrity of CDC as a scientific organization committed to the scientific method, and getting to the root causes of the public health epidemic in this country,” Miller continued.

READ MORE: Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Asked if there are any concerns about Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, and despite the resignations this week of top CDC scientists in response to the President’s firing of the CDC Director, Miller declared, “Secretary Kennedy has been a crown jewel of this administration who’s working tirelessly to improve public health for all Americans.”

Critics blasted Miller.

“Calling RFK Jr. ‘one of the world’s foremost experts on public health’ with a straight face is crazy,” wrote The Lincoln Project.

“I’m a an MD, PhD, physician toxicologist and drug developer. This is the biggest pile of horse-s– I have seen in months of horses–,” declared Peter H Proctor MD, PhD.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

 

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‘Glass Jaws’: Democrats Cast Ernst Exit as Harbinger of Weakening GOP

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19 hours ago

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August 29, 2025

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U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), once seen as a possible Republican Secretary of Defense, or vice-presidential or presidential candidate in a more traditionally conservative environment, is expected to announce that she will not seek re-election next year. The news has sent shockwaves through the political system, with some Democrats — especially her challengers — rejoicing, and some critics and political operatives suggesting the move shows the GOP brand is weakening, especially given the number of other prominent Republicans who have already announced their retirement.

“Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has told confidantes she plans to reveal next week that she won’t seek reelection in 2026, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News,” the media outlet’s Jennifer Jacobs first reported. “Ernst’s announcement is scheduled for Thursday, the sources said. Ernst, 55, has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015.”

Some on the left already saw a weakening Republican brand, and now see Senator Ernst’s exit as further evidence of that volatility.

Ernst joins a slew of prominent Republican Senators bowing out of their re-election races, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who just won re-election in November, is mounting a run for governor.

READ MORE: Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Former Biden White House official Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, remarked, “GOP senators are cratering in their support. Glass jaws all the way down.”

Author and political commentator Sophia A. Nelson, a Republican turned independent, on Friday predicted embattled U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine will be the next to announce their retirements.

“Democrats need to get it together,” Nelson added. “They have a real shot at the US Senate and retaking it in 2026. As well as the House of Representatives.”

In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek note, podcaster Chuck Todd responded to the news, writing: “On Earth 2, where the establishment of the GOP in 2016 successfully stopped Trump’s hostile takeover of the party, Ernst is either serving as VP, on a GOP ticket in 2020 or 2024 or had run for top spot herself.”

Back in May, Ernst was highly criticized for remarks she made at a town hall, telling voters (video below) upset over President Donald Trump’s trillion-dollar gutting of Medicaid and Medicare, “Well, we are all going to die.”

Some pointed to that gaffe as the impetus for her expected retirement.

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

Responding to the news of Ernst’s exit, journalist Aaron Rupar snarked, “You’re saying that telling your constituents they don’t need healthcare because they’re gonna die anyway isn’t winning politics?”

Iowa Democratic state Senator Zach Wahls, who is running for Ernst’s seat, responded to the news: “Joni Ernst saw the writing on the wall. Iowans are fed up with rising costs and unchecked corruption. And next year, we’re going to flip this seat.”

Newsweek on Wednesday reported that Ernst was narrowly trailing Wahls in an in internal Wahls campaign poll, and only narrowly beating other opponents.

Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, also running for Ernst’s seat, weighed in, commenting, “Whether it’s Joni Ernst or someone else, they’ll have to answer for supporting cutting Iowans’ healthcare in favor of a tax break for billionaires. When I’m in the Senate, I’ll never forget about Iowa.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News, in its coverage of Ernst’s retirement, pointed to reasons for Democratic optimism.

“One thing the national GOP cannot afford to ignore: Recent generic congressional ballots are giving a consistent edge to Democrats. A CNBC poll showed a 5-point lead for Democrats in August that had only widened since spring, something CNN pollster Harry Enten called a ‘big uh-oh’ for Republicans. In the last three elections with a new president — 2022, 2018 and 2010 — the party out of power gained enough seats in the midterms to control the House.”

The news outlet also reported that “outside of his GOP base, Trump’s legislative agenda is proving widely unpopular on his key issues: tariffs, inflation, the economy and deportation.”

See the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Act of Revenge’: Trump Axes Kamala Harris’s Secret Service Protection

 

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Johnson Pins Gun Violence on ‘Mental Health’ After Trump Slashes $1B in School Counseling

Published

22 hours ago

on

August 29, 2025

By

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is criticizing prominent voices on the left who denounced Republicans for urging prayer but taking no action on gun violence in the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic school mass shooting that left two young children dead and 17 wounded.

The Louisiana lawmaker pinned the blame for gun violence on “mental health” and “the human heart,” while insisting that guns are not the problem.

The House has voted to cut mental health services, including Medicaid, which is the largest payer of behavioral health services. Additionally, President Donald Trump has slashed $1 billion in school mental health programs that Congress approved in response to the 2022 Uvalde, Texas mass school shooting.

READ MORE: ‘Act of Revenge’: Trump Axes Kamala Harris’s Secret Service Protection

“It’s incredible to me that Jen Psaki and Gavin Newsom and others would attack religion, diminish the faith of millions of Americans at a time of such great tragedy,” Speaker Johnson alleged (video below). “There are a lot of commonsense solutions, things that can be done to protect children at schools and in churches that do not involve taking away the constitutional rights of law-abiding American citizens.”

Wednesday morning, Psaki, the former White House press secretary turned MSNBC anchor, lamented, “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers [do] not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Speaker Johnson continued, insisting that now is not the time to “politicize these issues.”

“And at the end of the day,” he continued, “the problem is not guns, okay, Jen Psaki? The problem is the human heart. It’s mental health.”

READ MORE: ‘Brutal’: Trump Approval Tanks as Support Plummets Across Key Issues, Poll Shows

In late April, the Trump Department of Education announced that it would stop funding “roughly $1 billion in grants that were meant to boost the ranks and training of mental health professionals who work in schools, saying the grant awards made under the Biden administration now conflict with Trump administration priorities,” Education Week reported. “The funds were authorized by Congress in the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed after 19 students and two teachers lost their lives in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

The Trump Education Department alleged the $1 billion in funds might “undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help.”

Critics blasted Johnson’s remarks.

“The GOP refuses to expand Medicaid for psychiatric care, cuts funding for ‘mental health,’ LGBTQ+ hotlines, denies the value of community services, yet feigns interest in ‘underlying causes’ of gun violence,” charged award-winning TV writer and playwright Hal Corley.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Hard Questions’: VP Echoes False Claim About Antidepressants and Mass Shootings

 

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