Deep Dive
Leaks Signal Complete Breakdown in the Trump West Wing
The Trump administration, which had remarkably few leaks in its first year under chief of staff Susie Wiles, has now become a gusher of chaos. Joanna Coles and Hugh Hewitt open the podcast noting that while Caroline Leavitt gets her hair done, Trump is in the Oval Office shouting, swearing, and raging powerlessly over a war he started against Iran. The leaks reveal Trump screaming that Iranians are "effing scumbags" and "effing lunatics" and that the only option is to bomb them harder and harder. This isn't strategic thinking — it's a portrait of a king completely unraveling. Hewitt connects this to Michael Wolff's reporting that Lindsey Graham was slavish to Trump in public but a prolific source to journalists in private. The hunt for leakers has become so intense that the administration is now demanding staff hand over their phones. Yet the latest leaks don't benefit Trump at all, suggesting either he's leaking about himself as he's done historically, or his phone habits — calling people at 2 and 3 a.m. to dictate policy — are spreading his fury beyond the West Wing to journalists waiting to report it.
The Disappeared: Four Gold Star Families Erased from the Record
The most devastating leak concerns four U.S. soldiers removed from the Pentagon's official casualty list. Private Isabella Gonzalez, 19, from Texas; Sergeant Angel Rampersad from Queens; Lieutenant Tyler Feehan from Hawaii; and Sergeant Michael Swinton were killed in recent weeks — three by missile strike in Jordan, one disposing of a drone in Iraq. Yet the Pentagon wiped them from its casualty database, claiming the U.S. was not technically at war with Iran because a ceasefire was in place when Trump wrote to Congress. Coles and Hewitt emphasize the grotesque logic: these soldiers would not have died without Trump's bombing campaign, yet their families are now being told they aren't Gold Star parents. The Pentagon's reasoning is nonsensical, designed purely for optics — the presentation of 14 deaths looks better than 18. But as Hewitt notes, this messaging disaster will likely backfire worse than just keeping the names public. What's particularly alarming is that the Iranian military has clearly not been degraded; it killed four Americans across two countries. Trump's rage in the Oval Office is partly because his bombing campaign hasn't intimidated Iran into capitulation. Instead of acknowledging miscalculation, the White House is trying to erase the evidence of American sacrifice.
Laura Loomer's Damascene Conversion on Ukraine Shifts MAGA Calculus
In a stunning reversal, Laura Loomer — a MAGA loyalist who spent years pushing conspiracy theories that Ukraine should surrender to Russia and that Zelensky was stealing American aid — has just returned from Kyiv with a documentary announcing her full-throated support for Ukrainian victory. She sat down with Volodymyr Zelensky, experienced an air raid firsthand, and came back evangelizing for the Ukrainian cause. The significance is enormous because MAGA has been obsessed with Ukraine surrender for five years, hurling conspiracy theories about Christian persecution in Ukraine while claiming Putin defends Christians. Loomer's reversal is already influencing others in the MAGA space — a MAGA-friendly comedian named Temple also flipped to supporting Ukraine this week. Coles notes that Zelensky is coming to Washington next week for Lindsey Graham's funeral and will meet with Trump, and The Daily Beast's Alison Quinn has documented how Ukrainians are actually degrading the Russian economy through drone strikes on weapons production and supply chains. Putin, Coles suggests, is now worried about being overthrown and living in a bunker. The momentum question matters because MAGA doesn't like losing, and if Putin appears to be losing, Trump's base could shift. What's particularly important is that senators like John Ossoff have confronted Pete Hegseth about refusing to learn Ukraine's drone technology — technology that could prevent the exact casualties Trump's administration is now trying to erase from the Pentagon records.
Mitch McConnell's 40-Day Vanishing Act Threatens Congressional Function
For 40 days, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been absent from public view with zero video proof of his condition, fueling Laura Loomer's claim that he's in a vegetative state. When pressed, Scott Jennings said McConnell is doing rehab and following doctor's orders, but notably avoided confirming he's had any phone contact. CNN later distanced itself from Jennings's account, calling it merely his personal recollection rather than verified fact. Meanwhile, McConnell's chief of staff Terry Carmack — paid $226,000 annually — was spotted in Senate corridors this week but offered no comment when peppered with questions. Coles and Hewitt stress that this matters beyond tabloid gossip: McConnell is critical to passing must-pass bills like the farm bill, which funds agricultural subsidies that allow Americans to eat, and defense spending. If his vote doesn't exist and he can't speak, the Republicans lack the votes for these essentials. A government shutdown becomes possible. Meanwhile, the Senate is about to take a six-week summer break. The optics are damning — politicians award themselves unlimited time off without transparency while having world-class health care paid by taxpayers. Coles notes that Tom Kean, a New Jersey congressman, disappeared for months, missed 146 votes, but was active enough to do stock trading. The principle extends from McConnell to every elected official hoarding power and privacy while Americans foot the bill.
Darlene Graham's Pro-Choice Donations Explode Her Senate Bid Before It Starts
Two weeks after her brother Lindsey Graham's death, two weeks after being sworn in as South Carolina's interim senator, and just days after being revealed by The Daily Beast's Swamp newsletter to have donated to pro-choice Republicans, Darlene Graham is now the frontrunner in an unexpectedly crowded primary. The Swamp newsletter discovered her donations to State Senator Healy, a Republican who filibustered South Carolina's draconian abortion ban, using even an alternate spelling of her name (Darlene vs. Darlene) to obscure her trail. Lindsey Graham was virulently anti-abortion, proposing abortion bans nearly every year from 2013 onward — purely performative, since none would pass the Democratic Senate. His sister, it turns out, has been quietly funding the opposite position. Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor famous for his Appalachian Trail disappearance and his affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi, has already thrown his hat in the ring. South Carolina's runoff rules mean if no candidate exceeds 50% in the primary, a second round occurs two weeks later, potentially dragging the race into August. This is messy for Republicans, especially in what should be a safe red state. Darlene is sitting as interim senator until January, able to vote while the race plays out. Her pro-choice record suggests she may be far more moderate than her brother, but she hid it from public view — a vulnerability opponents will hammer.
The Tate Brothers and Trump's Epstein Vulnerability
Andrew and Tristan Tate, infamous misogynistic influencers, were arrested in Miami on charges including rape, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse imagery. The charges originate in the UK, and both face extradition. But the Trump vulnerability is immediate: the Tates have repeatedly claimed close ties to the Trump family, including to Barron Trump, and Andrew Tate texted associates this year saying he'd received word from Trump's team that he'd be freed and needs to meet Trump in Miami. A leaked text confirmed his expectations of intervention. Democratic congresswoman Yasmeen Ansari has written to the House Oversight Committee demanding that Barron Trump be questioned about his relationship with the Tates. JD Vance follows the Tates on social media, and Don Jr. appeared on a livestream with Andrew Tate. While Democrats currently lack subpoena power in the House, they're expected to flip control at the midterms — at which point they can compel Barron to testify. This is particularly sensitive because Barron has been protective-ly kept out of public life by Melania, who won't even attend tonight's White House Correspondents Dinner. The Tates were originally arrested in Romania on sex trafficking and underage pornography charges before miraculously getting out; both are American-British nationals. The White House has now said it won't stand in the way of extradition, attempting to wash its hands of them. But the Epstein parallel is clear: Trump's proximity to toxic people, especially those involved in sexual exploitation, is a narrative Democrats will weaponize.
Dick Costello Predicts AI Will End Thinking for Masses
In an extended conversation with former Twitter CEO Dick Costello, Joanna Coles explores the death of meaningful discourse online and the coming cognitive catastrophe of mass AI adoption. Costello begins by noting that social media has fractured — Facebook feels dead, Snapchat has declined, and Twitter is now flooded with bots and AI slop, the very opposite of what Elon Musk promised to fix. The real threat, Costello argues, isn't bots themselves but the end of human cognition. Research shows that people who use AI for even ten minutes stop trying to solve problems; they simply ask for answers. Humans have evolved to offload cognitive tasks to survive — we don't think about berry gathering while running from predators. But AI that says "I'll do the thinking for you" triggers the same reflex at scale. In universities, when a professor asks a struggling student how they'd approach a problem, they learn through struggle and failure. When that same student asks Claude to build a binary tree algorithm, they get the answer instantly and stop trying. Costello predicts this cognitive offloading will get "a thousand times worse" as AI improves. The serendipity of learning — the mistakes, the surprises, the tangential insights — vanishes. He's already seeing the effects: AI slop now floods Spotify, Amazon Books, and LinkedIn; millions of AI-generated songs and books make finding anything of value nearly impossible. The homogenizing effect of AI — trained on internet averages, always defaulting to the median response — means all content becomes the same. When everyone can be an artist or musician or author via AI, nothing is interesting because nothing is unique.
The AI Industry's Profitability Crisis and Commodity Race
Costello lays out a near-term reckoning for AI giants. Chinese AI models, via distillation (essentially asking Anthropic's API millions of questions and copying the answers), are catching up fast. In one to three years, all open-source models will be commoditized and equivalent in quality. When a Chinese model costs $0.02 per 10 million tokens versus Anthropic or OpenAI's $10 for the same, enterprises will default to cheap. Anthropic, OpenAI, Grok, and Google have spent billions on compute and data centers in the U.S. but won't be able to justify those costs if pricing collapses to commodity levels. This forces a reckoning: either these companies pivot to new business models — workflow automation, consulting, government contracts — or the U.S. government stakes them to maintain American models for national security, arguing that Chinese models pose hacking risks to the Defense Department. Costello notes that Anthropic currently looks best-positioned because of its smart business approach and strong team, but he emphasizes the lead keeps shifting. A year ago, OpenAI looked invincible; now Grok's coding model is exceptional. The point isn't which company wins but that the underlying economics are unsustainable. He closes by noting that the internet itself may be dying because people no longer search — they just ask AI platforms directly, threatening the data aggregators that feed AI models. Companies like Micro One are emerging to manually interview PhD candidates and create new information rather than relying on scraped web content. The AI boom, in other words, is eating itself.
The White House Correspondents Dinner and the Press Under Siege
Coles and Hewitt circle back to tonight's White House Correspondents Dinner, a much smaller event than last year because of security concerns. Hewitt attended last year's dinner and ended up stationed next door to an armed man who breached hotel security and got within 20 feet of the ballroom where 2500 people were gathered. No one was searched. This year it's been shrunk to 700 people, and while Melania Trump won't attend, The Daily Beast will have reporter Farrah Thomson there — reporting, not clapping or cheering or seeking selfies with Trump. Hewitt is explicit that Trump has been attacking the First Amendment and journalism, demanding action against New York Times journalists who revealed the insecurity of his Qatar-sourced plane (the "Grift Force One"). Trump served subpoenas on these journalists trying to force them to reveal sources, but a judge shut it down and the DOJ voluntarily withdrew the subpoenas. The irony is devastating: by trying to prosecute the journalists, Trump admits the story was true. If the story were false, there'd be no basis for going after sources. Hewitt plans to attend to report on the event as a journalist should, not as a celebrity spectator. The dinner, historically meant to celebrate the First Amendment, will happen tonight under an administration openly hostile to press freedom. The disappearance of four soldiers from the Pentagon records, the rage-posting president, the vanishing Senate leader, and the prosecution of journalists — it all threads together as a portrait of a government in freefall and a media operating under siege.