Trump on Venezuela:

They had a tremendous earthquake. A lot of people were killed.

We have a lot of people there helping.

Venezuela has been fantastic. We have a great relationship.

Trump:

I cannot tell a lie.

Trump:

When you see a young man or woman walking around without legs...

NEW: OpenAI is releasing its new GPT-5.6 family — Sol, Terra, and Luna — to about 20 trusted partners first, after the Trump administration requested a pre-release review for cybersecurity risks.

CEO Sam Altman told staff the government will approve access "customer by customer," calling it the fastest path to broader release in the coming weeks.

He said the arrangement "is not our preferred long-term model."

The move follows export controls on Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models and stems from a June 2 executive order letting AI developers grant pre-release government access.

BIG: Burkina Faso severed diplomatic relations with France effective today, accusing Paris of "neocolonial ambitions" and supporting "subversive networks and terrorists" in the Sahel.

The official communiqué says the conditions for mutual respect and non-interference "are no longer met."

Burkina Faso expelled French troops (2023), kicked out diplomats (2024), and quit the Francophonie (2025).

The Pentagon confirms that six Marine Corps F-35B jets have been delivered without radars, due to delays in the new AN/APG-85 system, which won't begin production until April 2028.

F-35 Joint Program Office head Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello acknowledged the radarless jets cannot be considered fully mission capable.

SOURCE: TWZ

Tucker Carlson:

Who's getting paid to be anti-Israel?

I've been very critical of Israel. I've never taken a dollar from anybody.

I've never, and I would never, take money to give an opinion.

Tucker Carlson:

I actually really like Qatar a lot, and I think the people who run it are amazing, but I've never taken any money from Qatar, and I never would.

Tucker Carlson:

"Let's prolong the war on behalf of the Netanyahu regime" position does seem to be funded by somebody, because that's not an organic position in the United States.

Türkiye is dispatching two A400M aircraft carrying around 60 personnel — including AFAD rescue experts, military Humanitarian Aid Brigade members, Red Crescent staff, medics, and search dogs — to Venezuela after a devastating magnitude 7.5 earthquake.

Tucker Carlson:

There was no American intelligence saying Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear weapon.

That came from Israel, and they lied—and they lied to Trump.

I told him that before this started because it was obvious.

So why would the United States ever rely on Israeli intelligence again if they just lied us into a war that got a bunch of Americans killed and raised gas prices?

Tucker Carlson:

I'm under no illusions about my power.

I don't seem to have any power to change any event, unfortunately.

I argued with Trump for ten years against doing this. He took other counsel. That shows you how much power I have—zero.

So I was not able to prevent this.

And I don't think I had any role in ending it.

Bessent:

We had to go in Iran because they were two weeks away if they wanted from a nuclear weapon.

Bessent:

I went to the meeting with Mayor Mamdani and President Trump looked at him... and said, 'You're the leader of the Democratic party.'

So Donald Trump predicted what's going on back in December.

Tucker Carlson:

It was a year ago that the president and Mark Levin were at some event, and Levin basically puts him in a headlock.

Donald Trump is much larger—a big man. Levin is a dwarfish man. So he kind of leans up and pulls him down like that.

And the president—well, first of all, he's the president. Okay? Second, he's famously not the guy you put in a headlock. He's just not into it.

And Levin does that. The message, of course, is, "You're my boy. I control you," right?

I was disgusted by it.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson:

There's just little mini Mamdanis popping up all around the country running for Congress...

I started saying this many months ago and they were like, 'No, that's not [happening].' Well, you just saw it.

Andy Burnham is expected to become Labour leader on Friday, 17 July, and prime minister on Monday, 20 July, the day after the World Cup final.

Source: The Times

Ret. U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

I would rate the Turkish military as certainly among the top five in the world. And remember that it's a mistake to look exclusively at technology and firepower.

You have to look at the human material. The Turk is a very tough soldier. You talk about the Koreans, whether North or South—the Korean is a very tough soldier. You start stacking these different peoples up next to each other and look back at their history over hundreds of years.

You're dealing with different kinds of people, and some make excellent soldiers. Not everybody does. That's one of the reasons many people like me were happy to see the draft go away, because you were bringing in too many people who were never going to be good soldiers anyway.

It was better to have people who wanted to be soldiers. And the Turks have a song they sing at every funeral for a Turkish soldier: "Every Turk is a soldier."

Ret. U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor on Türkiye:

The two powers that are going to emerge from this war and will dominate the Middle East for decades to come, maybe longer. One is Iran. There's no question about that. And the other is Türkiye.

I tried to tell them on more than one occasion, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Your existential threat is not Iran... You've got a real problem further north and to the east, and that's called the Turks.

This is a resolutely martial people. People of great courage who are innately inclined to fight. These are natural soldiers. You do not want to go war with Turks.

In Iran, you're dealing with someone who is rational... They will coexist with you. You can talk to them and do business. But if you provoke the Turks, it's a fight to the finish.

If you don't think they're ready to go, you're making a very, very serious mistake.

Who dominated the Arabian Peninsula, who dominated the Levant, who dominated all the way to Egypt and into North Africa for centuries? We know who.

Senior Iranian official Mohsen Rezaee:

We want to maintain the security of the Strait of Hormuz.

We want to protect the environment of the Strait of Hormuz.

We must establish an insurance mechanism so that incidents occur—ships that encounter problems are covered to reduce their risk.

And when we provide all of this, these costs cannot come out of the pockets of the Iranian people.

These costs must be collected from those who are transporting oil through this strait.

Source: NewsNation

Russian Hardliners Demand Putin Escalate War After Ukraine Strikes Moscow

Following deep Ukrainian drone strikes, Russian nationalist voices are demanding extreme retaliatory measures, including tactical nuclear weapons.

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