Monday, August 12, 2024

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1/ Trump’s presidential campaign was hacked. The scope of the information obtained is unclear. On July 22, Politico started receiving emails from an anonymous sender, who called himself Robert and used an AOL email account, offering internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official, including a copy of the 271-page vetting document related to JD Vance. Two people familiar with the document confirmed it was authentic. The campaign blamed “foreign sources hostile to the United States,” citing last week’s Microsoft report that Iranian hackers “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign.” Microsoft, however, didn’t publicly identify the campaign or confirm whether it believed the hack had been successful. Separately, reports emerged last month that the U.S. intelligence community had obtained evidence suggesting Iran was planning to assassinate Trump in retaliation for his decision to order the airstrike that killed Iranian military officer Qassem Soleimani in 2020. There’s no indication that Thomas Matthew Crooks was connected to the plot. (Politico / Washington Post / Axios / CNN / Associated Press / NPR / NBC News / Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg / CNBC)

2/ U.S. intelligence warned that it’s increasingly likely that Iran will attack Israel this week in response to the Israeli airstrikes in Beirut, which killed Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, and Tehran, which killed a senior Hamas leader. The Pentagon ordered additional missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the region, as well as more land-based missile-defense units and another fighter squadron, to join a carrier strike group and other warships to the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The U.S. said the deployment was to “deter aggression” by Iran and Hezbollah. (Axios / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal)

3/ JD Vance defended his past comments that women without children are “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable,” dismissed his prior comments that people with children should get extra votes as just a “thought experiment,” claimed “our country has become anti-family,” and suggested mass deportation plans that “start with one million” people. Vance also claimed that Trump – despite WTF Just Happened Today? for more news and headlines, brought to you by Matt Kiser. The WTFJHT Podcast is narrated and produced by Joe Amditis.