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Global IT outage: Airline passengers facing ‘nine-hour waits’ and ‘lost baggage’ a day after CrowdStrike issue

Disruption caused by the global IT outage has continued this weekend as airline passengers reported long delays and lost baggage, while pharmacies tried to deal with a backlog in medicine deliveries.

The outage spread globally on Friday morning after an update from global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many Microsoft Windows PCs offline with a “blue screen of death” appearing on screens.

The company’s founder confirmed it was caused by a bug in the update and not a cyber attack, as some had feared.

Experts have warned it could take weeks for systems to fully recover and problems at airports were being reported on Saturday.

Andrew Evans, from Taunton in Somerset, said he had been waiting more than nine hours in Palma de Mallorca airport and claimed there had been little communication from airline operator TUI.

His flight, bound for Exeter, was due to take off at 2.05am local time (1.05am UK time) but passengers had still not boarded at around 10.30am local time on Saturday morning.

“Our holiday has absolutely fallen apart at the end – it feels like we are abandoned,” Mr Evans said.

“We went to the carousel but there was nothing there. We still haven’t got our luggage.”

Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Portugal reported arriving at the holiday destination to find that no checked-in baggage had been loaded on to the plane.

On Friday, some 167 flights scheduled to depart from UK airports were cancelled, while 171 flights due to land in the UK were axed.

TUI said its IT systems “remained unstable” and apologised to passengers, adding: “We understand how disappointing this would have been and recognise that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their departure.”

The Port of Dover said early on Saturday that it was dealing with “hundreds of displaced” airport passengers and urged customers to ensure they had a booking before arrival.

It is understood that the port was not a victim of the global IT outage.

Doug Bannister, head of the Port of Dover, said: “We operate a turn-up-and-go system here. However, we do insist you have a book on busy days, even if people are doing this on the drive down.

“The greater visibility we have the better.

“But we are here to service people who want to travel. So I would say to displaced airport passengers ‘come on down. We have the capacity’.”

The National Lottery app and website were down on Saturday – although it was unclear if this was connected to the global IT outage.

The travel delays come as thousands of families start to embark on summer holidays amid the end of the academic year for many schools.

Meanwhile, there was also significant disruption to pharmacy services on Saturday.

Nick Kaye, chair of the National Pharmacy Association, said: “Systems are by and large back online and medicine deliveries have resumed in many community pharmacies today after the global IT outage.

“However, yesterday’s outage will have caused backlogs and we expect services to continue to be disrupted this weekend as pharmacies recover.

“We urge people to be patient when visiting their local pharmacy and some may be still prioritising those patients with emergency prescriptions from their GP surgery.”

Indie rock group Bombay Bicycle Club announced the rescheduled date of a music festival performance they missed due to the global IT outage.

The British group were due to play Poolbar Festival in the Austrian town of Feldkirch on Friday but missed it due to cancelled flight.

The show is now going to take place on Sunday, the band said.

This post appeared first on sky.com

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Iran ‘one to two weeks away’ from weapons-grade nuclear material as US continues sanctions relief

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Friday that Iran could produce fissile nuclear material in ‘one or two weeks’ as the State Department renews a sanctions waiver for Iraq to buy Iranian energy.

Critics were quick to blame the Biden administration for enabling Iran to pursue nuclear weapons by allowing the rogue nation to sell its oil. Biden reversed many of former President Trump’s tough sanctions against Tehran.

‘What’s breathtaking is the complete lack of self-awareness that it was his own maximum deference policy that brought us to this moment, and worse, that his solution is to double down on the failed appeasement strategy,’ Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and former Trump administration NSC official, told Fox News Digital.

‘Rather than snapping back the U.N. sanctions and testing maximum pressure, the administration just extended a sanctions waiver and is conducting indirect negotiations via Oman,’ Goldberg lamented. 

Blinken spoke this week at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, addressing Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon and admitting that ‘instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, (Iran) is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that.’ 

Blinken blamed the collapse of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal – for Iran’s accelerated development. He stressed that the U.S. has not seen any evidence to suggest Iran already has a nuclear weapon, Barrons reported. 

Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri claimed that his country remained committed to the JCPOA, insisting that ‘America has not yet been able to return’ to the deal and that Iran seeks a return to the 2015 deal.

‘We are not looking for a new agreement,’ Bagheri told CNN earlier this week. ‘Neither I nor anyone else in Iran has not talked and will not talk about a new agreement. We have an agreement (signed) in 2015.’

Iran continues to receive sanctions relief through waivers that the U.S. has issued since the Trump administration in 2018, allowing Iraq to import energy from Iran for 120 days at a stretch. The latest renewal occurred on July 11 as Iraq suffered widespread power outages due to the unbearable heat overloading power grids across the country, MEHR News Agency reported. 

‘’We have renewed this waiver for the 22nd time, and it is about the department permitting Iraq to purchase Iranian electricity while Iraq continues to develop its domestic generation capacity,’’ US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a press briefing.

‘’It is a waiver authority that allows the purchase of electricity over a certain period of time, in this case, 120 days, so it’s permission for an activity over a period of time,’’ Patel told Iraqi news outlet Rudaw. 

‘’We have, over the past decade, seen some measurable steps of Iraq weaning off Iranian electricity,’’ Patel added. ‘Currently, we anticipate that they are relying on Iran for about 25% of their electricity. A number of years ago, that number was 40%.’

Blinken reiterated this point, saying that Iraq has doubled its domestic output, but many American politicians remain concerned that Iran benefits from these waivers and have used the funds to help continue developing their nuclear weapons program. 

The Biden administration insists that the funds remain out of reach for the Iranian government, instead funneling through third-party ‘restricted accounts’ that can only purchase food, medicine, medical devices, agricultural product and other non-sanctionable transactions.

Critics, however, argue that it displaces funding requirements for Iran and frees up the country’s spending so that money it would have otherwise put towards those purchase now goes toward funding its proxy groups and developing nuclear weapons. 

‘Let’s be honest with the American people and understand that Hamas knows, and Iran knows they’re moving money around as we speak, because they know $6 billion is going to be released. That’s the reality,’ Nikki Haley said last year when news broke that the State Department had agreed to release funds in exchange for U.S. prisoners in September. 

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies with a focus on Iranian security and political issues, told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration has remained on ‘auto-pilot’ and pursued ‘short-sighted’ policies when it comes to Iran, at their own peril. 

‘With stories about Iran-backed plots to kill the former president and reports of weaponization related work in Tehran, the last thing Washington should be green-lighting is yet another waiver extension that permits the Islamic Republic to free up revenues to continue to underwrite more global terror and domestic nuclear expansion,’ Taleblu said. ‘It’s one thing to see the need to help wean Baghdad off of Tehran and Iranian electricity and energy, but it’s another to continue to use this as a crutch for a better policy towards both Iraq and Iran.’ 

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Kamala Harris reassures Democratic Party donors that there’s nothing to worry about

Vice President Kamala Harris held a brief conference with the Democratic Party’s top donors yesterday in a show of support for her running mate.

Harris spoke with approximately 300 major Democratic Party donors on Friday, telling them there was nothing to worry about within President Biden’s campaign, despite the media kerfuffle.

‘I will start by sharing something with all of you, something I believe in my heart of hearts. It is something I feel strongly you should all hear and should take with you when you leave, and tell your friends too,’ Harris told the donors, according to multiple reports. ‘We are going to win this election. We are going to win.’

‘We know which candidate in this election puts the American people first: our President, Joe Biden,’ Harris said in support of her running mate.

Harris spoke to donors via video for approximately five minutes, championing the Biden administration and sharply criticizing former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric at the Republican National Convention.

‘Let me be clear: Trump’s convention this week was one big attempt to distract people,’ Harris reportedly told donors. ‘He wants to distract attention away from his record and his Project 2025 plan. Can you believe they put it in writing? It is further empirical evidence that the stakes of this election couldn’t be higher.’

The call was intended to quell fears among party donors that backlash against Biden from within his party could prove disastrous for his campaign.

However, Harris did not take questions from the donors following her short address, causing some to wonder what the point of the communication was.

Additionally, the call came on the same day that nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers voiced preference for Biden to drop out of the race.

Biden has been consistent and clear that he intends to stay in the race and run against Trump in November as the Democratic Party nominee.

While critics of the administration within the Democratic Party have treated Biden’s re-election bid as a decision yet to be made, the White House has been consistent and firm in its statements that he is indeed running.

‘The president’s in this race,’ Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told the hosts of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ on Friday morning. ‘You’ve heard him say that time and time again.’

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DNC committee moving forward with plans for virtual roll call vote in early August

The Democratic National Convention is set to follow through on plans for an early roll call nominating President Biden as their presidential candidate next month.

DNC Rules Committee members voted Friday for a virtual roll call on August 7 to certify Biden’s victory, despite widespread upset over what many call visible mental decline.

The nearly 200 committee members will meet again on or before July 26 to formally adopt the virtual roll call format. The vote itself is expected to serve as a mere rubber stamp for the Biden campaign.

President Biden is planning campaign events weeks in advance, preparing to hit the ground running after his current illness with a high-profile fundraiser.

The Biden-Harris ticket is holding a fundraising event on July 29th in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, that will feature special guests — talk show legend David Letterman and Hawaiia Gov. Josh Green.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will be in attendance.

Green, who has been governor of Hawaii since 2022, is a personal friend of the Bidens. The governor is among the administration’s closest political allies.

Axios reported that Biden has started laying out his travel plans as he recovers from COVID-19 at his Delaware beach house in Rehoboth. He has resisted calls from his party to step down, with his communications team holding a remote press conference on Saturday to push the argument for a second Biden term.

The calls for Biden to step down has drawn over 30 sitting Democrat congressmembers: Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on Friday urged Biden to ‘end his campaign,’ arguing that ‘our full attention must return to these important issues.’

One senior Democrat official told Axios that the entire issue feels ‘stuck’ at the moment, adding that it’s ‘not to say it’s going to stay stuck.’

Senior officials are pushing Biden to make a final decision over the weekend and have continued arguing with Biden advisers as to why bowing out would best serve the party.

‘It’s a fairly universal sentiment internally that we have reached the end of the road,’ one Biden aide admitted, noting that some key hold-outs will keep fighting to keep Biden in the race.

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Democrats plot coup to ‘save democracy,’ but what happens if they fail?

The Democrats seeking to remove President Joe Biden from the 2024 White House race promise that this is not a coup attempt by elites to thwart the will of their party’s primary voters, but boy, it sure looks like one.

It would be one thing if Democratic leadership en masse decided that Biden was no longer fit to serve, and with a single voice, called upon him to step down. But that is not what is happening here. The truth is, they are just worried he is going to lose the election to Donald Trump.

To avoid the metaphorical label ‘coup,’ there would have to be near unanimity and a clear and obvious emergency. This looks more like a factional battle for power. And that sounds like a coup.

Biden has a right to be furious at his old boss, Barack Obama, and the sly, Machiavellian former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as they stab him in the back with the help of Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney, and seemingly every major liberal news outlet.

The president rightly insists that he has racked up 18 million votes and won every primary. Even though the people have spoken with a clarion voice, the elites are trying to take him down.

Where is the lie? 

The latest maneuver, if you are keeping track, is for major donors to withhold money not just from Biden’s campaign, but from down-ballot races too, should the old man in the White House refuse to step aside.

Let’s think about what this really means: The powerful Democrats who seem to approve this move are all but admitting that left-wing billionaires can simply buy the Democratic nomination, the will of the people be damned. 

Maybe I missed the memo, but I thought the Democrats were trying to save democracy from Donald Trump. Apparently, one must destroy democracy to save it. Quite a novel concept, indeed.

But not everybody is on board, which is why, at least thus far, the coup is failing, and making the party look utterly disunified and rudderless.

On Friday, current Speaker Hakeem Jeffries threw Biden a lifeline, assuring that he supports the president. So Biden has the head of ‘The Squad,’ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and the Congressional Black Caucus. Those are powerful, coup-blocking chess pieces.

By ridin’ with Biden, these Democrats are taking the chance that he can still win. And while it may be a longshot, it is far from impossible. An overwhelming ground game in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin could still work, especially if states like Virginia turn out to be fools gold for the GOP.

It’s worth thinking about what would happen then, if a successful Biden owed his entire second term, or as much of it as he can endure, to the most far-left and radical wing of his party. It is not much of a stretch to say that one of our two major parties could wind up flat-out socialist.

The funny thing about coups is that when they fail they often leave the target more powerful than he was to begin with. Should Biden’s candidacy survive, he will be bathed in the light of defiant power.

There is less than a month to go before Democrats virtually, but permanently, are due to nominate Biden ahead of their convention. If he can hang on until then, he is in like Flynn.

It will take more than leaked conversations and a handful of moderate Democrat lawmakers calling on Biden to drop out for a new nominee to be anointed. Frankly, the insurrectionists’s quiver is running on arrows.

Democratic voters, for better or worse, have chosen Joe Biden, and this effort by top party officials and billionaire donors to replace their choice may be running out of steam.

That is good news for Biden, and Republicans hope it is good news for Donald Trump. But if this election has shown us anything, it is that surprising twists and turns are to be expected. So buckle up, this thing is far from over.

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AI accusations mar UK election as candidate forced to defend authenticity: ‘I am a real person’

A candidate for the populist Reform UK Party in Britain had to defend himself after allegations that he was not an actual person but in reality an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated candidate put up for election last month.

‘I am a real person and that is me in the photo,’ Mark Matlock confirmed to British news outlet The Independent. ‘Though I must admit I am enjoying the free publicity, and when I feel up to it, I will put out a video and prove these rumors that I’m a robot are absolute baloney.’

‘I just laughed when I saw it,’ he added. ‘I think it perked me up. I thought, ‘I need to get back out there.’ This is doing more good for me than my campaign, it’s fantastic.’

Reform exceeded expectations in the most recent general election in the United Kingdom, taking 14% of the vote, which only translated to 1% of the seats in Commons – five seats overall – due to the ‘first past the post’ system. 

The party’s success was enough to deeply impact the ruling Conservative Party’s candidates, splitting the vote in the lowest voter turnout for almost a century, resulting in a near-historic win for the rival Labour Party.

A number of people on social media raised suspicions that Reform had tried to game the system and propped up fake candidates in many constituencies, of which Matlock, who stood in London’s Brixton and Clapham Hill, became the poster boy due to his seemingly artificial appearance. 

Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that ‘the political mainstream has been looking to catch Reform out – given its shock surge in the polls – for some time’ and that AI proved a useful cudgel to do so.

‘The surprise factor of the election and the need for Reform to field as many candidates as they could, even in unwinnable seats, provided ample opportunities to do so, and some Reform candidates were indeed exposed for their unpleasant views,’ Mendoza argued.

‘The idea of AI candidates was simply an extension of that approach, although it has now been proven completely false,’ he noted, adding that more such allegations will arise in cases where an election is called on short notice, leading to ‘paper candidates’ who may never be met by their prospective constituents.

‘Of course, were such a candidate to actually win, the whole scheme would collapse, so it is difficult to see the circumstances under which any political party would actually stoop to such lows,’ Mendoza said, referring to fully AI-generated candidates. 

Users online pointed to a severe lack of online activity from many of Reform’s candidates and soon started analyzing leaflets and campaign materials they claimed showed AI-generated candidates, Scottish outlet The National reported. 

Green Party candidate Shao-Lan Yuen seized on these allegations and claimed that she hadn’t ‘seen or heard’ from Matlock, running as a rival in his constituency. She mentioned ‘suspicions’ that people said he could be AI-generated, and Independent candidate Jon Key said he saw ‘no sign’ of Matlock on election night. 

Key claimed that Matlock ‘doesn’t live in the constituency’ and that he had not heard back from an email he sent out, which he had sent to all other candidates he ran against, but Matlock claimed to have illness the night of the election. 

‘I got pneumonia three days before election night. I was exercising, taking vitamins so I could attend, but it was just not viable,’ Matlock revealed. ‘On election night, I couldn’t even stand.’

Referring to his campaign poster, Matlock explained, ‘The photo of me was taken outside the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I had the background removed and replaced with the logo, and they changed the color of my tie.’

‘The only reason that was done was because we couldn’t get a photographer at such short notice, but that is me,’ he insisted. 

Matlock told the BBC that he’s received ‘a lot of nastiness’ from people online, calling them ‘very mean’ and dismissing their ridicule as ‘unnecessary.’ The BBC also reported that its own investigation into claims of fake Reform UK candidates revealed ‘no evidence’ of any fraudulent candidates.

Reform did admit that in a last-minute rush to find candidates – due to the surprise snap election decision then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called – and were so ‘desperate’ to find candidates that they ended up recruiting some friends and family to stand for office. 

‘Basically it’s friends, relations, office workers,’ a party spokesperson told reporters. ‘One of the candidates got their partner to stand.’

The entire episode shows the growing concern over AI’s potential impact on elections as the technology continues to improve. 

A candidate in last year’s Turkish presidential election claimed that Russia released an AI-generated sex tape that was created with deepfake technology using footage ‘from an Israeli porn site,’ The Guardian reported. 

‘I do not have such an image, no such sound recording,’ Muharrem Ince said before announcing he would drop out following the ‘character assassination.’ ‘This is not my private life, it’s slander. It’s not real.’

Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts during a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing in 2023 referenced China and its alleged use of deepfake videos to spread propaganda on social media platforms.

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Trump tells Jesse Watters that he was not warned about gunman, despite reports

Fox News host Jesse Watters recently conducted a sit-down interview with former President Trump to discuss last week’s failed assassination attempt.

The interview, which will premiere on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET, featured both Trump and his vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Vance currently serves as a U.S. Senator representing Ohio.

The three men discussed the assassination attempt against the former president last week. Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump from a roof in the middle of a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding the presidential candidate on his right ear.

Trump revealed during the interview that he was not warned about Crooks by the U.S. Secret Service.

‘Mistakes were made,’ Watters told Trump. ‘They were monitoring this guy for an hour beforehand. No one told you not to take the stage?’

‘Nobody mentioned it,’ the former president replied. ‘Nobody said it was a problem.’

‘[They] could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15, 20 minutes, 5 minutes.’ Nobody said…I think that was a mistake,’ he added.

Trump later questioned how Crooks could get on the roof in the first place.

‘How did somebody get on that roof?’ Trump questioned. ‘And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw he was on that roof.’

‘When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and who’s got a gun,’…that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. And I would’ve thought someone would’ve done something about it,’ Trump said.

Trump, who appeared at the Republican National Convention with a large bandage on his ear, has reportedly recovered well from the injury. On Saturday, his former physician, Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson, released a detailed report about Trump’s health.

‘He will have further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam, as needed. He will follow up with his primary care physician, as directed by the doctors that initially evaluated him,’ he continued. ‘In summary, former President Trump is doing well, and he is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon.’

‘I am extremely thankful his life was spared. It is an absolute miracle he wasn’t killed,’ Jackson added.

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1 in 3 Democrats believe Trump faked assassination attempt. I talked to one

If some polls are to be believed, one in three Democrats think that Donald Trump faked his own assassination attempt. When I read that, I thought, could this possibly be true? But this weekend on my drive home to West Virginia from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, I got the theory first hand. And it’s a fascinating doozy.

Station Square Ristorante, just off of I-80 in Liberty, Ohio, is an absolute gem. Ottavio and Bridget Musumeci have somehow managed to create a legitimate fine-dining experience attached to the Super 8 motel. And no, I’m not kidding. In the wood-paneled bar, as I ordered oysters and antipasto for a late lunch, I met Mark, originally from northern New Jersey, which his accent revealed before he did. And Mark, well, he had some very interesting things to say.

As is my way, I turned the conversation to politics and the assassination came up.

‘That whole thing was a setup,’ Mark told me.

Before I could even respond, John, the bartender, who I would learn doesn’t like Trump or Biden, said, ‘Nah, two people are dead. No way.’ 

Mark’s response was, ‘this is Donald Trump, he’s capable of anything.’

So I dug in a bit. How did they get the kid to do it? Mark was ready with answers. They paid off the family, or maybe told him he’d get off with just a few years in jail, he suggested.

‘And the death of Corey Comperatore?’ I asked, referring to the retired fire chief who died shielding his family from the assassin’s bullets.

‘Donald Trump doesn’t care if his supporters die,’ Mark shot back, quite certain of himself.

You should know that Mark did not come off as some kind of lunatic. A bit prone to conspiracy theories maybe, but by no means crazy. So how could he believe all this with no evidence whatsoever?

He also had a good appetite, and as he wolfed down his caesar salad and veal piccante topped with mussels, he made it clear that it all came down to one simple precept: Trump is capable of anything.

I couldn’t help but think that the fact that Mark shares this kind of weird, irrational thinking with a third of his party faithful is because it is exactly what Democrats and their media allies have been feeding them. 

Why wouldn’t Mark, if he has a steady diet of liberal media, think that Trump is capable of killing innocent people? After all, they say he will deny women their rights, he won’t let black people vote, he will destroy democracy, and on and on and on. Mark is conditioned to believe that Trump is a unique evil and nothing should be put past him.

I said to Mark that if I thought one party, one side, or call it what you will, was willing to kill innocent Americans in this way, then it might be time to buy some guns. Then he said something that surprised me.

‘It’s not the other side, it’s just Trump.’

It made little sense, but in a strange way, I was glad to hear him say it. At least Mark doesn’t blame his fellow citizens who support Trump. Not yet, anyway. Mark finished and left before I did, and we had a wholesome and sincere goodbye. After the door closed, I asked to John, ‘What do you make of that?’ ‘It’s crazy,’ he shrugged.

Yes it is, but here we are. 

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Trump’s second term foreign policy likely to focus on ‘strength’ and ‘deterrence’: expert

A second Trump presidency is giving supporters hope of a continuation of his first-term policies, while critics worry that he’ll isolate the U.S. on the global stage at a delicate time for the international security landscape.

Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a former Trump administration NSC official, told Fox News Digital he sees a second Trump term as ‘going back to the basics of peace through strength [and] restoring deterrence.’ 

‘They’re prioritizing China as our top threat to national security,’ Goldberg said, referencing the campaign’s platform. ‘Investing in our military, modernizing our military, expanding the use of AI and space, to ensure that we are able to overpower the CCP and Beijing and its wider access around the world.’

Trump’s foreign policy record has remained a key point of comparison between him and his successor, President Biden, with many arguing Trump took an isolationist ‘America First’ approach that damaged relations with key allies. 

‘Isolationism is about going it alone and about viewing America’s way of engaging the world as unilateral and independent and alone, as opposed to building multilateral alliances — a sort of unilateral mindset,’ Joel Rubin, a former State Department official during the Obama administration, told Fox News Digital.

‘The U.S. can’t always act unilaterally, but that doesn’t need to be the predisposition,’ Rubin argued. ‘Trump never ignored the world, no, but what his foreign policy was focused on was America acting independently and unilaterally, and that I think is where there’s a difference. The United States is a leader, not an independent actor.’

Golberg disagreed with that assessment, arguing people often ‘mistake populist rhetoric for isolationism … or, certainly, some sort of instinct not to use force when necessary to defend the United States.’ 

‘The president was tested by Iran, and Qassem Soleimani lost his life because of it,’ Goldberg said as an example. ‘There was that moment where I think President Trump demonstrated to all the enemies of the United States that he’s not an isolationist. He’s a conservative. That’s following basic conservative principles of peace through strength, willing to show deterrence … which means you have the capability, but also the will, to use force when necessary.’

Rubin lamented that Trump’s hard-line stance on NATO ally contributions to defense spending hurt relations between the U.S. and such a vital network of allies and worried what that might mean for the alliance at a time when Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine requires unity and strength. 

‘Turning away from American alliances has put us in a hole that we’re barely coming out of now, and, thankfully, Biden restored our alliances with NATO,’ Rubin said, adding that the deal to withdraw from Afghanistan, which Trump first brokered and Biden decided to uphold, ‘really put us in a weak position.’ 

That fear remains firmly in mind for European leaders as they worry about what happens next in the event Russia succeeds in subduing and conquering Ukraine. Jens Spahn, a lawmaker of Germany’s center-right opposition party CDU, told outlet DW during the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., last week that ‘we should not make the same mistake again’ with Trump.

‘No one really had a network with his team,’ Spahn said, explaining the several meetings NATO delegations had arranged with Republicans close to Trump’s camp, DW reported.  

Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the German Green Party, meanwhile, argued that Trump’s vice resident pick of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, left little doubt that Trump would ‘deliver Ukraine to Putin’ after Vance said in 2022 that he didn’t ‘really care what happens in Ukraine one way or the other.’ 

Rubin acknowledged that Trump made some positive contributions to the global landscape, such as through the Abraham Accords, which he judged as ‘a positive contribution to the Middle East’ along with Trump’s handling of North Korea. 

‘I thought that it was very important for him to do what he did with North Korea, in terms of making the effort to engage and speak with Kim and seek progress on the nuclear program,’ Rubin said, though he noted that, ‘unfortunately, nothing really came out of it.’

‘I think the lack of a real commitment to its symptomatic program with North Korea was a loss when he had opened up something in a way that had not been done before, which I thought had a lot of promise,’ Rubin added. 

Goldberg defended several Trump-era policies as significant wins for American foreign policy, mainly touting global stability during the majority of Trump’s pre-pandemic administration. 

‘Russia was deterred from any sort of aggression in Eastern Europe — certainly not an invasion of Ukraine,’ Goldberg said. ‘Iran was running out of money, almost bankrupt. And after the killing of one of the world’s leading terrorists, Qassem Soleimani, they stopped expanding and escalating their nuclear enrichment.’

‘Israel was not facing a seven-front war, and, obviously, other actors, most importantly, China, had to think about what was next as the United States was investing more in its military, spending more on its defense industrial base, trying to finally accelerate what was needed to compete with China and potentially win a war in the future against China,’ Goldberg added. 

He acknowledged, though, that Trump faced typical growing pains for a new president when he took office and was slow to begin some of his more effective policies, such as the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Iran. 

‘I think his instincts are always to do the unexpected, to do something that hasn’t been tried before,’ Goldberg argued. ‘If everybody’s tried doing things the same way and it hasn’t achieved the right result, maybe there is a different approach. And I think we’ll see more of that in a second term.’

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Secret Service responds to report they ‘repeatedly’ denied requests to Trump security detail in the past

The U.S. Secret Service recently responded to a Washington Post report that claimed the agency’s top officials ‘repeatedly’ denied requests to former President Trump’s security detail.

The report comes exactly a week after former President Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, while speaking at a rally, prior to his 2024 presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. 

The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had been observed by attendees before the shooting began.

The Post reported that, before the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, top Secret Service officials ‘repeatedly’ denied requests for tighter security measures from Trump’s detail. An official granted the interview to the media outlet on the condition of anonymity.

According to the report, agents tasked with protecting Trump requested additional security resources in the past. These requests involved things such as magnetometers or a larger number of personnel to screen guests. Additional snipers had also reportedly been requested in the past.

Senior officials reportedly told the agents that the Secret Service lacked the resources to fulfill the requests. The Post reviewed multiple requests, but none of them pertained to the Butler rally. 

On Saturday night, the Secret Service released a statement obtained by Fox News Digital explaining that the agency ‘has a vast, dynamic, and intricate mission.’

‘Every day we work in a dynamic threat environment to ensure our protectees are safe and secure across multiple events, travel, and other challenging environments,’ the statement read. ‘We execute a comprehensive and layered strategy to balance personnel, technology, and specialized operational needs.’

The Secret Service also added that, even if a request is denied, the agency still tries to accommodate in some form to ensure the safety of whoever is being protected.

‘In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protected,’ the statement added. ‘This may include utilizing state or local partners to provide specialized functions or otherwise identifying alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.’

In an interview that will premiere on Fox News Channel on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET, Trump told host Jesse Watters that he was never warned about Crooks, despite the fact that the gunman had been noticed.

‘How did somebody get on that roof?’ Trump asked Watters. ‘And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw he was on that roof.’

‘When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and who’s got a gun,’…that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. And I would’ve thought someone would’ve done something about it,’ he added.

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