
Joy Reid defends Iran during CNN appearance
Published: Updated:
Fired ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid mistakenly blasted the US for trying to stop Iran obtaining nuclear energy during her latest CNN appearance. Speaking on Newsnight earlier this week, Reid defended the country following the attacks on their nuclear sites by President Donald Trump over the weekend.
The left-wing commentator said: 'Why on earth is the United States bombing a country that did not attack us, what on earth are we doing there at all. 'Why is it there is this arrogance in the west and in the United States to say that we get to decide who can have nuclear energy .' Trump's bunker buster bombing campaign was actually aimed at stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons, not nuclear power.
CNN host Abby Phillip interrupted, saying: 'Joy, this is not just about nukes. It's also about Iran being a state sponsor of terrorism and chaos and violence and death around the world.' The panel then decided into chaos over her remarks, with attorney Arthur Aidala slamming her for backing Iran. He said: 'Joy the fact that you are backing a country that slaughters homosexuals, that slaughters people for their religious beliefs. It's crazy, it's nuts.'
In response, she said that LGBTQ people weren't allowed to serve in the US military under President Trump. Clearly angered, Aidala continued: 'But they can live, they can get married they can have children. We're not killing them!' U.S. stealth bombers dropped 12 deep penetrator bombs, called bunker busters, on the Fordo nuclear facility and two on the Natanz site over the weekend .
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the attack as a success, but a US intelligence report has since emerged that seems to discredit that. According to the preliminary report, it was found that Iran's nuclear program had been set back only a few months. At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, defense officials laid out details that bolstered their argument that the attack had wiped out the key sites .

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Guardian
17 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump makes case for ‘big, beautiful bill' and cranks up pressure on Republicans
Donald Trump convened congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday to make that case for passage of his marquee tax-and-spending bill, but it remains to be seen if his pep talk will resolve a developing logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate. The president's intervention comes as Senate majority leader John Thune mulls an initial vote on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' on Friday, ahead of a 4 July deadline Trump has imposed to have the legislation ready for his signature. But it is unclear if Republicans have the votes to pass it through Congress's upper chamber, and whether any changes the Senate makes will pass muster in the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority passed the bill last month by a single vote and which may have to vote again on a revised version of the bill. Trump stood before an assembly composed of police and fire officers, working parents and the mother and father of a woman he said died at the hands of an undocumented immigrant to argue that Americans like them would benefit from the bill, which includes new tax cuts and the extension of lower rates enacted during his first term, as well as an infusion of funds for immigration enforcement. 'There are hundreds of things here. It's so good,' he said. But he made no mention of his desire to sign the legislation by next Friday – the US Independence Day holiday – instead encouraging his audience to contact their lawmakers to get the bill over the finish line. 'If you can, call your senators, call your congressmen. We have to get the vote,' he said. Democrats have dubbed the bill the 'big, ugly betrayal', and railed against its potential cut to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low income and disabled people. The legislation would impose the biggest funding cut to Medicaid since it was created in 1965, and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance. It would also slash funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps Americans afford food. Republicans intend to circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by using the budget reconciliation procedure, under which they can pass legislation with just a majority vote, provided it only affects spending, revenue and the debt limit. But on Thursday, Democrats on the Senate budget committee announced that the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, had ruled that a change to taxes that states use to pay for Medicaid was not allowed under the rules of reconciliation. That could further raise the cost of the bill, which the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation recently estimated would add a massive $4.2tn to the US budget deficit over 10 years. Such a high cost may be unpalatable to rightwing lawmakers in the House who are demanding aggressive spending cuts, but the more immediate concern for the GOP lies in the Senate, where several moderate lawmakers still have not said they are a yes vote on the bill. 'I don't think anybody believes the current text is final, so I don't believe anybody would vote for it in it's current form. We [have] got a lot of things that we're working on,' Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a top target of Democrats in next year's midterm elections, told CNN on Wednesday. In an interview with the Guardian last week, Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski declined to say how she would vote on the bill, instead describing it as 'a work in progress' and arguing that the Senate should 'not necessarily tie ourselves to an arbitrary date to just get there as quickly as we can'. Democrats took credit for MacDonough's ruling on the Medicaid tax, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying the party 'successfully fought a noxious provision that would've decimated America's healthcare system and hurt millions of Americans. This win saves hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans to get healthcare, rather than funding tax cuts to billionaires.'


Daily Mail
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Fox News star Brit Hume turns on former colleague Pete Hegseth for outburst over Iran bombing intel
Brit Hume jumped to the defense of his Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin and slammed former co-worker Pete Hegseth for their clash over the Iran bombing. Hegseth clashed with much of the press in his briefing on the strikes after several outlets claimed they had only set back Iran's nuclear facilities by months rather than decimating them. However, he shared particular scorn for Fox's National Security Correspondent Griffin, saying: 'Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.' Hume, a longtime fixture at the network, defended Griffin in a week where Tucker Carlson joined the parade of former Fox News anchors giving friendly fire her way. 'I have then, have had and still have, the greatest regard for her. The attack on her was unfair,' Hume said, criticizing Hegseth. He said the attack was not deserved and Griffin's 'professionalism, knowledge and experience at the Pentagon is unmatched.' Hegseth, a former weekend host for Fox News before being tapped to run the Department of Defense for Trump, was openly hostile to the media during a Thursday morning press conference at the Pentagon. The entire briefing was seemingly held to push back on reports indicating that Operation Midnight Hammer - the name of the weekend bombing mission - was ineffective. Griffin, a veteran Pentagon reporter who's been with the channel for decades, asked Hegseth to clarify whether Iran's already enriched uranium was destroyed by the U.S. strikes. 'There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,' the Pentagon secretary responded cagily. Griffin then asked: 'That's not the question, though. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow mountain, or some of it?' 'There were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance? Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?' 'Of course, we're watching every single aspect,' Hegseth responded before bizarrely turning on his old colleague. 'But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.' The veteran Pentagon reporter immediately interjected, highlighting to Hegseth how she was the first journalist to reveal how the operation targeted the nuclear facility's ventilation shafts and more. 'I was the first to report about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night, and in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission, with great accuracy,' the Fox News correspondent retorted. 'So I take issue with that,' she added. Satellite imagery showed trucks arriving at the Fordow nuclear facility just days before the strikes, leading to questions about whether the Iranians moved their enriched uranium to another location before the U.S. bombs were dropped. 'I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be — moved or otherwise,' Hegseth later told another reporter. Multiple sources familiar with an initial battle damage assessment told CNN and the New York Times that the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities only set back the country's nuclear program by a few months. 'It is preliminary,' Hegseth said of the leaked assessment on Thursday. 'It points out it is not coordinated with the intelligence community at all, there is low confidence in this report, there are gaps.' The bigger issue, according to Hegseth, is the unpatriotic media. 'You cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and blood,' Hegseth charged the reporters in the room. 'You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.' 'Your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful, it's irresponsible.' The Pentagon secretary also invoked statements from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Both intelligence chiefs put out statements on Wednesday night stating that the damage done to Iran's nuclear sites will take 'years' to rebuild. 'CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by recent targeted strikes,' Hegseth said. It came just days after Carlson admitted he wanted her out when he worked at Fox News, referring to her as 'the deepest of the deep state.' As Trump announced a ceasefire - one Carlson reacted to by tweeting: 'Thank God' - he released an episode of his show where he continued to question his ex-employers coverage, zeroing in on Griffin, the network's Chief National Security Correspondent. 'Jennifer Griffin is, even by the standards of Pentagon employees, she's not technically an employee of the Pentagon. She's a shill, obviously, for the deepest of the deep states. But she's like a parody. She's like parody. It's like the whole thing,' Carlson said. Carlson and fellow former Fox host Clayton Morris joked about Griffin's water-carrying for the 'deep state.' 'The crazy thing is Jen Griffin is a liar, but also very liberal, true Trump hater, to the point where I complained about her and I really tried not to complain about other people at Fox when I worked there,' he said. 'She was discrediting the channel, she was such a Trump hatter, and it was emotional.' He even went to one of his superiors at the network and suggested Griffin wasn't helping. Carlson said he asked: 'She's an idiot. She doesn't tell the truth. She misleads our viewers. And she's like a screaming liberal who hates Trump, who our viewers love. So what are we getting out of this?' The response he got from the network was that 'you could not touch Jennifer Griffin.' Morris noted that Griffin has an office at the Pentagon, suggesting she may be presenting bias in her coverage based on how close to her sources she is.


BBC News
21 minutes ago
- BBC News
Migrant crackdown risks choking off critical supply of US workers
At his 1,200-person cleaning business in Maryland, chief executive Victor Moran carefully screens new recruits to make sure they are authorised to work in the US. Even so, President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigrants is starting to chip away at his workforce. About 15 people have left his company, Total Quality, since Trump won a fight to strip immigrants from Venezuela and Nicaragua from temporary protections shielding them from deportation, he says. If the White House expands its efforts, it could cost him hundreds more of his workers, who rely on similar work permits and would be difficult to replace. Similar kinds of concerns are reverberating at businesses across the US, as Trump's crackdown on immigrants appears to pick up pace, threatening to choke off a supply of workers that is increasingly critical to the US one in five workers in the US was an immigrant last year, according to census data. That marked a record high in data going back decades, up from less than 10% in 1994. Trump has said he is targeting people in the US illegally, who account for an estimated 4% of the US workforce. His pledge to conduct mass deportations was a centrepiece of his campaign and an issue on which he drew widespread support, including many Hispanic administration has resumed raids at workplaces, a tactic that had been suspended under White House efforts have been much broader in scope, taking aim at people in the US on student visas; suspending admissions of refugees; and moving to revoke temporary work permits and other protections that had been granted to immigrants by previous actions threaten disruption to millions of people, many of whom have lived and worked in the US for years. 'Stress on my mind' "We are terrified," says Justino Gomez, who is originally from El Salvador and has lived in the US for three 73-year-old is authorised to work under a programme known as TPS, which grants temporary work permits and protection from deportation, based on conditions in immigrants' home countries. His employment, first as a dishwasher and line cook in a restaurant and now as a cleaner, helped him send an adopted daughter in El Salvador to school to become a teacher. But Trump has already taken steps to end the programme for people from Haiti and Venezuela. Mr Gomez, who lives in Maryland, fears El Salvador could be next. "Every time I leave home, I have this stress on my mind," he tells the BBC, through a translator provided by his labour union, 32BJ SEIU. "Even when I go to the metro, I'm afraid that ICE will be there waiting to abduct us." Economic impact Many of Trump's actions have been subject to legal challenge, including a lawsuit over TPS brought by the even if the White House does not successfully ramp up arrests and deportations, analysts say his crackdown could weigh on the economy in the near-term, as it scares people like Mr Gomez into hiding and slows in the workforce, which has been powered by immigrants, has already flattened since January, when Trump took office. As firms have a harder time finding workers, it will limit their ability to grow, slowing the economy, warns economist Giovanni Peri of University of California, Davis. A smaller workforce could also feed inflation, by forcing firms to pay more to recruit the policies are sustained, they could have far-reaching economic consequences, Prof Peri adds. He points to the example of Japan, which has seen its economy shrink as it keeps a lid on immigration and the population ages. "The undocumented raids are a piece of a policy that really wants to transform the United States from one of the places where immigrants come, are integrated and part of the success of society to a closed country," he says. "Instead of an engine of growth, it will become a more stagnant and slow growing and less dynamic economy." Many firms say it is already hard to find people to fill the jobs available. Adam Lampert, the chief executive of Texas-based Cambridge Caregivers and Manchester Care Homes, which provides assisted living and in-home care, says about 80% of his 350 staff are foreign-born. "I don't go out and place ads for non-citizens to fill our roles," he says. "It is the immigrants who are answering the call." Like Mr Moran, he said Trump's moves had already cost him some workers, who had been authorised to work on temporary permits. He said he was also worried about the ripple effects of Trump's crackdown on his business, which in some ways competes with undocumented workers employed directly by families to provide care. He said if those workers are forced out, it will drive up demand for his own staff - forcing him to pay more, and ultimately raise his rates. "We're going to have incredible inflation if you scrape all these people out of the economy," he warned. "We can't do without these people in the workforce." At Harris Health System, a major hospital network in Texas, Trump's policy changes have already led to the loss of some workers, says chief executive Esmail says training American workers to fill the jobs available in his sector would take years, given the rising needs. "As the population is getting older and we are clamping down on one viable source of current and future workforce, this issue will come to a head," he says. Trump last week acknowledged the disruption his policies were creating for sectors that rely heavily on undocumented labour, such as hospitality and agriculture, even reportedly pausing workplace raids in some industries temporarily after receiving blowback from fellow despite the concerns about the economic impact, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the BBC that such raids remain a "cornerstone" of their the homebuilding industry, firms across the country are reporting seeing some work crews stop showing up for work, which will slow construction and raise costs in a sector where prices are already a concern, says Jim Tobin, president of the National Association of Homebuilders, which represents businesses in the industry has called on Congress to reform immigration laws, including creating a special visa programme for construction workers. But Mr Tobin says he was not expecting big changes to immigration policy anytime soon. "I think it's going to take a signal from the president about when it's time to engage," he says. "Right now it's all about enforcement."