The News Cycle is almost impossible to track these days. At least, to do so fully.
That’s where we come in.
In the Badlands News Brief, the Badlands Media team hand pick news items of interest from the previous days to give you an overview of the biggest goings-on relevant to the Truth Community with some Badlands flavoring to help wash it down.
This week’s items are brought to you by our friends at A Bit of Whimsy Boutique. Please support the America First sponsors who make this work possible.
Now, onto the news from Thursday, July 18 …
Donald Trump officially accepts GOP nomination for POTUS, recounts assassination attempt
Former President Trump delivered his highly anticipated speech on Thursday night as he accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination on the convention's final evening. The emotional speech came after his decision earlier in the week to abandon his original 20-page speech due to Saturday's attempted assassination.
"So many people have asked me what happened, and therefore, I’ll tell you what happened," Trump said. "And you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s too painful to tell."
As such, Trump began recounting the events from Butler, Pennsylvania over the weekend where the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire. The shot narrowly missed, hitting the former president's skull and instead pierced his right ear while he was turning to look at one of his immigration charts displayed on a screen at the event.
"In order to see the chart, I started to turn to my right, and was ready to begin a further turn, which I’m lucky I didn’t, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me, really hard, on my right ear," Trump recalled. "I said to myself, 'Wow, what was that—it can only be a bullet,'—and moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down, and my hand was covered with blood, just blood all over the place. I immediately knew it was very serious, that we were under attack, and in one movement, proceeded to drop to the ground."
"There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet, in a certain way I felt very safe, because I had God on my side," Trump continued. "The amazing thing is that prior to the shot, if I had not moved my head at the very last instant, the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and I would not be with you tonight."
Despite shots ringing out at the crowded rally, attendees did not "run for the exits or stampede," Trump noted, but instead "tens of thousands of people stood by and didn’t move an inch. In fact, many of them bravely, but automatically, stood up looking for where the sniper would be, and then began pointing at him."
Because of this, Trump said, "many lives were saved."
"But that isn’t the reason they didn’t move—the reason is that they knew I was in serious trouble, they saw all of the blood, and thought I was dead, and they just didn’t want to leave me, and you can see that love written all over their faces," he said.
"I am not supposed to be here tonight," Trump said, as the crowd shouted back, "Yes you are."
"I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God," Trump said. "In watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment." — FOX News
And …
Behind the Curtain: Top Dems now believe Biden will exit
Several top Democrats privately tell us the rising pressure of party congressional leaders and close friends will persuade President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.
Why it matters: The 81-year-old president, now self-isolating with COVID, remains publicly dug in. But privately he's resigned to mounting pressure, bad polls, and untenable scrutiny making it impossible to continue his campaign, the Democrats tell us.
Behind the scenes: The private message, distilled to its bluntest form: The top leaders of his party, his friends and key donors believe he can't win, can't change public perceptions of his age and acuity, and can't deliver congressional majorities.
The president is being told that if he stays in, former President Trump could win in a landslide and wipe away Biden's legacy and Democrats' hopes in November.
State of play: The pressure to step aside as a candidate has been rising to intolerable levels, especially over the past few days.
Democrats fully expect polls after the Republican National Convention to show a possible blowout that could bring down Democrats in Congress, too.
"His choice is to be one of history's heroes, or to be sure of the fact that there'll never be a Biden presidential library," one of the president's close friends told us. "I pray that he does the right thing. He's headed that way."
Yesterday's AP poll, showing nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, ricocheted through the White House and Congress.
A panic pressure campaign is pounding Biden. It has been relentless — and coordinated. — Axios
Our Take: Public mandate is codified through Narrative Warfare, and Donald Trump now wields both asymmetric and disproportionate power projection capabilities in that realm.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt and the Shot Heard Around the World, Trump now has the public mandate in a host of formerly disparate theaters.
Where it concerns his Narrative fighting style, he now has the mandate to take it in any direction he likes, from humbled and thankful statesmen to righteous fury, given what he experienced and, more importantly, why he experienced it, and why we experienced it through him.
What’s more, the establishment and Deep State harpies that have been desperately attempting to rebrand a Justice Term as a Retribution Term have also pushed the Collective Mind toward adopting the very positions that terrify them.
Donald Trump survived the shot heard around the world.
Over 30% of Dems believe he faked it to bolster his chances in an election cycle in which he was already far ahead of the fake president he beat the last time around, inverting the conspiracy paradigm.
Joe Biden is being hunted by his own in full view of the normie hivemind while they desperately attempt to crown the least popular politician of the last three election cycles, Kamala Harris as his replacement.
Trump's rhetoric, even according to the MSM, is now adopting a grand unification theme, at a time when Americans are looking for a solution to decades of engineered chaos and the false binary the Deep State has relegated the national experience to.
Days after escaping death by a quarter inch, he's greeted like a rock star at the RNC, with vanquished political foes bending the knee before him.
This is the current battlespace.
Do they dare conjure the 100m fake ballots needed to beat him this time?
Do we want them to?
We’re in a War of Stories, which means that whoever has the better story wins the war.
Power back to the people, first through the ascendance of the people’s champion. —
Von der Leyen vows to turn EU into defense union
Ursula von der Leyen who hopes to be re-elected as European Commission (EC) President, has vowed to transform the EU into a defense bloc in her political program published by the EC.
"Our work in the next five years will be focused on building a true European Defense Union," the document said. Von der Leyen added that EU countries "will always retain responsibility for their own troops, from doctrine to deployment, but there is a lot Europe can do to support and coordinate efforts to strengthen the defense industrial base, innovation and the Single Market."
Additionally, she is planning to appoint a European commissioner for defense issues. Her political program indicates that "to help coordinate this work at the European level, I will appoint a Commissioner for Defense, who will work closely with the next High Representative/Vice-President in accordance with the Treaty." — TASS
Our Take: This move makes a lot of sense, when you consider that the founding documents of the European Union—which was created in 1993—were basically photocopies of the Third Reich's plans for post-war Europe, had the Nazis won WW2. (To be honest, I'm not at all convinced that they actually lost it.)
A continental army for Europe; what a bizarre concept. Though, it is something that has long been speculated: a transnational military force that is empowered to impose itself on individual nation-states.
What a despicable and draconian concept.
This is one small step for Europe, one giant step for globalism. And just last week, at the NATO summit, Pentagon officials promised weapons manufacturers that NATO would be ramping up orders for bombs and weapons for many years to come.
Fortunately, there are still good men in Europe—Viktor Orban, Nigel Farage, Robert Fico, among others—who are fighting back against these sociopaths.
The War of Sovereignty must be won. —
Investment Firm Denies Shorting Trump Media Stock Day Before Assassination Attempt
Investment firm Austin Private Wealth LLC has denied claims that it placed a massive put option on Trump Media & Technology Group stock the day before the assassination attempt, asserting that the filing was a “clerical error”.
In stock market terms, a put option is basically a bet that the asset’s price will fall, which would have almost certainly occurred if Trump had been killed.
As writer and researcher Josh Walkos highlighted, it appeared as though the firm had “shorted 12,000,000 shares of $DJT via a put option. The filing date is July 12th, the day before the assassination attempt.”
“They have around $1 Billion in assets under management and this is by far the largest put placed,” wrote Walkos.
A Bloomberg terminal screenshot showed that the contract subsequently disappeared from the record.
The company then amended their filing records on July 16th and the put option was removed. — Modernity News
Our Take: I often reference the Deep State as a System of Systems, and while that framing seems apparent to Anons and the Truth Community, it would likely confuse the vast majority of normies on all sides of the sociopolitical spectrum.
I do not expect that to be a permanent state of affairs.
When we talk about the process of awakening, overall, we're not just talking about waking people up to the truth of the Deep State criminal cabal, or the enemies of the MAGA movement. We're talking about exposing the core tenets of centralization, collectivism and globalism itself, and all the dark pillars that hold it together, which may find its roots in the Prussian empire that's largely been memory holed over the course of the last century.
It can seem like a daunting or impossible task to explain the depth and scope of the System of Systems, but now, I hope you're starting to see how the War of Stories can take one inflection point, and turn it into a Shatterpoint of multi-directional awakening. —
Welcome to Costa del Un! Grinning North Korean dictator surveys plans for his new tourist resort before strolling on immaculate white sand beach… right next to rocket-testing site
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was seen grinning as he surveyed plans for his new tourist resort being constructed on the country's eastern coast before strolling on an immaculate white sand beach.
The Wonsan-Kalma zone is one of Kim's most talked-about tourism projects since the plans were announced in 2015 and North Korea has been building luxury hotels and recreational facilities there to create a key attraction for international visitors.
But the project reportedly suffered setbacks due to shortages of construction materials as a result of toughened UN sanctions and Covid restrictions.
Kim toured the Wonsan-Kalma zone with top deputies this week and discussed preparations for its opening by May 2025 as decided by a ruling party meeting in January, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
The dictator was pictured walking along an immaculate white beach in the resort, which is located next to a rocket-testing site. — The Daily Mail
Our Take: Yesterday, I mentioned a concept that I called "Multipolar Devolution,” a play on Jon Herold's theory that refers to the Sovereign Alliance's operations against the Globalist Unipolar Hegemony.
This story is another example of that idea, as it is a promise that was made by both Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump back in 2018, when the former promised a "Major Change" to his country after the historic meeting where the two met at the DMZ, and Donald Trump became the first US president to enter North Korea.
President Trump—a legendary real estate developer—pledged to help the young leader transform the coastline into a tourist destination. People Magazine quoted him:
“North Korea has great beaches,” Trump told reporters. “You see that whenever they’re exploding cannons into the ocean. I said, ‘Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?’ ”
Let's take a look:
I've worked in construction, real estate, and architecture since graduating from high school nearly 20 years ago, and that beachfront has some of the best potential I've ever seen in a build site. So, yes, Donald Trump was right—again— North Korea really could become a premiere tourist destination, with the right guidance.
I've previously reported on the Brief that, according to the recently published memoirs of former South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong Un has been "desperate" to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons since that historic summit with Trump.
“He also mentioned that he has a daughter and doesn’t want her generation to live with the burden of nuclear weapons. He sincerely explained his commitment to denuclearization.”
Peace was always an option, and the carrot that will deliver it to the world is the promise of prosperity—not just for the American People, but for all mankind.
But first, the War of Sovereignty must be won.
Fight, Fight, Fight! —
Biden administration cancels another $1.2 billion in student loans for public service workers
The Biden administration is cancelling an additional $1.2 billion in student loans for borrowers who work in public service through changes to an existing forgiveness program.
The relief for roughly 35,000 borrowers was announced Thursday by the Education Department and made through changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which benefits workers such as teachers, nurses and firefighters. Those qualifying for forgiveness have their remaining loan balance eliminated after making 120 qualifying monthly payments.
“These 35,000 borrowers approved for forgiveness today are public service workers — teachers, nurses, law enforcement officials, and first responders who have dedicated their lives to strengthening their communities, and because of the fixes we made to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they will now have more breathing room to support themselves and their families,” Biden said in a statement. — AP News
And …
A federal court has now blocked Biden's new student-loan repayment plan in full, prohibiting borrowers from getting cheaper payments and debt cancellation
A major repayment plan for millions of student-loan borrowers is once again blocked.
On Thursday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the SAVE plan, intended to lower borrowers' monthly payments and give many of them a shorter timeline for loan forgiveness, cannot be implemented as the legal process continues.
It follows a series of legal challenges to the plan. Earlier this year, two separate groups of GOP state attorneys general filed lawsuits to block the SAVE plan, and at the end of June, two federal courts placed preliminary injunctions on the plan.
However, just days later, the 10th Circuit appeals court granted the Biden administration's request to stay one of the rulings, allowing provisions that were set to go into effect in July — including cheaper payments — to move forward.
Thursday's ruling from the 8th Circuit blocked all provisions of SAVE in a one-sentence ruling: "Appellants' emergency motion for an administrative stay prohibiting the appellees from implementing or acting pursuant to the Final Rule until this Court rules on the appellants' motion for an injunction pending appeal is granted."
An Education Department spokesperson told Business Insider that "we are assessing the impacts of this ruling and will be in touch directly with borrowers with any impacts that affect them." — Business Insider
Our Take: When it was first "announced" that the Biden Administration would be "forgiving" student loans across the land, there was much gnashing of teeth and white-knuckled takes about the communist, dictatorial nature of such a decree ... which makes sense, BUT ...
Many of us said that we needed to take more of a long-term view of such emotion-stoking narratives and wait to see if they visit Actual effects in the realm of the real.
Well, while SOME very specific provisions of Biden’s repayment plan have gone into effect, they're not nearly the forgiveness plan most of Biden's most radical "voters" expected, and now, even those are being put on permanent hold in many states, as Biden's decrees hold about as much water today as his bladder does.
This is yet another lesson that, while bad news coming out of the powers that would be is easy to react to, what's often a more effective choice on both a micro and macro level is to observe the effects of the Narrative Deployment ... and then see if it actually happens. —
US directly involved in Middle East, Ukraine conflicts — Lavrov
The diplomatic cover-up of Israel’s actions has made Washington directly involved in the Middle East conflict as well as in Ukraine, Chairman of the UN Security Council, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting on the Middle East, including the Palestinian issue.
"By offering a diplomatic cover-up for Israel’s actions and sending weapons and munitions, Washington - everybody understands this - has become directly complicit in the conflict, just as it does regarding the situation in Ukraine. Once this support ends, bloodshed will stop. However, the United States is either unwilling or unable to do so. Apparently, the key thing is not saving human lives, but the maneuvers that will enable them to score more points in the election campaign," Lavrov said.
Lavrov emphasized that "the current unprecedented outburst of violence in the Middle East is largely a consequence of the well-known US policy in the region."
"It is the consequence of that diplomacy which ‘effectiveness’ American representatives have been telling us for nearly ten months, demanding that we curtail the work on the platform of the UN Security Council."
"My US counterpart, Antony Blinken, has also come up with such a call. Time after time, [the United States] resorts to the right of veto, blocking the calls for an immediate, lasting and comprehensive ceasefire," the Russian foreign minister concluded. — TASS
Our Take: I have developed a deep admiration for Sergei Lavrov, as I have had a chance to study him and other key figures of the Sovereign Alliance.
He really is a remarkable leader, with a great mind for diplomacy. He knows exactly how to deliver truth bombs, without being overtly incendiary. Because the truth is that the State Department has intentionally destabilized nearly every corner of the world in order to ensure that nothing could threaten their Unipolar hegemony. They have killed more people than we could possibly measure, and have likely overthrown more governments than we could definitively prove.
The blood thirsty disposition of the career bureaucrats in the State Department disqualifies them to represent our interests on the world stage.
What the State Department and MI6 have done to the Middle East over the past century is one of the greatest tragedies of the modern era. Colonel Macgregor's commentary to Russell Brand last week really emphasized this hard and sobering truth.
Normally, I like to bring some levity to this newsletter, but listening to Donald Trump speak at the RNC Convention as I type this, my heart is filled with sadness and optimism and intense resolve, and I don't feel much like making any jokes. We all must do more to help President Trump; he cannot carry this burden alone.
So instead, I will let Sergei Lavrov bring today's levity. Cheers, friends. Have a great weekend. —
BONUS ITEMS
Obama TURNS on Biden: Ex-president tells allies Joe needs to 'seriously consider' staying in the race as speculation grows he could drop out in DAYS
Former President Barack Obama has told allies that President Joe Biden should seriously consider whether he should stay in the race, as speculation grows he could drop out within days.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Obama - who's only spoken to Biden once since the disastrous debate - believes Biden's path to victory has greatly diminished, but thinks the president needs to make the decision to quit himself.
Obama's view on the state of the race comes after Axios reported that Democratic sources believe the drumbeat to exit the race from party leaders and friends will push Biden to make the decision to step aside as early as this weekend.
'It feels the most real it's ever been,' one senior House Democratic aide told DailyMail.com. Another senior Democratic Hill aide told DailyMail.com that chances are 'high' that Biden pulls the plug but the timing is 'fluid.'
A defiant Biden has insisted publicly that he will be the Democratic nominee and only God or a 'medical condition' would compel him to bow out. So far, he's been supported by family members, first lady Jill Biden and son Hunter, in the decision to stay put.
But privately he's started to realize that might be untenable, as polling shows him losing to Trump and surveys show widespread concerns about his age and health that he's unlikely to overcome.
This week private conversations he's had with top Congressional Democrats have started to leak out, with reports saying Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have delivered to Biden some hard truths.
They warned the president that he will lose the White House - and could take Congressional majorities down with him. — The Daily Mail
Leading 'Trump Russia Hoax' Propagandist's Wife Indicted As Foreign Spy
Max Boot - a big fan of 'forever wars' who laundered Trump-Russia conspiracy theories through the Washington Post - is married to a South Korean spy who used to work for the CIA, and is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (now on 'administrative leave) - according to a new indictment revealed on Wednesday.
Boot's wife, Sue Mi Terry, 54, a native of Seoul living in Manhattan, used her position as a foreign policy expert to trade access to top US officials in exchange for luxury goods and 'high-end sushi dinners,' according to the indictment.
Terry allegedly began spying for South Korea in October 2013, five years after she left the CIA, and three years before Boot began calling Donald Trump a Russian asset.
Terry is accused of having "disclosed sensitive US government information to South Korean intelligence and used her position to influence US policy in favor of South Korea" over the course of a decade, in exchange for "money and luxury gifts," FBI Acting Assistant Director in Charge Christie M. Curtis said in a statement. — ZeroHedge
Five reasons Kamala Harris is probably in if Biden drops out
Top Democrats are convinced President Biden is likely to step aside as early as this weekend to make way for another Democratic presidential nominee.
Why it matters: If he does, Democrats will be forced to make a swift decision that would determine the fate — and the future — of the party for 2024 and beyond.
The big picture: There's a movement underway among some Democratic officials and operatives to bypass Vice President Harris as Biden's successor — or at least make the nomination a contest rather than a coronation.
They're floating names like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, or California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Reality check: There are at least five reasons the mission to bypass Harris is unlikely to succeed.
1. Money: The Biden campaign's war chest — $91 million as of the last filing in June — could easily be transferred to Harris but not to any other candidate.
2. History: As a Black and Asian American woman, Harris is already a history-making VP. She could be the first woman president.
3. Expected endorsements: Party heavyweights including Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) have already said they'll back Harris if Biden drops.
4. Party unity: Senior Democrats have moved very cautiously in their mission to convince Biden to go. Many aren't ready to plunge into the unknown by letting multiple candidates fight it out one month before the convention.
5. Legitimacy: The Biden-Harris ticket won 14 million votes and swept the (largely uncontested) primaries. — Axios
We hope you enjoyed this brief look back at the major news items you might have missed in this ever-escalating and ever-accelerating news cycle as the Information War continues to rage on around us.
As always, if you have any thoughts on these news items or the MANY others swirling in the digital ether, drop into the comments below to share them with your fellow Badlanders.
Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM. We are the news now.
“Fortunately, there are still good men in Europe—Viktor Orban, Nigel Farage, Robert Fico, among others—who are fighting back against these sociopaths.
The War of Sovereignty must be won. — GhostofBasedPatrickHenry
Btw, Ghost, I took some time to read up a bit on Amos Hochstein. As far as I can gather, he is the only misfit in the entire Biden criminal Administration. I hope he can hold the line til Trump is back.
BB: “When we talk about the process of awakening, overall, we're not just talking about waking people up to the truth of the Deep State criminal cabal, or the enemies of the MAGA movement. We're talking about exposing the core tenets of centralization, collectivism and globalism itself, and all the dark pillars that hold it together, which may find its roots in the Prussian empire that's largely been memory holed over the course of the last century.”
Well said! I would add something from Tucker’s wonderful speech last night: “There’s a lot of hate out there…but there is also a lot of Love”
We are tired of having to endure the Left’s hatred! Hopefully there are hundreds of thousands on the Left who are tired of it too. There is force in hate…but there is true power in Love ❤️🇺🇸🕊🌎
Ghost: “Peace was always an option, and the carrot that will deliver it to the world is the promise of prosperity—not just for the American People, but for all mankind.”
Beautiful! 🙏❤️
GBPH the video clip of Sergei Lavrov was not only hilarious but also true... there are way to many pussies in the Party of False decorum that will not speak Truth. We the People are the news now so we on the other hand must loudly and proudly continuously share the Truth.
God Wins!
God Bless!!!