Saturday Afternoon News Updates: A Missing President, Suspicious Medical Reports, and a Raging War – 5/30/26
Saturday Afternoon News Updates: A Missing President, Suspicious Medical Reports, and a Raging War – 5/30/26Your Saturday updates are here
Hi all, Ben here. It’s Saturday, May 30th, and there is a lot to get into today. Here’s what we’re tracking:
Before I go any further, if you haven’t yet joined as a paid subscriber, consider doing so now . This is how we grow. And if you’re already a Meidas+ paid Substack subscriber, thank you for supporting pro-democracy media. We’re making this update free for everyone to read. Let’s get into it. The War Trump Doesn’t Want to AcknowledgeFor the past 72 hours, Donald Trump has vanished from public view. No press conferences. No appearances. Just a whole lot of social media posts. In his place, the regime has been recycling old interview footage, including a segment from earlier this week where his daughter-in-law Lara Trump tours him around the White House ballroom like a nursing home open house. As we said on social media, if you turned on the TV in another country and saw the leader’s daughter-in-law giving him a softball interview on a major “news” channel, you would rightfully assume that country is a tinpot dictatorship. Meanwhile, Scott Bessent has been dispatched to hold press conferences on Trump’s behalf. Why is he hiding? Here’s one likely reason: Americans are getting hurt, drones are getting shot down, and the Trump administration is working overtime to make sure you don’t fully understand what’s happening. On May 30th, an Iranian ballistic missile, a Fateh-110, struck Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Kuwaiti air defenses intercepted it, but falling debris injured approximately five U.S. personnel and contractors, and damaged at least two MQ-9 Reaper drones. The day before, another Reaper was destroyed entirely. The U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff has called the MQ-9 the most valuable aircraft in Operation Epic Fury, the platform that struck Iran more than any other in the U.S. arsenal. These are $30 to $50 million machines, and they are being knocked out of the sky.
CENTCOM is doing what it always does, threading needles on language. No planes were shot down, they insist. Technically true, if you accept the apparently crucial distinction between a crewed aircraft and a drone. CENTCOM is also highlighting that the drones were intercepted, while not acknowledging the fallout and the injuries soldiers. Iran has been releasing radar footage showing them locking onto and destroying the Reapers, and has openly signaled that if they wanted to, F-35s would be next. They are not being subtle. The U.S. Navy Central Command and UK maritime authority also issued a critical warning to all vessels in the Strait of Hormuz: major U.S. military operations are coming. Any ship supporting Iranian mine-laying activity will be targeted by U.S. forces. This is the exact same type of warning that preceded the strikes of June 11th, 2025. So when people ask whether another major offensive is being planned, here is the military saying pretty clearly, yes. Pete Hegseth, over in Singapore at a security summit, went on television to declare that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz and the blockade is “ironclad.” Meanwhile, Iran activated air defenses over Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf on the same day Hegseth was giving that speech. The gap between the administration’s public posture and the reality on the ground is extraordinary. In his interview with Lara Trump, which Fox is still airing, days later, because there’s nothing fresher available, Trump said, essentially, that having a war right before the midterms is bad timing. “You have a very short window,” he told her. Our editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski put it perfectly: it’s hard to negotiate when your opponent already knows you need a deal done before Election Day. Trump spent two hours in the Situation Room and came out with no decision. You’ll notice, when its morning during the week, the deal is basically done and just needs a signature. By evening, the U.S. and Iran are exchanging fire around the Strait of Hormuz. This is the cycle, every single day. Trump’s Late Night Medical Physical Dump Is Raising QuestionsThe White House released Trump’s annual physical at approximately 11 p.m. on Friday night, three days after the examination was conducted. The report itself is strange in ways that medical professionals are already publicly flagging. Trump’s physicians attribute bruising on the backs of both hands to “frequent handshaking” combined with aspirin use. Bilateral bruising from handshaking. That explanation is doing a lot of work for not very much credibility. The report also introduces an “AI-enhanced electrocardiogram” that supposedly calculates Trump’s “cardiac age” as roughly 14 years younger than his actual age. As Dr. Vin Gupta noted, when a president’s doctors start citing AI metrics and explaining away bruising with folksy activities, the line between medical documentation and political messaging has disappeared entirely. In other words, this is a propaganda document masquerading as a medical one. It has as much credibility as a Truth Social post. Trump is also listed at 238 pounds, a 14-pound gain since last year, two pounds short of the clinical definition of obese. How convenient. He is still being listed as 6’3”, a height he apparently grew into sometime after 2016 when he claimed to be 6’2”, and has somehow maintained despite being over 70, when virtually every other human being on the planet begins to lose height. The report emphasizes repeatedly how active and vigorous he is. What’s absent from the report is as telling as what’s in it: no underlying imaging, no independent physician notes, no comprehensive records that outside experts could evaluate. The public got a curated summary that’s essentially Trump fan fiction about his own health. The Corruption Is Still Happening in Broad DaylightWhile all of this unfolds, Trump’s financial self-dealing continues without pause or consequence. Trump was fined $200 for failing to disclose stock trades worth tens of millions of dollars within the legally required 45-day window. No, that wasn’t a typo. One of those trades: Trump bought up to $50,000 in TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of the UFC, shortly before he began heavily promoting a UFC event at the White House. Before the event, before the publicity, after the stock purchase. And now comes the drone war angle. The Pentagon’s $1.1 billion Drone Dominance program is targeting 300,000 low-cost attack drones by the end of 2027. The Trump administration is in talks to direct funding to companies including Unusual Machines. Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser and a shareholder in Unusual Machines. Stocks across the drone sector surged 33 to 57 percent on the news. This is the family war-profiteering in real time while Americans are getting injured at a Kuwaiti air base. The Kennedy Center Meltdown, Vance’s Ongoing Humiliation, and Other Weekend ChaosTrump’s court-ordered removal from the Kennedy Center has produced one of the more spectacular social media meltdowns of a presidency that has had many. A federal judge blocked Trump’s effort to shut down the center and ordered his name removed from the building. Trump responded with a multi-thousand-word screed on Truth Social blaming the judge, the judge’s wife, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Lisa Page, Russia investigations, E. Jean Carroll, tariffs, birthright citizenship, and the broader rigging of the American court system. He declared the Kennedy Center will “probably never open again.” Trump yesterday said the court decision made him want to wash himself of the Kennedy Center entirely and relinquish control. Oh no, Donald! Please don’t! That would surely own the libs! The JD Vance situation is also worth noting. The New York Times is reporting that Trump has been systematically needling his own vice president, questioning his judgment on Iran, mocking his vacation schedule, laughing at him for dropping the Ohio State championship trophy, and privately telling aides he’s not sure Vance has what it takes to lead the party. Vance, meanwhile, is apparently scrolling his phone during meetings and getting into Twitter fights, with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reportedly begging him to stop. Delaney Hall and the Data Center RevoltTensions remain high outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, where protesters have gathered for days over reported conditions inside, including detainees who went on a hunger strike over spoiled food, with attorneys describing worms in the meals. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin described the hunger strikers as demanding their “ethnic-right food.” An attorney representing detainees told CNN they simply don’t want to eat worms. New Jersey State Police have taken over public safety operations outside the facility in an attempt to lower tensions, with the governor calling for peaceful protest and pushing for the facility’s closure. And in Texas, something remarkable is happening. Lifelong Republican voters in rural communities are so furious about sprawling data centers consuming their farmland, water, and power during droughts and blackouts that they are openly saying they will vote for Democrat James Talarico over Republican Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race. A recent poll has Talarico leading 47 to 44. When a reporter asked one Republican voter whether she was willing to let the Senate flip to Democrats to stop the data centers, her answer was immediate: “My entire community is going to break rank. Everybody, all of us. We’ve had enough.” Meanwhile, the right-wing smear campaign against Talarico, which has included falsely claiming he is transgender and obsessing over whether his girlfriend is vegan, has backfired so completely that it has turned into a national joke. The New York Post ran an “exposé” with the headline: “Dem. Senate candidate James Talarico’s mysterious girlfriend revealed — and she’s vegan.” We’re getting “tan suit” vibes on this one. The buried lede: she apparently descends from the man who founded Galveston and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Hard to be more Texan than that! Republicans are defending Ken Paxton, a man who has been indicted, impeached, accused of corruption by members of his own party, and divorced after his wife cited biblical grounds. Thanks for reading, subscribing, liking, and re-stacking. We’ll be back with more soon. |
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