It looks like another Democrat darling has tripped over his own carefully crafted narrative.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) just had a public meltdown when confronted about a glaring and long-running falsehood: his claim to having received a Bronze Star. For years, Moore casually let the military honor bolster his public image, political resume, and book sales — but now, under scrutiny, he’s suddenly claiming it "wasn't something I even thought about.” That’s a hard pill to swallow, considering the Bronze Star is not just some casual decoration. It’s one of the U.S. military’s most prestigious awards, given for heroic achievement in combat zones.
Wow. 2028 Democrat presidential contender Wes Moore just completely fell apart when asked why he continuously lied about having a Bronze Star throughout his career.
Moore defended his claim, saying he’s just “proud to have served,” and insists the Bronze Star was “never a central part” of his story. However, his public record tells a different tale. His biography, speeches, campaign literature, and media appearances all featured the honor — until he got caught.
Moore used the Bronze Star claim to boost credibility, gain media attention, and rise through the ranks of the Democratic establishment. Additionally, in his 2006 application for a White House Fellowship, Moore wrote that he had received a Bronze Star. The governor later explained that his deputy brigade commander, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Fenzel, had encouraged him to include it, believing it had been approved by senior leadership.
In a 2008 PBS NewsHour interview with Gwen Ifill and a 2010 appearance on The Colbert Report, the Democrat was introduced as a Bronze Star recipient—and he did not correct the record at the time. When asked later why he didn’t correct people, Moore said he was “hopeful” such errors wouldn’t put him on the spot during live national interviews.
In addition, in August 2024, The New York Times revealed the discrepancy in Moore’s record based on a FOIA-obtained application, prompting Moore to call it an “honest mistake” and express regret for not correcting the record sooner. He explained that, in the military, trust in a commanding officer typically suffices, which is why he included the Bronze Star on his application.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund wants to bankroll its own Joe Rogan to support Democratic political candidates, according to a Wired story written by left-wing reporter Taylor Lorenz.
Lorenz identified Chorus as a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has ties to Arabella Advisors. It’s reportedly offering $8,000 a month to some influencers, with strings attached about what content they can post.
Random influencers boosting conspiracy theories is one thing, but a journalist boosting a conspiracy theory and instigating a smear campaign against a fellow reporter in an influencer group chat is wild. People can read the story themselves herehttps://t.co/IzjFdNj4n8
Lorenz faced pushback after running the story, she said on social media.
I heard from a right wing media reporter yesterday that Chorus is pitching “hit pieces” on me. I wonder if this story, which repeats the false claim that I’m funded by the Sixteen Thirty Fund (I am not), is part of that well funded smear campaign.https://t.co/wYOHJbKz2t
Chorus co-founder Brian Tyler Cohen responded. He claimed that the company doesn't restrict what those sponsored can say.
Creators get a stipend for being in the program and attending trainings. Chorus doesn’t police anyone’s content. Do you expect every tweet and video to be preceded by “FYI I am part of a scholarship program where I learn tips on optimizing my content?”https://t.co/pGr7QoGDK6
He retweeted another account claiming that the network could boost the Dem network.
"Journalists have been reporting for MONTHS about the Dem influencer network being underfunded + then act like it's a nefarious thing when it gets funded by nonpublic Dem donors."
The left has struggled to form popular content creators, podcasters, or push politicians who seem relatable to the average person. Look to recent politicians including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden.
Harris' campaignpaidOprah Winfrey's company $1 million for an event, $165,000 to a company owned by Beyonce, and $50,000 to a company owned by basketball star Lebron James. Still, Harris lost the popular vote by over2 millionvotes.
Meanwhile, on the right, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and the Ruthless podcast interviewed J.D. Vance. About 2.75 million people subscribe to conservative commentator Megyn Kelly on Youtube.
Walz and Harris declined an interview request from comedian Theo Von.
Harris did go on the Call Her Daddypodcast, where she gave these words of wisdom that show one reason why she lost the election.
"Well, I think you and your listeners have really got this thing right, which is one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real and to talk about the things that people really care about. What I love about what you do is that your Your voice in your show is really about your listeners. And I think, especially now, this is a moment in the country and in life where people really want to know they're seen and heard and that they're part of a community, that they're not out there alone."
Israeli forces launched a precision strike on Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida in Gaza City on Saturday evening, with Israeli officials expressing “cautious optimism” that the terror group’s propaganda chief was eliminated, though his death has not been confirmed.
The IDF and Shin Bet security agency said the operation targeted Abu Obeida—identified by Israel as Hudhayfa Kahlout—in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The strike was carried out using precision-guided munitions following extensive aerial surveillance, with officials telling the Jerusalem Post they are optimistic about the outcome but awaiting confirmation.
Abu Obeida has been one of Hamas’s most visible figures for decades, serving as the theatrical mouthpiece for its military wing. Known for hiding behind a red keffiyeh and earning the nickname “the man in the mask,” his staged broadcasts on Al Jazeera and other outlets helped him cultivate a cult-like following among terror supporters across the Arab world. Israeli intelligence has repeatedly worked to undermine that persona, unmasking him as Kahlout and exposing his role in Hamas’s propaganda apparatus.
If confirmed, his elimination will mark a major symbolic and intelligence victory for Israel, dealing a blow to Hamas’s ability to control its narrative at a time when its senior leadership has been systematically dismantled. The strike marks at least the second known attempt on his life—an earlier May operation that killed Mohammed Sinwar also targeted Obeida, though he escaped that strike.
The timing of the latest operation came around the same time Hamas released a propaganda video acknowledging for the first time that Mohammed Sinwar—known as “The Shadow,” brother of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and a top military commander—was killed months ago in an Israeli strike. The video, noted by the Times of Israel, showed previously unseen footage of Mohammed alongside other eliminated commanders, hailing them as “martyrs” while conspicuously avoiding details of how they were tracked and killed in tunnel networks beneath Khan Younis.
The admission underlined what Israel has long asserted—that Hamas conceals battlefield losses from its own population until it can spin them for propaganda value. Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October 7 massacre, was himself eliminated in October. Together, the loss of both brothers represents a devastating blow to Hamas’s leadership structure.
Hamas responded to the Abu Obeida strike by accusing Israel of hitting a residential building and causing “dozens of deaths and injuries,” echoing its familiar claims of civilian targeting. Israeli officials countered that Hamas systematically embeds military infrastructure in civilian areas, using Gaza’s population as human shields in violation of international law.
The strike also followed a night of Hamas-driven disinformation, including fabricated reports of Israeli soldier kidnappings broadcast uncritically by Al Jazeera. IDF Arabic-language spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee blasted the Qatari network for serving as a propaganda arm for Hamas, accusing it of spreading “a big lie” after the reports were exposed as false.
Abu Obeida’s propaganda role has been a central focus of Israeli cyber and intelligence operations for years. During the 2014 Gaza conflict, Israeli units hacked Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV channel to broadcast unmasked images of Obeida, warning Gaza residents “not to believe this liar.” At the start of the current war, the IDF publicly identified him as Hudhayfa Kahlout, stressing that “he hides behind the alias Abu Obeida and his red keffiyeh, just as Hamas hides behind civilian infrastructure.”
Saturday’s operation came amid heavy fighting in Gaza City, where Israeli ground forces continue to face ambushes and IED attacks. On Friday, seven soldiers were wounded when a Namer armored personnel carrier was struck in the Zeitoun neighborhood, underscoring the intensity of the ongoing urban battle.
While Abu Obeida’s fate remains unconfirmed, Israeli officials say the strike is part of a broader campaign to systematically dismantle Hamas’s leadership. With both Sinwar brothers now dead—including Mohammed “The Shadow” Sinwar—and the propaganda chief himself possibly eliminated, the terror group is struggling to maintain command and control over its forces—let alone the narrative it broadcasts to the outside world.
Israel has successfully blocked every such flotilla attempt this year.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined dozens of international protesters Sunday in Barcelona for another attempt to challenge Israel’s legal maritime blockade of Gaza, despite being detained and expelled by Israeli forces just two months ago.
Departing from Barcelona’s port, the so-called Global Sumud Flotilla will be joined by additional vessels from Tunisia and other Mediterranean countries on September 4th in what organizers claim is the “largest fleet ever assembled” to try and reach Gaza.
Former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau and Portuguese lawmaker Mariana Mortágua joined Thunberg aboard the flotilla, while Irish actor Liam Cunningham participated in rallies with the 22-year-old agitator before their departure.
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However, Israel has successfully blocked every such attempt this year. In June, Israeli naval forces intercepted Thunberg and 11 other activists aboard the sailboat Madleen approximately 185 kilometers west of Gaza.
All passengers were detained, brought to Israeli shores, and subsequently expelled from the country.
For days prior, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had explicitly warned Thunberg and Co. to turn back, saying he had “instructed the IDF to act so that the Madleen hate flotilla does not reach the shores of Gaza.”
However, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition claimed the passengers had been “kidnapped by Israeli forces” after losing communication with the vessel.
A month later, Israeli forces intercepted another vessel, the Handala, carrying 21 pro-Hamas activists from 10 countries attempting the same mission.
Speaking to AFP Saturday, Thunberg argued that such missions “should not have to exist” but are necessary due to Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
“It is the responsibility of countries, of our governments and elected officials, to act to try to uphold international law, to prevent war crimes, to prevent genocide. That is their legal duty to do. And they are failing to do so.”
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Israel dismisses these flotillas as propaganda stunts supporting Hamas.
Israeli officials have consistently maintained that the naval blockade, imposed in 2007 when Hamas seized control of Gaza, remains necessary to prevent weapons smuggling to the terrorist organization.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has a long and often violent history of confronting Israeli naval forces.
The movement gained international attention when Israeli commandos boarded the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara in 2010, leading to international outrage.
Since then, all flotilla attempts have been intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters.
Hamas-backing Qatar has bankrolled film and stage projects by socialist Zohran Mamdani’s Israel-bashing movie-director mom — and one of its royals is now pushing her son’s mayoral bid, The Post has found.
Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, sister to the ruling emir, and the state-funded cultural institutions she controls, have supported Mira Nair and her creative projects since at least 2009, even extending a personal invitation to participate in the cultural program the country organized as part of the festivities around hosting the 2022 World Cup.
Since mid-June, Sheikha Al-Thani has taken to promoting Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy on social media, boosting news of favorable polling on Instagram and posting fire emojis under a TikTok video of him embracing Nair.
Mira Nair’s filmmaking has been backed by the Doha Film Institute for years, The Post found.
“They are buying somebody who is willing to be bought and at the time of their choosing they will ask for what they want,” warned Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, of Nair’s Qatar ties. “They need a rainbow coalition of people who will support the ideology they promote: sometimes it will be Islamism, sometimes it will be antisemitism, sometimes it will be anti-Israel.”
The Post found extensive ties between the Queens assemblyman’s mom and the Qatari elite, including:
In 2009 her film ‘Amelia’ opened the first-ever Doha Tribeca Film Festival in the Gulf regime’s capital.
From 2010 until 2014, the Doha Film Institute — founded by Sheikha Al-Thani — underwrote a “bootcamp” to train Qatari students in screenwriting and filmmaking at Nair’s Maisha Film Labs in East Africa and in Doha, according to both organizations’ websites.
The Doha Film Institute also paid the entire $15 million budget of Nair’s 2012 film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” one of the first movies it produced. The flick, which had previously struggled to obtain financing, tells the story of a Pakistani immigrant who suffers mistreatment at the hands of U.S. authorities after 9/11, and opened the Doha Tribeca Film Festival that year.
Nair’s film “Nafas,” about historic Qatari pearl divers, was the first movie commissioned by the Qatar National Museum, which Sheikha Al-Thani chairs. It premiered at the museum’s 2019 opening, which Nair attended, and remains one of its flagship exhibits. Its budget has not been made public.
A company Nair set up in her native India did $102,000 in business in 2022 and 2023 with event management firm Agence Publics Qatar, which shares its chairman with the Qatar Engineering & Construction Co., a major player in Qatar’s piggy-bank oil and gas industry, according to LinkedIn and publicly-listed import records collected by private supply chain-monitoring firms.
The country’s most high-profile support for the auteur came in 2022, when state-owned Qatar Airways and Qatar Creates — another of the sheikha’s pet projects boosting the country as a cultural destination — produced an extravagant Nair-directed stage adaptation of her Golden Globe-nominated film “Monsoon Wedding” as part of the World Cup festivities.
Qatar’s sharia-inspired social policies, which bar women from marrying or holding government roles without a male guardian’s permission and which can punish homosexuality with torture or even death, are at odds with the progressive images Nair and Mamdani have cultivated.
The filmmaker has presented herself a voice for the “marginalized,” while her son has pledged to make New York an “LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city.”
Mira Nair and Zohran Mamdani attend the Gala Screening of ‘Queen Of Katwe’ on October 9, 2016 in London, England.
Thousands of migrant workers died building facilities for the World Cup in Qatar’s 125-degree temperatures amid conditions human rights activists described as “modern day slavery.”
But in an interview with the website Qatar Happening during the soccer tournament and the ‘Monsoon Wedding’ musical’s run, Nair had only praise for the regime and her royal patron.
“Her Highness Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani has loved the movie but also supported the inception of this musical over several years,” Nair said.
Nair has boycotted the Haifa International Film Festival over Israeli policies she says “privilege one religion over another.” But Qatar bans non-Muslims from practicing in public, and the State Department has warned the country is “pursuing a number of actions which will ultimately lead to the eradication” of its Bah’aii religious minority.
Despite these well-documented abuses, as recently as November 2024, Nair was photographed attending a high-profile exhibit opening at the Qatar National Museum. There is no record of her ever speaking out on the regime’s notoriously deplorable human rights record.
The filmmaker did not respond to repeated requests for comment, nor did the Qatari entities that have financed her work.
Mira Nair, seen here with Qatar’s minister of culture, Dr. Hamad Bin Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari, gets support from the controversial country even though its social policies bar women from marrying without a male guardian’s permission and punish homosexuality with torture or even death.
Critics have called Qatar “America’s ultimate ‘frenemy,’” as it provides support to anti-U.S. Islamist organizations while simultaneously hosting an American airbase. Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the nonprofit Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, called it “both arsonist and firefighter”: backing destabilizing organizations like Hamas and the Taliban, then offering itself as a mediator with the groups on behalf of the West.
Schanzer said it was concerning only “one degree of separation” could exist between the country’s ruling elite the mayor of America’s biggest city, given how the Qataris have used their country’s vast wealth to bribe ex-New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and figures in the European Parliament.
“The Qataris are hyperactive in terms of international diplomacy, international investment, and everything that they do is designed to spread their funds and spread their influence,” he warned.
There is no publicly available evidence of a direct relationship between Mamdani and the Qatari regime. The assemblyman maintained he had never traveled to Qatar, nor received direct financial assistance from the country’s institutions.
But his campaign declined to answer whether he had received such assistance from his mother, or whether he had had contact with the sheikha, and would not directly condemn the Al-Thani family’s rule—only attesting to “his belief in universal human rights and the freedom to advocate for justice everywhere.”
“The attempt to weaponize his mother’s career against him is an insult to voters who care about actual issues, not manufactured distractions,” said campaign spokeswoman Dora Pekec.
