August 12, 2026
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Michael's Daily Notes
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Despite new information, one big question remains about President Trump's secret exit from Ankara — the catering truck, the decoy plane, the month of silence until the Washington Post broke the story.
The update: Israeli officials reportedly warned their U.S. counterparts of an Iranian plot to target Air Force One with shoulder-fired missiles. The threat was deemed dire enough to smuggle the President off the plane in a catering container. Yet that same plane took off from that same tarmac anyway — carrying Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, senior aides Stephen Miller and Steven Cheung, staff, and reporters, some unaware they'd become decoys. God forbid something untoward had happened. Imagine the hue and cry that would — appropriately — have resulted.
The question: So who owns that decision? The President says it wasn't his. "It's only up to Secret Service," he told reporters Tuesday night. "I just follow what they'd like to do." Maybe so. But listen to the rest of his answer: in one breath, they moved him to a plane of "equal safety"; in the next, the plane he flew "was at greater risk." Both cannot be true. And history says presidents aren't powerless in these matters — when the plan for Bill Clinton's 2000 stop in Pakistan called for using the press as unwitting decoys, his team vehemently objected, and the plan changed.
Hence today's poll question: Is it fair to blame President Trump for the Air Force One decoy operation — a security decision he says was made by the Secret Service?
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DAILY POLL
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Is it fair to blame President Trump for the AF1 decoy operation, a security decision he says was made by the Secret Service?
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TOP STORY
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In a closely contested Wisconsin Democratic primary, moderate David Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong, setting up a November showdown with Republican Tom Tiffany and underscoring the ongoing debate within the party over its direction in battleground states.
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TODAY'S YOUTUBE
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SPONSORED BY PARX CASINO
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IN OTHER NEWS
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As shipping through the Strait of Hormuz plunges to a new low, violence is spreading across the region’s critical waterways, with Iran-backed Houthi rebels killing six people in a Red Sea attack and U.S. forces firing on a ship accused of violating the American blockade of Iran.
Since Trump told Zelenskyy in the Oval Office that he didn't "have the cards," Ukraine has dramatically expanded long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, defense plants, air defenses and retail warehouses in a bid to make ordinary Russians feel the war and pressure Putin toward talks.
Anthropic said new Claude models will embed an imperceptible watermark in generated text to signal AI authorship, part of its commitments under the EU AI Act, though the company conceded that heavy editing, paraphrasing, or translation can erase the mark.
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A MESSAGE FROM COMCAST
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A quarter-century before President Trump's covert flight from Turkey aboard a military aircraft, President Bill Clinton in 2000 switched to an unmarked plane trailing Air Force One for a heavily guarded visit to Pakistan — a ruse this reporter witnessed firsthand from the press plane.
Jurors at Luigi Mangione's Manhattan murder trial over the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson will remain anonymous, Justice Gregory Carro ruled, as prosecutors warned of potential intimidation by the defendant's supporters and 86 news organizations prepare to cover the September proceedings.
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen told the Galilee Conference that the spy agency repeatedly surveyed Iran's Fordow enrichment site to understand it, and called the U.S. bombing of the facility “the fulfillment of all my dreams.”
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CARTOONS
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by Rob Rogers
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MORE NEWS
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Richard Clarke argues that as AI agents become increasingly autonomous, recent breaches of secure experiments underscore the urgent need for federal guardrails to prevent powerful systems from escaping controlled environments and causing real-world harm.
The lone total solar eclipse of 2026 sweeps across parts of northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain on Wednesday, with major European cities including Madrid, London and Paris seeing at least 90% totality and a slim partial view reaching parts of North America.
Former Miss Universe Canada winner Ashley Callingbull interrupted the 2026 pageant she was hosting to condemn contestants who wore a feathered headdress and an 'Arctic Beauty' outfit as cultural appropriation, prompting organizers to apologize and pledge new costume guidelines.
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For the Left
Abdul El-Sayed deleted older videos and posts questioning football, fireworks and gun rights before launching his MI Senate campaign, while his campaign says the comments no longer reflect his views.
For the Right
Former President Barack Obama poked fun at President Donald Trump’s gold-heavy Oval Office makeover while praising a TV recreation of the presidential room on “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness”.
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