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5️⃣ Patel’s “Never Intoxicated” Presser — And Who Trump Hires On Purpose

The FBI Director of the United States of America stood at a DOJ podium yesterday and told a room of reporters he has “never been intoxicated on the job.” That’s the sentence. That’s what we’re doing now. Acting AG Todd Blanche stood beside him — Patel’s boss, for those keeping score — and told reporters he hadn’t read The Atlantic story he was there to dispute, but assured everyone parts of it were “blatantly false.” Reporting he hadn’t read. Blatantly false. Sure, buddy.

Patel’s response to the allegations that he’s had “bouts of excessive drinking” and unexplained absences from the Bureau? A $250 million defamation lawsuit, a rant about the “fake news mafia,” and a cute line about being “an everyday American who loves his country [and] loves the sport of hockey” — that last one a reference to video of him chugging beers with the US Olympic gold medal hockey team in February. An everyday American. Running the FBI.

Zev’s point cut to the bone: this is who Trump hires on purpose. Not despite the red flags — because of them. Compromised people are controllable people. Patel was put there to do two things: protect Trump and punish Trump’s enemies. Everything else — the Atlantic reporting, the 700 agents reassigned, the unexplained absences, Jamie Raskin launching a House investigation today and demanding Patel submit to an alcohol test under penalty of perjury — is noise around the core function.

As I said on the show: “He’s doing the job he was hired to do. The drinking is the side quest. The Bureau being hollowed out is the main quest.”

4️⃣ Lutnick Calls Canada “Insulting.” Shaheen Tells Him Why.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick walked into a Senate Appropriations hearing today to defend the 2027 budget and instead got handed his ass by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Last Friday at a Semafor event, Lutnick’s assessment of Canada’s trade negotiating strategy was, and I quote, “They suck.” Today he doubled down, calling it “outrageous” and “insulting and disrespectful to America” that Canadian provinces won’t stock American spirits on their liquor shelves.

Howard. Buddy. My guy. You want to know why they won’t stock your bourbon?

Shaheen laid it out plainly: Canadian tourism to New Hampshire is down 30% year-over-year. Tourism is the second-largest industry in her state — 70,000 jobs. Small businesses on both sides of the border are cratering. Her question, which Lutnick could not answer: “How does insulting our closest ally and neighbor help the businesses in my state of New Hampshire, and states all across this country, who are hurting because of the loss of Canadian business and tourism?”

Lutnick’s response was to lecture her about how Canada “leans on” the $30 trillion US economy, as if that was the gotcha. Shaheen came back with the line of the day: “When we have allies and partners, we should try and work with them — not insult them.”

As a Canadian, let me translate for Howard: we’re not buying your liquor, we’re not visiting your states, we’re not signing your deals, and we’re not going to. You called our Prime Minister a governor. You called our country the 51st state. You tariffed us for fun. We have long memories and short tempers and we are done. The Carney government said today they’re in no rush. Why would they be? Every day Lutnick opens his mouth, Canada’s leverage goes up.

3️⃣ MTG: Trump Personally Told Bondi To Bury The Epstein Files

Marjorie Taylor Greene went on the Shannon Joy Show yesterday and said the quiet part on a megaphone: Donald Trump “flat out” told then–Attorney General Pam Bondi, “Do not release the Epstein files.”

Per Greene, Trump was “blocking everybody” — Bondi at DOJ, Speaker Mike Johnson in the House, Majority Leader John Thune in the Senate. His stated reason, in Greene’s telling of their final conversation before he branded her a traitor and she resigned from Congress: “My friends will get hurt. People you know, Marjorie. People at Mar-a-Lago.”

Let me say that part again, slowly. The President of the United States told his Attorney General to suppress federal evidence in a child sex trafficking investigation because his friends at his private club might get hurt.

Greene is not a credible narrator on most days. On this one, the corroboration is doing the work. She said essentially the same thing to The New York Times in December. Bondi reportedly told Trump in May that his name is “all over the files.” The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Bondi for a deposition on the redactions and the 53 pages of FBI interviews NPR confirmed were scrubbed — she didn’t comply, claiming the subpoena doesn’t apply because she’s no longer AG. And the “client list” Bondi vowed to release in February 2025? Suddenly didn’t exist by July.

Zev connected it to a pattern we’ve tracked for two years: the Epstein story is not a sex scandal. It’s a compromise operation. Seventeen or eighteen countries now have open Epstein investigations. London is dismantling the network in real time. The question is no longer what was on Epstein’s island. It’s who got put where because of what was on Epstein’s island — and whether the sitting President of the United States is one of them.

2️⃣ Mask Off — China Is Arming Iran. The Touska Is The Proof.

On Sunday, the USS Spruance fired on and boarded the Iranian-flagged container ship MV Touska in the Gulf of Oman as it tried to run the US naval blockade into Bandar Abbas. Six hours of warnings ignored. Rounds into the engine room to disable the propulsion. Marines on deck. The ship is part of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines — IRISL — which the US sanctioned in 2019 as “the preferred shipping line for Iranian proliferators.”

Here’s the part that matters. The Touska‘s last stops before Iran: Gaolan port in Zhuhai, China, and Taicang port north of Shanghai, per satellite analysis. Gaolan is known — per The Washington Post — for shipping sodium perchlorate, a key precursor for solid rocket fuel that Iran needs to rebuild its missile program. US security sources say the cargo is “dual-use”: metals, pipes, electronic components consistent with ballistic missile manufacturing. Nikki Haley — and I cannot believe I am about to favorably cite Nikki Haley — said it on X: the ship “was headed from China to Iran and is linked to chemical shipments for missiles.”

This is not speculation anymore. This is a boat. With a captain. Loaded in a Chinese port. Pointed at Iran. Full of missile-grade chemicals. In the middle of a ceasefire the United States is trying to negotiate.

China’s response: “concern” over the “forcible interception” and a demand that everyone honor the ceasefire. Last week they denied arming Iran and threatened “countermeasures” if Trump imposed a 50% tariff over it. Today the Touska is sitting in US custody like a subpoena with an anchor.

The mask is off. China is the quartermaster. The war Trump says he won is being resupplied in real time by the country he’s flying to meet with next month.

1️⃣ Trump Loses Iran. Ceasefire Goes Indefinite. London Meets Without Him.

And here it is. The top story. The one that reframes everything below it.

Trump announced yesterday afternoon — on Truth Social, of course — that he’s extending the Iran ceasefire indefinitely. No end date. No deadline. Until talks “are concluded, one way or the other.” This from the man who said four days ago an extension was “highly unlikely.”

What actually happened: the talks collapsed. Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Islamabad for a second round of negotiations — with Witkoff and Kushner in tow, the same geniuses who brought you the Gaza disaster — was scrapped. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said there were no negotiations to attend. Tehran wants the naval blockade of Hormuz lifted before they’ll even sit down. Trump refuses. Khamenei hasn’t signed off on anything. The Iranian government, per Trump himself, is “seriously fractured.” He’s not wrong. But neither is he winning.

Meanwhile, in London and Paris, the grown-ups are meeting. Forty countries on a UK-chaired call earlier this month — France, Germany, Canada, UAE, India — planning a neutral multinational mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz. The United States was not invited. France and Britain have explicitly framed the initiative as separate from Washington’s blockade policy. Macron and Starmer co-chaired. Merz said Germany would contribute mine-clearing. Meloni showed up in person.

And — the part that should end careers if journalism still existed — the UK is set to announce legislation next month moving Britain closer to the European Union, explicitly because the Iran war has soured the “special relationship” with the United States. The war Trump started. The ceasefire he can’t close. The allies he insulted. The strait he can’t reopen. London is quietly de-coupling from Washington and re-coupling to Brussels, and the American press is covering Kash Patel’s bar tab.

On Chinese social media, they’re already calling Beijing the real winner of the Iran war. A Weibo user’s line of the week: the White House’s “credit score” wouldn’t be enough “to unlock a shared bike.”

The Throughline

Five stories. ...