Biden Forgets Hamas’s Name During Awkward Press Conference

(Headline USA) President Joe Biden appeared to forget the name of Hamas during a bumbling press conference on Tuesday, The Telegraph reported.

The 81-year-old was asked about ongoing hostage negotiations between Israel and the terrorist organization after delivering a speech on the new border security bill introduced in the Senate.

“There is some movement, and I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna …” he began, before pausing and staring blankly ahead.

“Let me choose my words: There’s some movement, there’s been … a response from the, uh…,” he said, again pausing. “There’s been a response … from … the opposition, but, um…”

Biden then looked to his left, toward his aides. A reporter eventually chimed in, asking whether he was referring to Hamas.

“Yes, I’m sorry, from Hamas,” he said. “But it seems to be a little over the top. We’re not sure where it is. There’s a continuing negotiation right now.”

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who is challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, said the party needs to face facts when it comes to Biden’s mental fitness.

“I’m attacked for being honest and saying the quiet part out loud—the part DC insiders only do in private,” he tweeted.

“I admire our President. I voted for him and campaigned for him. He has visited my home and been gracious to my family and our country,” Phillips continued. “But shame on all of you pretending everything is OK. You are leading us—and him—into a disaster, and you damn well know it.”

Former President Donald Trump’s team also blasted Biden, saying, “Lights are on but no one is home.”

Recent polls have found the majority of Americans, including Democrats, believe Biden is too old to seek reelection.

A national NBC poll released on Tuesday found that 76% of all voters have major or moderate concerns about the president’s age and mental and physical health, including 54% of his voter Democratic base.

Obama, Bill Clinton to Join Biden for Campaign Fundraiser

(Headline USA) Former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are set to join current President Joe Biden at a March fundraiser for his reelection bid as Biden struggles to drum up enthusiasm for his campaign.

“Folks – I’ll be in NYC on March 28th to support @JoeBiden. Who’s coming with me? Chip in for your chance to join,” Obama tweeted on Tuesday.

Clinton replied to Obama’s post, saying, “Count we in. Who else is going to be there?”

The person overseeing Biden’s account then replied to both, writing, “You guys know you can just call me next time, right?”

The presence of the two former Democrat presidents is expected to help boost Biden’s fundraising. His campaign entered 2024 with $117 million on hand, but former President Donald Trump continues to lead him across the polls, including in key battleground states.

Biden, 81, is also suffering from a dearth of enthusiasm for his campaign. Most Americans believe he is too old to seek a second term, and those voters who plan to support him anyway plan to do so only to prevent Trump from winning.

“It’s not going to be [Biden] energizing the base,” said Cliff Albright, executive director of Black Voters Matter Fund, in an interview last April with Politico.

“It’s obviously going to have to be surrogates to do the energizing part, but he’s got some achievements, including some that influence black folks directly that he can craft a message around,” Albright added.

Although many in the black community remain unquestioningly loyal to the Democratic Party, Trump has succeeded in chipping away at the longtime voting bloc.

Recent surveys indicate that roughly 25% of black voters support the GOP frontrunner—which could sway the election outcome enormously in major cities that helped deliver the 2020 race to Biden.

In South Carolina, a group of black male voters explained to MSNBC why they’d rather support Trump.

“A lot of my friends—we’ve only voted once, and Trump is kind of all we know, Trump and Biden,” said voter Kinard Givens.

“And they’re like, ‘Well, we were broke with Biden. We weren’t with Trump,’” Givens continued. “And that’s kind of the only thing that I’m hearing over and over again is that ‘with Trump, we had money.’”

The announcement of the joint campaign appearance came in spite of growing speculation that Biden may soon be replaced on the campaign trail—with the most likely candidate being former first lady Michelle Obama.

If the bait-and-switch operation were done with Biden’s blessing, he would be able to transfer his campaign warchest in its entirety, provided there were no outstanding debts, according to the Federal Election Commission.

YouTube Vows to Censor ‘Hate Speech’ in 2024 Election News

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) YouTube CEO Neal Mohan wrote in his post that the Big Tech company that is controlled by Google will be censoring undesirable speech to the social media platform that is related to the 2024 election while promoting the “authoritative sources” that would “inform” the public about the upcoming election.

In his post, Mohan wrote that YouTube will use everything in its power, including things like search and recommendations, to wipe out “hate speech” and “boost authoritative sources,” adding that it will be done when people search for topics that are related to the elections.

Mohan also talked about how the censorship machine that would become responsible for the destruction of everyone who opposes the mainstream narrative works when facing people who are using the social media platform and what YouTube plans to do about that this year.

“Another way we uphold our responsibility is by connecting people with high-quality information. This is more important than ever as elections take place across the globe – more than 50 countries will hold elections this year,” he wrote, adding that it is important to protect the “creator economy” and “children.”

YouTube CEO then added that the platform is “ensuring that when people look for election news on YouTube, authoritative sources are prominent in their searches and recommendations,” without providing any details on how exactly YouTube is going to be “ensuring” it.

Mohan also dismissed the past years’ high levels of censorship on all social media platforms, including YouTube, and added that the company will continue the trend.

“We spent years investing in a playbook to responsibly manage content on YouTube including longstanding, rigorously enforced policies against hate speech, incitement to violence, election interference and more. We quickly evolve and adapt when new challenges emerge, and we’ll do so again,” the YouTube CEO wrote.

John McCain Donor IDed as Source of Deep-Fake Biden Robocalls in New Hampshire

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) An investigation into artificial-intelligence-generated phone calls impersonating President Joe Biden and telling Democrats to avoid voting in last month’s New Hampshire primary revealed the origin of the calls to be a Texas telecom company.

According toe federal election records, the company’s owner had previously made large donations to a political-action committee supporting the 2008 presidential campaign of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said he opened the joint investigation with the Federal Communications Commission and the Industry Traceback Group, according to NBC News.

The deep-fake “robocalls,” which targeted thousands of registered Democrats in New Hampshire on the weekend before its Jan. 23 primary, encouraged voters to “save [their] vote[s] for the November election” since Biden was not officially on the ballot.

“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” the message said. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

New Hampshire officials had scoffed at the notion of moving their primary back—in violation of state law—despite the Democratic National Committee’s desire to lead off with South Carolina to avoid the risk of Biden losing.

Although dark-money donors spent millions of dollars on a write-in campaign to ensure Biden’s victory, the DNC had signaled that it would deny New Hampshire’s delegates from casting votes during the August convention in Chicago. It has subsequently backpedaled on the threat, however, in light of Biden’s win.

While the robocalls had little impact on the turnout, authorities planned to make an example of the unprecedented violations of New Hampshire’s voter-suppression laws and telecom statutes in order to deter similar behavior before the general election.

“Calls using AI with something as deceptive as trying to clone the voice of the president of the United States—we haven’t seen something like that before, so close to an election with such a blatant attempt to mislead voters,” Formella said.

“We don’t want it to be the first of many,” he added. “We want this to be an example for us to point to, but also an enforcement example for anyone out there who would consider doing this.”

Formella announced that law enforcement would pursue both civil and criminal action against Life Corporation, a marketing company owned by Dallas-based entrepreneur Walter Monk.

Investigators were unclear of Monk’s motivations and did not elaborate on the reasoning for the calls, but said they were confident Life Corporation was the source.

The FCC sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company and a second group, known as Lingo Telecom, which transmitted the calls.

If the accused are charged as guilty, they could face up to seven years in prison and thousands in fines.

Online records of Monk were sparse. However, the Federal Elections Commission showed that he and his wife both made $5,000 donations to the PLR PAC, which spent nearly all of the $65,673 it raised on independent expenditures for McCain’s 2008 campaign against Barack Obama.

McCain ultimately lost the race and died of a brain tumor in 2018, having squandered much of his influence on the GOP in a high-profile feud with President Donald Trump.

Congressional Watchdog to Review Impact of Tuberville’s Hold on Military Promotions

(The Government Accountability Office plans to look into the consequences of a nearly 10-month hold on most military promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., that was done to protest the woke Defense Department’s funding of abortions for servicewomen.

The GAO, which serves as the research arm of Congress, agreed to a request from Democrats to look into the matter after Tuberville’s nine-month-long protest blocked promotions for more than 425 senior military leaders.

Under pressure from fellow Republicans, the former Auburn football coach ended his hold on promotions in December 2023, despite not getting what he wanted.

Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Robert Garcia, D-Calif., had asked U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, head of the GAO, to review the blockade of military promotions, including the short- and long-term effects on national security.

“We accepted the request and the work is expected to begin shortly,” a GAO spokesperson told the Center Square on Tuesday.

Dodaro has been with the GAO since 1973 and was promoted to comptroller in March 2008, under then-President George W. Bush, suggesting that his review—unlike many of the Biden administration’s lawfare attacks on Republicans using the weaponized adminisrative state—will not be politically motivated.

Tuberville, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made his stand in response to Pentagon policy that allowed service members time off and pay to travel to other states for abortions. That Biden administration policy was enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Under U.S. law, generals and admirals of the five armed services require Senate confirmation.

Raskin and Garcia wrote in their letter that the blockade “created a damaging ripple effect on the careers of service members at all levels” and that “such career stagnation radiates massive effects on factors such as servicemember retention, pay, pension, and future opportunities.”

An email sent to Tuberville’s press office on Tuesday wasn’t immediately returned.

Michigan Dems Outraged by Op-Ed Calling Detroit Suburb ‘America’s Jihad Capital’

(Headline USA) Two Democratic state lawmakers in Michigan condemned an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal that dubbed a Detroit suburb “America’s jihad capital.”

State Rep. Alabas Farhat and House Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash described it as “racist and Islamophobic” in a resolution presented Tuesday.

The measure called on the newspaper to retract the piece, which was published Friday, and to issue a public apology to the City of Dearborn.

“It was a pathetic excuse for an editorial piece,” said Farhat, who represents Dearborn.

“It fanned the flames of hatred and division in our country during a time when hate crimes are on the rise,” he added. “It makes it so that it’s normal to question how patriotic your neighbor is.”

The resolution was referred to committee in the state House, which is split evenly between Democratic and Republican representatives, with 54 members each.

Farhat blamed Republicans for the resolution not being voted on, and said that only two Democrats signed on because of the rush to turn it in on time.

“[T]here’s broad support in our caucus” for the resolution, he claimed.

The op-ed’s author is Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank founded by Israeli analysts.

Stalinsky pushed back on the criticism Tuesday in a phone call with the Associated Press, and stood by his piece.

“It’s a political stunt,” he said of the resolution.

“I don’t think any of the leaders read the full article,” Stalinsky added. “They used a couple sentences from the beginning but don’t get into the facts that I cite lower down. Everyone is attacking the headline and no one is reading the full article.”

Yet, the opinion piece exacerbated anger and concerns within the Dearborn community, which has a large Arab–American population.

Officials said they increased police presence in the city after the op-ed appeared, perhaps validating, to some extent, the characterization of Muslim extremists as oversensitive and prone to violence.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud tweeted that city police increased security at places of worship after the op-ed column “led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online.”

Dearborn High School was put on a temporary soft lockdown on Tuesday after a shell casing was found inside the building, according to police. The lockdown was lifted Tuesday afternoon, and police said on social media that there were no threats to the school or community.

In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel and the subsequent military strike on Gaza, radical Muslims and Palestinian sympathizers have engaged in regular acts of disruption, vandalism and violence in the U.S. and other Western nations allied with Israel.

While many of those have specifically targeted or persecuted Jews on college campuses and elsewhere, protesters have pushed a false equivalency by characterizing any backlash as “Islamophobia.”

Democrats fear that the loss of Muslim support—including vocal criticism from “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.—could cost President Joe Biden the state in his re-election campaign.

That, in turn, might ultimately clinch victory for former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner, who already is polling ahead of the incumbent president in many crucial swing states.

Biden’s visit to Michigan last week was met with protests and chants of, “Hey Biden, what do you say? We won’t vote on Election Day.”

Some are responding with a desperate mix of virtue-signaling and efforts to scapegoat their Republican counterparts.

Michigan’s far-left Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told reporters Monday that the article was “cruel and ignorant.”

Biden tweeted that “blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong,” while also referencing Dearborn.

State and city governments across the nation have approved pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian resolutions that have no legal authority but reflect the pressure on local officials to speak up on the conflict.

Michigan lawmakers, however, have struggled to come to a consensus on how to react to the Israel-Hamas war and its effects in Dearborn, which also has a large Jewish population.

In October, a pro-Israel resolution in the state House that was introduced with bipartisan support was never passed because of objections from several Democrats.

Aiyash, the Democratic floor leader in the chamber, strongly opposed the resolution at the time, saying, “If we’re going to condemn terror, we must condemn the terror and the violence that the Palestinian people have endured for decades.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

FBI Contractor Said He Heard ‘Coded Messages’ before Stealing Bureau Car from HQ

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) An FBI contractor was arrested Tuesday for allegedly stealing a government vehicle from FBI headquarters and driving it to another bureau facility in Vienna, Virginia.

The details of the arrest of John Conrad Worrell III are bizarre. According to the FBI’s criminal complaint, Worrell heard “coded messages” before committing his crime.

“WORRELL believed he had been receiving coded messages, which appeared in various forms including e-mails, ‘stage whispering,’ and a variety of different context clues over the course of several weeks, indicating that WORRELL was in danger, and thus he was attempting to go to a secure facility where he could be ‘safe,’” the FBI’s criminal complaint said.

Motivated by those coded messages, Worrell allegedly took the vehicle—a dark green four-door Ford sedan—from FBI HQ around 12:26 p.m. Tuesday. He then drove to Vienna and arrived at another FBI facility about 90 minutes later, the complaint said.

“At approximately 2:02 p.m., the Victim Agent’s vehicle entered the driveway of an FBI facility located in Vienna, Virginia. The Victim Agent’s vehicle approached a guard shack near a movable anti-vehicle barricade,” the complaint said.

“The driver of the stolen FBI-issued vehicle, subsequently identified as JOHN CONRAD WORRELL III, attempted to enter the restricted facility.”

Once he was at the Vienna facility, Worrell identified himself as the agent he stole the car from, the complaint said.

“WORRELL claimed to have a classified meeting at the Vienna FBI facility. When WORRELL was unable to provide FBI access cards that matched the Victim Agent’s identity, WORRELL was denied access to the facility and was directed to park in a nearby visitor lot,” the complaint said.

WORRELL subsequently parked the Victim Agent’s FBI-issued vehicle in the visitor lot at approximately 2:03 p.m. … Over the course of the next 45 minutes, WORRELL was repeatedly approached by security personnel. After repeated requests by security personnel, WORRELL provided his Virginia Driver’s License,” the complaint continued.

Vienna Police Department arrived at the FBI facility at approximately 3:02 p.m. Worrell allegedly admitted his theft soon thereafter.

Later, when interviewed by the FBI, Worrell told agents about hearing the coded messages.

Worrell’s case was first reported by local news in Vienna, and it hasn’t yet been listed on government’s public court docket.

Worrell’s case was assigned for an initial hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey. As of Wednesday afternoon, he had not yet made his first appearance in federal court, according to WUSA9.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Surprise! Biden’s Classified Docs Scandal Fizzles Out w/ No Charges

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Despite having brought classified documents to his Delaware home, President Joe Biden will get off scot-free as the partisan Department of Justice has decided to overlook the alleged wrongdoing, Time reported.

Tranches of sensitive documents discovered last year at multiple locations—including Biden’s Washington, D.C., office space and his home garage in Wilmington, Del.—dated back to his time as a U.S. senator and as vice president during the Obama administration.

The documents were first reported shortly after a controversial raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, resulted in the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who went on to indict the Republican leader on multiple felony counts.

However, the news of them did not go public until several months later, following the 2022 midterm election in which Democrats outperformed expectations.

Public outrage over the scandal, and cover-up—as well as the double standard—forced Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel. Yet, many suspected that Hur was functioning more as a fixer than a prosecutor.

With the investigation now concluded, those suspicions may be validated.

Still, the president may not be entirely off the hook. Hur plans soon to release an investigative report detailing the types of documents removed and other findings of the investigation. And the Biden camp appears to be worried that photos from the investigation could harm his chances at being reelected this upcoming November, according to Axios.

“Any photos of those storage practices could cause a political storm similar to what happened after the release of photos of Trump storing documents at Mar-a-Lago,” the outlet reported.

The embarrassment could give the 81-year-old Biden a pretense to exit the race, allowing Democrats to instead run a more viable candidate—likely former first lady Michelle Obama.

Conservative pundits—including New York Post columnist Cindy Adams and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly—have recently outlined how Democrats plan to execute the widely anticipated bait-and-switch operation.

“There is a plan to replace Joe Biden with Michelle Obama,” Kelly said in a January podcast with the National Review‘s Rich Lowry and C.W. Cooke.

“The plan is that around May, Joe Biden announces that he is not running,” Kelly continued. “This will allow. . . for Michelle to get nominated at the August convention.”

ATF Whistleblower Suggests that Gun-Walking Scandal is Still Ongoing

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Former ATF official Peter Forcelli, who blew the whistle on the bureau’s Obama-era Operation Fast & Furious Scandal, recently said he believes that the government is still allowing the streets to be flooded with illegal weapons.

In an interview with the Second Amendment Foundation published Tuesday, Forcelli said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, which is overseen by U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino, suffers from a “culture of laziness and ineptness and a fear of getting beaten in court.”

“The U.S. Attorney is turning a blind eye to straw purchases, which is fueling what’s going on in Mexico,” he said.

“The prosecutors who work there haven’t changed their ways. They have a habit of kicking the can down the road and not taking straw purchase cases. These are not purchasers who are buying guns for target shooters. These are guys who are sending guns to Mexico to slaughter human beings.”

Forcelli also reportedly said that the Arizona U.S. Attorney is still hesitant to take “proffers,” which is when a suspect offers some information so law enforcement can determine whether they want to extend formal cooperation in exchange for more information. The USAO is supposed to answer proffers in writing, but the Phoenix office is only answering verbally to avoid having their responses documented.

“They were sheepish about straw purchases and very hesitant to proffer anybody,” Forcelli said. “They still don’t decline cases in writing. The declinations are made verbally. If the shit hits the fan, they can deny it. That’s the scam they pull.”

Operation Fast and Furious was an Obama-era scandal where the ATF purposely allowed illegal gun purchases under the guise of tracking organized crime. The operation never resulted in the arrests of any organized crime leaders, and it became a national scandal when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by a Fast and Furious firearm in 2010.

Meanwhile, the ATF still doesn’t even know how many guns are still on the streets from the original Fast and Furious scandal.

The U.S. government reportedly lost 2,000 firearms during Operation Fast and Furious, of which only 710 were recovered as of February 2012.

In April, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked ATF Director Steven Dettelbach how many more have been recovered since then, and the ATF boss said he didn’t know.

Biggs said one of the Fast and Furious guns has recently been used in a crime. Biggs didn’t provide details of this crime, but said the ATF is now questioning the firearms dealer from which the gun emanated.

Forcelli, who worked in the ATF’s Phoenix office from 2007 to 2011 before becoming a senior official until his retirement in October 2021, is publishing a book next month entitled, The Deadly Path: How Operation Fast and Furious and Bad Lawyers Armed the Mexican Cartels.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Woke Mayo Clinic Doctor Blames Racism (Not Lifestyle) for Black Heart Disease

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) In order to celebrate the “intersection” between Black History Month and American Heart Month, politicized experts from the Mayo Clinic suggested that black people die of heart disease more frequently than others because of racism, the Mayo Clinic News Network reported.

The claim was made by LaPrincess Brewer, a medical doctor whose research “seeks to better elucidate the social determinants of cardiovascular health and how they contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease,” according to her online biography.

Brewer noted that black Americans have the highest risk of hypertension—that is, high blood pressure—among all races throughout the world.

“African Americans, unfortunately, have the highest rates of uncontrolled hypertension in the world, which dramatically increases their risk for developing heart disease,” Brewer noted.

Common risk factors for hypertension include obesity; lack of exercise; high-sodium or low-potassium diets; and frequent use of tobacco, alcohol or amphetamines.

However, Brewer claimed that soaring hypertension rates were due not to decisions made by black people, but rather to systemic racism or socioeconomic issues.

According to Brewer, this racism causes “food insecurity, housing insecurity, redlining, which really limits certain individuals from receiving opportunities and resources to better their health.”

The term “redlining,” which has entered common veracular with the rise of social justice and the diversity, equity and inclusion movement, typically refers to a bank’s use of geographic location when evaluating whether to approve loans based on the likelihood that the borrower may default.

Indeed, mitigating factors—such as the amount of crystal meth available in a given neighborhood—may correlate both with hypertension and the bank’s willingness to loan money to an individual whose credit history raises red flags.

The argument made by Brewer is not new.

In 2021, for instance, University of Chicago cardiologist Bryan Smith published an article arguing that “health inequalities” have caused higher rates of heart failure among the black population.

Among the “inequalities” Smith identified were “structural and social inequities, which cause increased stress and distrust in the medical system, a lack of nutritious food options (living in food deserts), and poor access to medical care.”

Such arguments have also advanced at the highest levels of government, by no less than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prior to gaining notoriety as the nation’s lead authority overseeing the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC released a 2019 pamphlet “exploring racial and ethnic disparities” in obesity, hypertension and heart disease.

Accordingly, in 2021, then-CDC director Rochelle Walensky declared that racism itself was a “serious public health threat.”

The attempt to make heart disease racist goes hand-in-hand with attempts to explain all differences among races as results of systematic inequalities.

For example, Mother’s Day was declared racist in 2023, because black people live in the anxiety of dying at the hands of a racist white person on a daily basis.

Fortunately, several news sites have begun maintaining comprehensive lists of things that have been declared racist. Among them: white paint, Canadian ice hockey, defending against hurricane looters, driving your car, organizing your pantry and frolicking in the rain.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.