This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Donald Trump is erupting on Christopher Wray after the FBI director suggested to Congress this week the former president may not have been struck by a bullet.

"Concerning former President Trump, there's some question about whether or not it's a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear," Wray testified.

"I don't know right now whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have landed somewhere else," he added.

Late Thursday night, Trump reacted to Gray's suggestion, posting on Truth Social:

"FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday that he wasn't sure if I was hit by shrapnel, glass, or a bullet (the FBI never even checked!), but he was sure that Crooked Joe Biden was physically and cognitively "uneventful" – Wrong!

"That's why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our Country at record levels. His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, Raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in D.C. burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments – with zero retribution.

"No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel. The hospital called it a 'bullet wound to the ear,' and that is what it was. No wonder the once-storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!"

U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician, got vocal about the matter, saying:

"Christopher Wray was COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE and OUT OF LINE to question if President Trump was hit by a bullet. All this rhetoric does is feed the fire of ASSASSINATION DENIERS and IDIOTS like Joy Reid and Keith Olbermann!

"I examined the bullet wound hours after he was shot. It was a bullet wound with ALL the hallmark signs that accompany a wound from a high-powered rifle. Not to mention, we ALL SAW IT with our own eyes!

"It's because of IDIOTIC and POLITICALLY MOTIVATED statements like this, that we don't have ANY confidence in the supposed #1 law enforcement agency in this country. We CAN'T TRUST THEM to run this investigation into the assassination attempt!"

In the wake of comments by Jackson, the FBI Friday issued its statement to Fox News Digital: "What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject's rifle."

Colin Rugg, co-owner of Trending Politics noted: "Why to believe your own eyes when you can listen to the media spoonfeed your lies?"

At the Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft wrote: "Chris Wray has single-handedly destroyed the reputation of the FBI, a once-respected law enforcement agency that is now the strong arm of the political left in destroying their political opponents."

He added Wray's "storied career at the FBI includes:

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Former President Trump's would-be assassin was a user of the popular social media site Gab.com, whose infrequent posts suggest he was a supporter of Joe Biden, says Gab CEO Andrew Torba.

"In the process of responding to an emergency disclosure request from a U.S. law enforcement agency, Gab learned that a pro-Biden/Harris account on the site was believed to have belonged to Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate President Trump. After backing up the account, we notified the public," Torba said.

"Politicians like Eric Swalwell have tried to mislead the American people by claiming Crooks was a Republican."

Torba said Gab "has published the first evidence making it very apparent that Crooks was a left-wing partisan who hated President Trump's immigration policies – noting that the shooter fired on President Trump when he started talking about those same policies.

"This raises the possibility, for the first time, that his attempted assassination of President Trump was the latest instance of a wider pattern of left-wing domestic terrorism that has plagued our country since the summer of 2020."

He indicated Gab "will continue to fight for the free speech rights of all Americans. Free speech allows truths like this to surface while censorship seeks to hide the facts in darkness."

"He posted on the site nine (9) times total," Torba said. "While the account made very few posts on the site, the majority of them were in support of President Biden"

"A number of posts in particular expressed support for President Biden's COVID lockdowns, border policies and executive orders."

Voter records show Crooks was a registered Republican, and also donated $15 to liberal campaign group ActBlue in 2021, according to an election donation filing and news reports.

Torba also said: "If the past is any guide, defying the D.C. consensus by publishing the first definitive evidence that the shooter was a Biden supporter – something Democrats and their media allies have tried to cover up and deny at every turn – has a high probability of resulting in significant political and media backlash."

"In the past, we have been the target of politically motivated inquiries from both the House Oversight Committee and the Joint Committee on the January 6th Attacks, both of which sought to interfere with our mission of protecting free speech online."

Torba, an unabashed Christian, asked for prayer in dealing with the latest disclosures:

"Would appreciate some prayer. I'm sticking my neck out big time on this one, but I felt it was the right thing to do in the public interest."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Recently,  a U.S. Army anti-terrorism brief from Fort Liberty, North Carolina, identified various pro-life organizations as terrorist groups. Base officials have since denied this designation represents the Army's official position, but only after the incident was exposed on social media by independent journalist Sam Shoemate, or @samosaur on X.

In an official response, Fort Liberty officials released the following statement:

"After conducting a commander's inquiry, we determined that the slides presented on social media were not vetted by the appropriate approval authorities, and do not reflect the views of the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Liberty, the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

"The slides were developed by a local garrison employee to train soldiers manning access control points at Fort Liberty.

"These slides will no longer be used, and all future training products will be reviewed to ensure they align with the current DoD anti-terrorism guidance."

Shoemate has since posted on X of being "notified that the soldiers recently part of training on Fort Liberty (Bragg), who were told that certain pro-life groups are terrorists, are now under investigation."

Despite Fort Liberty's public disapproval, the source who provided the original image of the slide presentation to Shoemate told the Gateway Pundit, "The whole military is fundamentally and systematically infected with an ideology that is diametrically opposed to the fundamental mission of our armed forces: increasing lethality and winning wars."

Retired Army Public Affairs Officer Dr. Chase Spears agrees, telling WND, "The aggressively social justice-focused Army I recently departed after 20 years is not the combat-focused force I joined."

While conceding the slide presentation may have "gone rogue by not following the letter of the law," he said "it did not go rogue philosophically." In fact, says Spears, the incident aligns with what today's senior military leadership is willing to support. "They're only sorry that they got caught."

"You have to ask yourself: Are the measures put in place to keep this from happening not working, or are these really rogue individuals [who aren't following the rules] truly the ones responsible?" Spears asked. He added that there is another potential option: "Is this in fact what the military believes, and thus commanders are choosing not to discourage the addition of clearly leftist ideology into training materials?"

"Within the first 10 years I was in the Army," Spears told WND, "I would have been the devil's advocate, believing some guy or gal got overzealous and did something they weren't supposed to." However, in the last decade, he argues, "the military has gone through an extraordinary ideological transformation. This is not the first incident like this. It is not difficult to imagine that they're just saying the quiet part out loud."

The first time Spears attended a briefing he considered "clearly antithetical" to the U.S. military was in 2011, upon the repeal of the long-time "Don't ask, don't tell" policy in place regarding homosexual service members. From this point forward, he said, examples of blatant disdain and disregard for Christians and conservatives escalated.

"What's really embarrassing for the force is that they've been caught time and time again," Spears told WND. For example, in 2013, slides shared during a U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief labeled Christians as religious extremists, alongside the Ku Klux Klan, al-Qaida, Hamas and others. Later in 2013, former Army Secretary John McHugh ordered a halt to listing Christians as extremists, and even the ACLU applauded his decision.

That same year, Spears recalled, training slides created by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, or DEOMI, "categorized America's founders as holding to extreme ideologies in seeking independence from the British crown."

"What's the purpose celebrating of the 4th of July?" Spears asked. "What would be the purpose of the stars and stripes of the American flag and the oaths that we all take if DEOMI officially maintains that independence from Britain is actually an extremist ideology?"

"For any service member that believes this, I cannot trust that he or she has the best interest of American security in mind," he said. "I can't trust such a person to believe the Constitution and feel any kind of loyalty to it."

Spears also noted that last year officials at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, put out an "unofficial" message warning their airman not to attend a rally by Turning Point USA which helps advocate for conservative politics across the country's various education systems. "After this attempt at infringing on the rights of military members assigned there made the news," he said, "they walked it back."

Spears pointed out the common thread connecting the various examples of Christians and conservatives being depicted as extremists. "It's only when military officials get caught that they correct themselves, and fall back in line with the law," he explained, adding that "'ask for forgiveness, not permission' is a frequent refrain among mid-grade military decision makers."

"We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, because most service members who attend these kinds of required training events are not going to speak out against or take pictures of it because they're terrified of retribution," he argued. "I promise you it's happening way more often than we realize."

"If we continue on the current trajectory, efforts to intimidate, stigmatize and silence Christians and conservatives in the force will become more brazen," Spears warned. "Too many military commanders today already ignore the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act and Department of Defense policy on convictional freedom, and they have gotten away with it," he told WND, adding: "A military that hates conservative values is one that will be incapable of its most basic purpose: to defend the nation."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

'They fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will follow through on a promise to close the border to asylum-seekers'

There have been new reports of a large migrant caravan heading toward the United States, after illegal migrants looking to cross the Southern Border in Texas, fear former President Donald Trump may take the win in the 2024 presidential election.

Multiple reports have stated the caravan has over 3,000 migrants, who are currently making their way through southern Mexico.

The Associated Press reports the caravan has people from more than a dozen countries, including Cuba, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

"Some of the members of the group said they hoped to make it to the U.S. border before elections are held in November because they fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will follow through on a promise to close the border to asylum-seekers,"

Migrants told the AP they were concerned about the Trump administration nixing an app migrants use to enter the U.S. called CBP One. The app allows asylum-seekers to enter America legally by allowing them to make their cases to U.S. officials upon arrival. The app, however, only works close to the U.S. border.

Vice President Kamala Harris is partly responsible for the crisis at the southern border after she was tasked with leading the Biden administration to find solutions to the influx that began in early 2021.

Joe Biden told migrants to "surge the border" during the Democratic debates ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

In January, the U.S. House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the Biden administration incentivizing illegal immigration involving children.

Joseph Edlow, founder of the Edlow Group, told the committee that immigration laws currently have too many loopholes, and encourage illegal migrants to cross the border with a child because they are almost guaranteed to be granted asylum, whether or not the child belongs to them.

"If you bring a child, you're going to be able to claim asylum, whereas you wouldn't if you didn't have a child. So it's gonna encourage more illegal immigration, more families coming across," Edlow told the committee.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump stressed at last week's Republican National Convention that he will be stopping illegal migration, calling it an "invasion."

"No hope or dream we have for America can succeed unless we stop the illegal immigrant invasion. The worst that's ever been seen anywhere in the world," Trump said during his speech at the RNC, adding third-world nations would fight with "sticks and stones" to stop this happening in their own countries.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A Milwaukee homeless man was shot dead blocks away from the Republican National Convention Tuesday, after he was seen wielding a knife during an altercation with another man in a local park.

Identified by family members as Samuel Sharpe, he had reportedly been living in a tent encampment in King Park less than a mile from the RNC convention. Alexi Worley, a spokesperson in the convention's joint command center said there was nothing to suggest the shooting was connected to the event.

According to an eyewitness, he had at least one knife on him when police officers ordered him to drop his weapon.

"My friends … got into an altercation," the eyewitness told WISN 12 News.

"One had, maybe a four-inch blade, the police were up in the thing, they came out, told him to drop the knife, drop the knife, and he turned around because he didn't realize they were there … and when he turned back around, they shot him … to me that was murder, I just witnessed a murder by the police," the eyewitness said.

Other eyewitnesses said Sharpe was experiencing a mental health crisis, and alleged multiple police officers were involved with the shooting, while others said Sharpe refused to drop the knife.

A group of community activists gathered at King Park, outraged that officers from outside were involved in the shooting. The Fraternal Order of Police President Brian Steel, confirmed Columbus Police Department officers were involved in the shooting.

Alan Chavoya from the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression told reporters the group had "warned" the city, Milwaukee Chief of Police Jeffrey Norman, and other officials, that "outside agitators" coming into the city for the convention, would cause a problem.

Fox News also reported a 21-year-old man was arrested wearing a ski mask and carrying an AK-47 pistol blocks away from the RNC event. The man was discovered by Homeland Security investigators and Capitol Police during a security sweep. As of this writing, charges were still pending.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

For years already, Democrats have harped on the theme that "democracy is threatened."

That would be, of course, if President Donald Trump is re-elected. Or anyone else. If anyone BUT Joe Biden is elected.

They suggest that Trump wouldn't leave the White House again, that he would declare himself a dictator, that he would run the nation by executive order, and that further elections simply would not be.

Their campaign probably reached its apex when, a year and a half ago, Joe Biden went to Philadelphia and ranted about the soul of the nation.

There, he claimed, "As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise."

He said, "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. … There's no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country."

Turns out Americans don't agree. Outside of those inside Biden's leftist political camp.

Columnist Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner explained that as Trump gets closer to winning back the White House, "liberals have warned that 'democracy itself' is on the ballot."

He suggested Democrats appear to believe that voters agree with them, and the "media's breathless claims, to quote ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, that 'bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War.'"

Bedard noted, "It turns out, not so much."

"It appears that Trump and Republicans own the democracy argument," he explained.

That's from Rasmussen Reports which asked voters, a pool of 35% Democrat, 32% Republican, and 32% independent, "In terms of preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution, has President Biden done a better job or a worse job than former President Trump?"

Forty percent said Biden has done better, but 47% said worse.

Bedard explained, "What’s more, a majority of likely voters believe that Biden has done a poor job protecting the Constitution. Some 55% said he has done a fair to poor job, while 44% believe he has done a good to excellent job."

And 43% said Biden has done a poor job of keeping his oath of office.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Election interference?

Facebook probably could offer a good how-to course, given that a new study has confirmed the web giant did exactly that – 39 times since 2008.

Newsbusters has explored the research of the MRC Free Speech America effort to review what's happened in American elections.

Those researchers "compiled 39 times Facebook was caught interfering in U.S. elections since 2008."

These actions surged in 2012, then reached a "crescendo" in 2020 and happened all the while Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg was claiming free speech ideologies.

It also was Zuckerberg who, during the 2020 election, handed out some $400 million plus to various election officials to help them deal with COVID. They mostly used it to recruit Joe Biden voters.

Zuckerberg has claimed, "We can either continue to stand for free expression understanding its messiness but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide that the cost is simply too great. I'm here today because I believe that we must continue to stand for free expression."

Further, he claimed he believes politically centered censorship is dangerous.

"Yet, from 2012 through 2024, Facebook has vacillated between a hands-off approach to free speech online and repeated election interference through policy changes and outright censorship of political candidates and ideas," Newsbusters noted.

Highlights of the MRC evidence include that Facebook suspended a Veteran PAC in 2012 for a meme about the disastrous loss of American lives in Benghazi.

According to the MRC report, "Facebook suspended the account of Special Operations Speaks, a veteran-led PAC. The group had posted a meme reminding its followers that Navy SEALs were denied backup during the tragic terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The meme showed pictures of then-President Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden along with the words 'Obama called on the SEALs and THEY got bin Laden. When the SEALs called on Obama THEY GOT DENIED.'"

Facebook claimed its removal was not, in fact, censorship.

Then came 2016.

MRC said, "In 2016, Facebook censored then-Democratic Party candidate for president Bernie Sanders and 'conservative topics' and news. Facebook used to have a trending section on its website that included trending news manually curated by contractors. Several of the curators who worked for Facebook in 2014 and 2015 told Gizmodo the articles that appeared in Facebook’s Trending News section often depended on the biases of the curator and what Facebook wanted to be trending at the time. 'Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,' a former curator who asked to remain anonymous said. 'I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.' Stories about then-presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) were also reportedly excluded."

During the 2018 midterms, the report said, "Facebook removed ads for Sen. (then-Rep.) Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), and Michigan State Senate Republican candidate Aric Nesbitt. The platform additionally censored an ad promoting border security paid for by then-President Donald Trump. Similarly, the platform reportedly removed a video promoting an AR-15 giveaway that Senate candidate Austin Petersen (R-MO) was conducting on his website."

At its peak political activism in 2020, Facebook's work "exploded."

"The platform censored posts and ads from then-sitting President Donald Trump at least four times and took down seven political ads paid for by the political right. One of these ad campaigns Facebook killed just over a month before the election. The ad reportedly pointed out the incongruence between Democrats’ open borders and COVID-19 lockdown policies."

The MRC said, "[The] 2020 election interference came to a head, however, when the platform censored the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden report documenting the Biden family’s financial scandals and then ultimately placed an indefinite suspension on then-sitting President Trump’s accounts shortly into 2021."

The Facebook censorship continued into 2022, when it targeted mostly Republicans including Rep. (then candidate) Rich McCormick of Georgia, Virginia GOP congressional candidate Jarome Bell, Tennessee GOP congressional candidate Robby Starbuck, and Missouri GOP U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens.

What's up in 2024?

"Facebook and Instagram are limiting users’ access to political content. Meta already began limiting its distribution of political content in 2022 but has continued to lean into that in the lead-up to the 2024 election. In February, Meta announced that Instagram and Threads (a new social media platform owned by Meta) will no longer recommend political content by default, but users can opt into having such content promoted to them. … Although the move sounds harmless, it makes it more difficult for those who produce political content to grow their page and for more viewers to decide for themselves whether or not they want to follow that content."

WND reported only weeks earlier that Pamela San Martin, a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, in an interview with Wired, demanded more censorship.

"Even though we're addressing the problems that arose in prior elections as a starting point," she said, "It is not enough."

She claimed, "Between the U.S. election [in 2020] to the Brazilian election [in 2022], Meta had not done enough to address the potential misuse of its platforms through coordinated campaigns, people organizing, or using bots on the platforms to convey a message to destabilize a country, to create a lack of trust or confidence on electoral processes."

Wired blasted Facebook in its report, for not doing enough, with, "Meta, in particular, with some 3 billion users across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, is a uniquely powerful force in shaping the global information ecosystem. In 2016, the platform took center stage for its seemingly central role in propelling Donald Trump into the White House. Sensitive to criticism that it had not done enough to protect American democracy, Meta invested in new tools and processes to try and keep election-related misinformation and disinformation off its platforms during the 2020 presidential election. But once the race was over, reporting from OneZero at the time found that Stop the Steal groups continued to balloon in the weeks after the 2020 election. The company rolled back many of these new mitigating strategies, allowing narratives that questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s win to circulate in the lead-up to the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. And despite the violence on January 6, Meta has continued to allow ads that question the results of the 2020 US election."

However, Facebook was not even the chief among offenders.

WND reported when the Media Research Center reported researchers found 41 times when Google interfered in American elections.

Dan Schneider, MRC's Free Speech America vice president, and Gabriela Pariseau, editor, said in a summary, "MRC researchers have found 41 times where Google interfered in elections over the last 16 years, and its impact has surged dramatically, making it evermore harmful to democracy. In every case, Google harmed the candidates – regardless of party – who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice."

Their report continued, "From the mouths of Google executives, the tech giant let slip what was never meant to be made public: That Google uses its 'great strength and resources and reach' to advance its leftist values. Google’s outsized influence on information technology, the body politic, and American elections became evident in 2008. After failing to prevent then-candidate for president Donald Trump from being inaugurated following the 2016 election, Google has since made clear to any discerning observer that it has been — and will continue — interfering in America’s elections."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Social media was erupting in outrage this week after a journalism institute gave an award for a photograph of a Jewish murder victim, one of the hundreds killed in the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.

The New York Post called the image "sickening" and explained it was taken as Hamas terrorists paraded the women's "near-naked body" through the streets of Gaza.

The award, naming a photo-of-the-year, was slammed as "an outrageous desecration of Jewish life."

The Post reported, "The grim photo featuring Shani Louk’s body was among a collection of 20 images that helped the Associated Press secure first place in one of the Pictures of the Year International award categories earlier this month."

It was picked by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, but immediately was blasted online as an "outrageous desecration of Jewish life."

Tom Emmer, GOP House whip, said on social media, "RJI thinks a horrifying picture of Shani Louk's half-clothed, dead body is award-winning work … Disgusting."

"I am DISGUSTED, SHOCKED and ENRAGED that this @AP image of a murdered Shani Louk from October 7th was given a picture of the year," a social media user posted on Twitter, now called X. "This is the value of Israeli women to you?"

"Wrong and sick," said another.

Louk, 23, was among the scores of music festival attendees killed or taken hostage when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 civilians, often in horrific ways like beheading babies and burning whole families alive.

Israeli authorities later revealed the woman also had been beheaded.

AP announced the award with an "unblurred image" of the woman's lifeless body on Instagram, the report said.

The report noted others were aiming at Ali Mahmud, the freelancer who took the picture.

There has been an uproar over allegations that freelancers providing images and information to multiple American news organizations knew about the attack, and even accompanied the terrorists.

The Post reported, "Several Israeli American and American Nova survivors sued the AP last month for using freelance photojournalists believed to be 'longstanding Hamas affiliates and full participants in the terrorist attack.'"

The Western Journal reported X user Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll didn't withhold her feelings: "You are the most vile of human beings to profit and reward such behavior. May you rot in hell with these terrorists and may the entire world see the emptiness of your souls."

The report noted that Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon said, "This photo captures Hamas terrorists desecrating the body of Shani Louk, may her soul rest in peace. Yet the @AP news agency proudly received an award for it. Their continued pride in their photographers' 'work' and involvement in the atrocities is shameful."

The Daily Mail cited the "fury" over the award being given to the image.

And it advised, "A prestigious university has been branded a 'disgrace' after it awarded the world's oldest photojournalism prize for a picture of a mutilated and murdered October 7 victim."

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