Episode Details

Welcome back to This Week in Tyranny. While you were watching Ed Sheeran throw Macklemore off his own tour and the entire internet pick a side in about nine minutes, which is still faster than the House of Representatives moved on anything this week.

This week: Trump converted his vanity arch into a weapons depot, the Pentagon is undercounting the American dead in Iran, a chatbot almost started a war with China, the Space Force admitted it has weapons in orbit, the Bureau of Land Management has been quietly taking applications to put twelve data centers on your public land, the White House started banning news outlets and confiscating reporters’ badges at the gate, and the FBI dropped its hiring standards after firing everybody qualified. Let’s go.

Start with the one that broke this morning.

Triumphal Arsenal?

Donald Trump announced that the two hundred and fifty foot triumphal arch he wants to build directly across from Arlington National Cemetery is now a military installation. His words, on Truth Social. “At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex slash Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.” And then, because he cannot help himself, “There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World.”

He’s right. There isn’t. That’s a Dr. Evil lair with a gift shop. My dude, you have invented the guard tower.

I testified against this arch in front of the National Capital Planning Commission, back when it was just an arch. Vietnam veterans were already suing to stop it then, because a two hundred and fifty foot tower parks itself on the sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and the graves of people I served with. That was the version without the ammunition in it.

And the people building it didn’t know either. Sources told CNN the announcement blindsided them. It wasn’t in the designs. It wasn’t in anything the Commission of Fine Arts reviewed. It was a post.

Here’s my favorite part. The FAA already ruled the thing needs an anti collision beacon on top so aircraft don’t hit it, because it sits in the approach to Reagan National. Trump is calling that beacon an eternal flame. There is an actual eternal flame at Arlington. It’s been burning on John F. Kennedy’s grave since 1963, on the hillside just across the bridge. And this man looked at that, and then at a strobe light the government is making him install so pilots don’t die, and decided they’re the same thing. His narcissism doesn’t have a floor. It has a sub basement and a shovel.

Speaking of the dead.

Pentagon Lying About Iran Casualties

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that more American troops have died in the Iran war than the Pentagon has told you. Six US officials with access to the Defense Department’s internal casualty data. Five of them put the toll at a minimum of twenty two. One says twenty three. The Pentagon’s public number is eighteen. Three American contractors have also been killed and aren’t in that count either. The Pentagon declined to answer the Post’s questions.

And it isn’t the first time. Earlier this year four fallen soldiers were moved off the Iran war death toll and reclassified as overseas operations, because they died during Trump’s short lived ceasefire.

Are you fecking kidding me. That database is not a scoreboard. Line of duty determinations run through it, and line of duty determinations decide what a surviving spouse is owed. I covered the Gold Star widow who was denied combat pay because the Pentagon wouldn’t call Iran a war. Same tric