‘I Have Very Firm Instructions’: Trump Makes Clear What Happens To Iran If He’s Assassinated
'The whole country is going to get blown up'
The conspiracy that gave Liz Wheeler ‘chills’: Was there a FIFTH plane on 9/11?
September 11, 2001, remains the most tragic day in American history, but almost a quarter-century later, mysteries surrounding the events of the day have yet to be solved.
And one TMZ documentary that BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler admits shockingly gave her “chills” involves United Flight 23, which was grounded when the World Trade Center was hit. However, the plane may have been another one that hijackers were attempting to weaponize.
“I watched the creepiest — I’m talking chills up and down your arms — documentary recently. The absolute creepiest. It was actually a documentary done by TMZ, believe it or not. I’m not particularly into celebrity gossip,” Wheeler says.
“It’s actually quite a well-done piece of investigative journalism about September 11, 2001,” she adds.
The narrative that the documentary challenges claims that four planes were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9/11, and the documentary provides evidence that there was actually a fifth.
“What if I presented evidence to you today that there was actually another plane — another plane that was supposed to be hijacked too? And not only was there another plane that had hijackers on it, but the government found out about it afterward. And so did the airlines. They knew about it. And to this day, they’re covering it up,” Wheeler explains.
The documentary features the claim, according to a flight attendant, that one passenger on the plane was a man who was wearing a burka.
“How would you react if you were on an airline and there was not only a person in a full burka — not just a hijab, a full burka with just the eye slits — but a person with hairy hands, a person that the flight crew were pretty certain was a man?” Wheeler asks.
There was a male “bodyguard” sitting next to the man in the burka, who flight attendants recalled was “sweating profusely.”
But these were not the only Middle Eastern passengers of note aboard the flight.
“So we have four Middle Eastern passengers in first class. Someone, an individual dressed in a full burka with just eye slits. ... The other man in the tan suit was trying to peer into the cockpit using his son as an excuse,” Wheeler explains.
These same passengers argued with the flight crew about taking off quickly instead of being delayed to hand out food.
“As if that’s not creepy enough, once the news broke that the plane was not going to be taking off because the other planes on 9/11 had hit the towers, had hit the Pentagon, these same passengers asked a question of the flight crew,” she continues.
One of them asked, “Did they get the White House?”
Once they were all deplaned and the airport was being evacuated, someone on the ground noticed that there were people back on the aircraft, 20 minutes after the plane was locked.
When it was investigated, it was discovered that the hatches to the plane had been reopened.
“So, what does that mean? Did someone enter the airplane through the floor hatch to remove, I don’t know what, evidence, weapons after everyone exited the plane?” Wheeler asks. “Well, that’s not just a hypothetical question. A weapon that had been planted on a plane was found at JFK.”
When TMZ reached out and even filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the organization was ignored.
“How can you not think that this is a government cover-up?” Wheeler asks, shocked. “The 9/11 commission didn’t even interview the pilot of that plane.”
Want more from Liz Wheeler?
To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
When Can We Start Uprooting Domestic Terror Cells Attacking Law Enforcement?
It’s been a year since Trump took back the White House -- how is it possible we know so little about these cells, and when will we see mass arrests of these paid agitators and the politicians who are determined to use whatever power they have to help them?Bessent delivers bad news to Somalis on welfare: No more wire transfers to the homeland
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent revealed on Thursday that the Trump administration is clamping down on extra-national remittances by individuals exploiting public assistance.
The announcement, which comes on the heels of a series of damning revelations about fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota, could prove impactful for the crime-ridden Islamic nation of Somalia.
After all, members of the Somali diaspora sent $2.12 billion in remittances home in 2024 alone. The loss of the American portion of this funding stream would not go unnoticed for a failed nation with a GDP in the neighborhood of $12 billion.
'Our generosity has been taken advantage of.'
Bessent, who is also the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, told Fox News' Laura Ingraham, "We are here to follow the money because that's what Treasury does."
"We did it with the mafia, we have done it with the cartels, and now we are going to do it with these Somali fraudsters," continued Bessent. "Treasury has something called FinCEN, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and we are coming in."
Bessent indicated that the agency is launching four investigations into money-service businesses "that we believe may have wired money out of the country — a lot of the ill-gotten, stolen money — over to the Middle East, over to Somalia. We'll see where that's going."
As part of the crackdown, Bessent indicated that FinCEN will be issuing a Geographic Targeting Order, an order that imposes new identification and record-keeping requirements pertaining to transactions within a certain region, and engaging in "enhanced surveillance."
"There's something called a Suspicious Activity Report if a certain amount of money gets wired," added Bessent.
According to guidance released in October by FinCEN, financial institutions are required to "file a SAR if the institution knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect that the transaction or series of transactions are designed to evade [currency transaction reporting] requirements."
After Ingraham suggested the threshold was $10,000, Bessent said, "We're lowering that to $3,000."
In addition to significantly lowering the threshold for a SAR, Bessent said that "from now on, anyone who wires money out from one of these money-service businesses has to check a box saying whether they are on public assistance."
"If you are on public assistance, we are going to start pushing that you cannot wire money out of the country," added Bessent.
"Our generosity has been taken advantage of."
The treasury secretary further suggested that if a so-called asylum seeker is wiring money out of the country, "one of two things must be true: You are getting too much money and your benefits should be cut, or you are part of this conspiracy."
Days before President Donald Trump announced the termination of the Temporary Protected Status designation for Somalia, BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo and investigative reporter Ryan Thorpe detailed the alleged direction of stolen taxpayer funds by Somalis in America to terrorists abroad.
According to the duo's City Journal report, federal counterterrorism sources confirmed "that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab."
Al-Shabaab is a Somalia-based, Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization committed to waging a global jihad.
One confidential source told Rufo and Thorpe that "the largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
How Trump's capture of Venezuelan oil leaves America's adversaries sputtering
The U.S. military deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, bringing him to New York City to face drug, narco-terrorism, and weapons charges.
Days later, President Donald Trump — who last month ordered a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers into Venezuela and has been in talks with the vestigial Maduro regime about opening up to American oil companies — announced that "Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America" to be sold at market price for the supposed benefit of the American and Venezuelan people.
'After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.'
The geopolitical implications of America's removal of Maduro and Washington's increasing oversight of Venezuela's oil sector are far-reaching.
In addition to demonstrating the reluctance of certain American adversaries to support one another with anything beyond strongly worded statements, Trump's reassertion of U.S. influence over Venezuelan energy and his removal of the leftist dictator serve to undermine the communist regimes in China and Cuba as well as to threaten Russia's ability to finance military aggression in the medium to long term.
"The recent actions taken by the U.S. in Caracas were motivated by a desire to show greater assertiveness by the U.S. against China and Russia's efforts in Latin America," David Detomasi, a professor of international business at Queen's University who has written extensively on the geopolitics of oil, suggested to Blaze News.
"Because much of Venezuela's oil exports ended up in Chinese and/or Russian hands, gaining control over those exports was an important goal," Detomasi added.
The Trump administration indicated in its National Security Strategy that "after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region."
RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again
To this end, the administration indicated it would "deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere."
Venezuela is home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels as of 2024.
Despite this natural abundance, output has been nowhere close to what it could be, owing to the nationalization of oil assets under Hugo Chávez in the mid 2000s and other ruinous leftist policies that have since starved the industry of investment, expertise, and infrastructural support. Since the 1970s, when the country was producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, daily output has dropped to 1.1 million barrels.
While output has dropped from 7% to 1% of global oil production since the 1970s, Venezuelan oil exports have nevertheless proven valuable for nations antipathetic to the United States, China and Cuba in particular.
China
The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the recent American actions in Venezuela, stating that "such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela's sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region."
China, here throwing rocks from a glass house, announced in 2023 the elevation of the China-Venezuela relationship to an "all-weather strategic partnership" and indicated Beijing would back Venezuela's "just cause against external interference."
In addition to having its "all-weather" partnership exposed as an undefended fair-weather compact and losing a key ally in Caracas, China now faces the possibility of losing a significant source of energy.
Chinese imports of Venezuelan oil reportedly hit 470,000 barrels per day last year, accounting for around 4.5% of China's maritime crude imports. In November, Venezuela reportedly sent as many as 746,000 barrels per day to China.
Reuters indicated that a portion of these imports goes to paying down Venezuela's debt to China, believed to be in excess of $10 billion.
J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, recently noted that "depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China's present oil imports."
RELATED: The Venezuela crisis was never just about drugs
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an economist and the director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told Blaze News that China wants to buy all the oil it can since it already has coal and doesn't produce much oil or natural gas.
'China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia.'
In addition to depriving China of a critical source of energy or at the very least regulating its flow, the economist suggested that the restoration of American influence over Venezuelan energy and the potential of Caracas ramping up oil production may also diminish a key source of China's geopolitical power.
"If there's more oil around, it might lose geopolitical power in terms of the demand for its wind turbines, its solar panels, and its electric batteries that go in the electric vehicles," Furchtgott-Roth said.
As of 2024, China reportedly manufactured 92% of the world's solar panels and 82% of wind turbines.
Andrés Martínez-Fernández, senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, told Blaze News that many of Maduro's fellow travelers remain in power, so it is presently unclear whether Caracas will keep China cut off or resist its influence.
Martínez-Fernández suggested, however, that ultimately "extricating that Chinese influence and presence in our hemisphere" would amount to a massive victory, serving also to weaken BRICS and reveal how such anti-American alliances "collapse once they're tested by the strength of the United States."
"When it comes to it, China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia, even when they have substantial interests there," Martínez-Fernández said.
Cuba
Whereas Maduro's ouster and the premier exercise of the "Donroe Doctrine" spell trouble for Beijing, they could prove catastrophic for the regime in Cuba.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel suggested this week that "it is urgent that the international community mobilize, organize, and coordinate in denouncing this flagrant act of state terrorism and the illegal, immoral, and criminal kidnapping of a legitimate president."
Díaz-Canel's sense of urgency is understandable granted that Cuba — which has suffered rolling blackouts in recent months and years — relies on Venezuela for subsidized oil.
"If oil supply were to cease entirely, the Cuban economy would grind to a halt," Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Javeriana University, told NBC News. "This would represent a devastating blow to a Cuban economy already in recession for six years and lacking the productive capacity, competitiveness and foreign currency to replace these flows."
Bert Hoffmann, a political scientist at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, told Euronews, "Over the last months, Venezuelan oil still made up 70% of Cuba's total oil imports, with Mexico and Russia sharing the rest."
'Cuba looks like it's ready to fall.'
In addition to Cuba's energy dependence on Venezuela, Díaz-Canel's regime was closely linked with Maduro's, with Cuban intelligence and security services lending a hand in Caracas.
When asked about whether the U.S. should give other countries in the region the Venezuela treatment, Martínez-Fernández said, "By doing what we did in Venezuela, we are helping to cut off lifelines to the more dramatic and dangerous threats beyond Venezuela in our hemisphere."
Weeks ahead of Maduro's capture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that bringing down Cuba's communist government is the policy of the United States.
"I think every administration would love to see a different type of situation in Cuba. Cuba is a disaster. It's a disaster. It's not just because they're Marxists and because they're terrorists," Rubio said. "They're incompetent. These are incompetent people, and they've destroyed that country."
Trump told reporters on Sunday, "Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now they won't have that money coming in."
"Cuba looks like it's ready to fall," Trump said. "I don't know if they're going to hold out."
Russia
Russia's foreign ministry characterized the recent American actions in Caracas as "destructive foreign interference" and urged the Trump administration to "reconsider their position."
While Russia, like China and Cuba, had a close strategic partnership with Maduro's regime, it does not similarly rely on Venezuelan oil. Nevertheless, the crackdown in Caracas could nevertheless have profound consequences for Moscow.
RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard warns: Powerful foreign allies eager to pull US into war with Russia
Furchtgott-Roth recently wrote that "Russia, reliant on oil revenues to fund military operations, will suffer if expanded Venezuelan output pushes prices lower."
Income from Russia's oil and gas exports amounts to nearly one-third of the country's federal revenues.
When asked about the timeline for such consequence, Furchtgott-Roth told Blaze News that the consequences could be felt in Moscow in the near future, even though it might take years for Venezuela to significantly increase oil production.
"Prices are set on the basis of expectations of future supply. So as soon as people see that the conditions are in place for Venezuelan oil to be produced in greater quantities, prices will adjust, presumably down lower than they would have been otherwise," the economist said.
'They might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries.'
While Maduro's ouster and the potential U.S.-led energy renaissance in Venezuela could profoundly impact Russia, Moscow's response has been rather muted, amounting to little more than heated blather before the United Nations.
Neil Melvin, a political scientist at the Royal United Services Institute, told Deutsche Welle that "Russia's support for Venezuela has been more symbolic than practical."
Although Russia's influence and relations in the Western Hemisphere have been impacted, Melvin suspects that Moscow does not want to offend Washington with heavy criticism at a time when the U.S. is working to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.
The relative Russian silence on America's shake-up in Latin America might also have something to do with its own geopolitical ambitions.
Professor Detomasi told Blaze News that while the U.S. action in Caracas might give China and Russia "pause in the operations in Latin America," they "will use the U.S. action as a justification if and when they might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!What investigators still haven’t asked about Minnesota’s fraud
The national spotlight has settled on the industrial-scale fraud uncovered in Minnesota, much of it linked to networks operating within the state’s Somali immigrant community. To date, coverage has focused on how operators allegedly diverted nearly $9 billion in public funds into shell businesses that existed largely to funnel money to friends and family through no-show jobs and inflated contracts.
That story matters. But it may not be the whole story.
Fraud at this scale almost never stands alone. Where investigators uncover massive deception, additional crimes often lie beneath the surface.
Most of the businesses implicated in the scheme presented themselves as child-care centers, autism service providers, and non-emergency medical transport companies. For readers unfamiliar with immigration enforcement, the reaction is straightforward: Criminals stole money intended for society’s most vulnerable.
For those who have spent decades working in immigration law and border security, a different question arises. Why build an end-to-end infrastructure of licensed service providers unless it served additional purposes?
Videos circulating online show many of these facilities sitting empty — unused day-cares, idle transport vans, and vacant offices. That does not prove the businesses were harmless.
In criminal investigations, fraud rarely exists in isolation. One axiom holds that following the money reveals the perpetrators. A second, less discussed rule also applies: Following the money backward often reveals additional crimes.
Illegal immigration provides a perfect example. The initial violation occurs when an alien enters unlawfully or makes false asylum claims. Additional offenses frequently follow: identity theft, illegal employment, fraudulent tax filings, and payments to smugglers to bring in relatives. Organized crime and terrorist groups have used similar layered fraud models for decades. Illicit revenue becomes seed money for broader criminal activity.
Despite the scale of the Minnesota fraud, little public attention has focused on whether these businesses were used for more than financial theft. There appears to be no comprehensive inquiry into whether any of the entities sponsored employment-based visas, concealed smuggled minors, facilitated labor trafficking, or enabled sex trafficking.
None of those allegations has been proven. But the structure of the alleged scheme bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the network of Health and Human Services contractors through which the Biden administration lost track of thousands of unaccompanied alien children.
According to a City Journal investigation, federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that millions of dollars from the Minnesota fraud flowed back to Somalia, where funds ultimately reached al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization. The report described Minnesota taxpayers as the group’s largest single funding source.
RELATED: Minnesota’s fraud scandal exposes a dangerously loose election system
If accurate, that finding raises a far more serious concern. Terrorist organizations do not stop at cash transfers when operational infrastructure is available. A network of licensed service providers — child-care centers, transportation companies, and health services — offers precisely the kind of cover such groups seek to move people, materials, and money discreetly inside the United States.
The full extent of al-Shabaab’s involvement remains unclear. Covert operations rarely reveal themselves all at once. They are built deliberately, in stages, with long timelines. Minnesota records suggest (and the explosion in Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s personal wealth seems to indicate) that much of the large-scale fraud linked to Somali-run entities accelerated over the past decade. That timeline raises the possibility that the scheme was still maturing when investigators uncovered it.
If so, authorities may have disrupted a funding and logistics pipeline before all layers of criminal activity were fully deployed.
One point remains undeniable: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Fraud at this scale almost never stands alone. Where investigators uncover massive deception, additional crimes often lie beneath the surface.
Federal authorities should pursue this case to its roots. That means examining every entity, every financial flow, and every operational link — not just to recover stolen funds, but to determine what else those structures were built to conceal.
Vandal in custody after brazen attack on JD Vance's Ohio home
U.S. Secret Service personnel captured a 26-year-old man who allegedly attacked the Cincinnati home of Vice President JD Vance early Monday morning.
Hamilton County Justice Center records indicate that the suspect, William DeFoor, has been charged with criminal trespass, criminal damaging or endangering, obstructing official business, and felony vandalism.
Vance expressed gratitude to the U.S. Secret Service and the Cincinnati police and noted, "As far as I can tell, a crazy person tried to break in by hammering the windows."
'We try to protect our kids as much as possible.'
The vice president indicated that he and his family were not home at the time of the "attack" as they had already returned to the national capital. While the Vance family was in Cincinnati last week, they reportedly left on Sunday afternoon.
Two law enforcement officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity indicated that the Secret Service heard a commotion at the house around midnight and found that an individual had not only vandalized a Secret Service vehicle parked in the driveway but had smashed a window and was attempting to steal into the house.
RELATED: 'Something historic': CNN analyst GOBSMACKED by how Vance polls against Nikki Haley, others
According to an arrest report obtained by WLWT-TV, the suspect — who has since been taken into custody by the Cincinnati Police Department — was spotted both by a USSS agent as well as on security footage damaging four windows along with the vehicle.
USSS spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that the suspect was detained shortly after midnight.
Court documents indicate that DeFoor pleaded guilty in April 2025 to two counts of vandalism after he inflicted over $2,000 worth of damage to a Ohio interior design company, reported WXIX-TV. DeFoor was sentenced to two years of treatment at a mental health facility and ordered to pay $5,550 in restitution.
There has been an outpouring of support for the vice president in the wake of the incident. While many have signaled relief the Vance family is OK, others have questioned how a miscreant could get so close to their home in the first place.
In the wake of the incident, Vance emphasized that "we try to protect our kids as much as possible from the realities of this life of public service," and he intimated that the news media shouldn't circulate images of his home with holes in the window.
This is hardly the first time that a maladjusted individual has descended on one of Vance's residences.
In April, a mob of liberals rallied outside the vice president's Washington, D.C., residence, vilifying him and calling him a "fascist" as well as "America's Himmler," referring to the architect of Nazi Germany's so-called "final solution," Heinrich Himmler.
One month earlier, another mob of liberals assembled outside Vance's Cincinnati home to protest actions taken by the Trump administration.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Today's top stories