BREAKING: Trump's Most Chaotic Monday Yet
Good morning, this is Really American. It is Monday, July 13, 2026. Trump’s week starts off in complete chaos.
Lindsey Graham is dead, Mitch McConnell is in a rehab facility, and the Republican agenda is suddenly on life support seven weeks before the midterms. Meanwhile, a blockbuster Washington Post investigation just exposed how Trump’s sons are cashing in on their father’s Pentagon to the tune of billions. Overseas, Trump’s war with Iran is spinning out of control as both countries claim the same 21 miles of ocean. And McConnell finally broke his silence about his mystery hospitalization, but his statement raises more questions than it answers.
Before the news, a quick word about why Really American exists. Trump’s sons are quietly building a defense tech empire funded by your tax dollars while their father runs the Pentagon. Bezos owns the Post. Murdoch runs Fox. The billionaires own the government and they own most of the media covering it. Really American is the alternative to oligarch-controlled media: fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and not for sale. We have seen a massive surge in new free subscribers, and we are grateful you are here. If you have been reading on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription funds the independent journalism you are about to read. Subscribe or upgrade right now.
TRUMP LOSES CONTROL OF THE SENATE
Trump’s entire legislative agenda just lost its majority.
Lindsey Graham’s sudden death on Saturday, combined with Mitch McConnell’s month-long absence, leaves Trump’s party with a functional 51-to-47 majority and a committee math problem it cannot solve. Per the Washington Post, Republicans now hold just 13 seats on the Appropriations Committee against 14 Democrats. Trump cannot move a single spending bill through committee if Democrats hold together.
Everything Trump wanted from this Senate is now in jeopardy. The Budget Committee that Graham chaired is deadlocked along party lines, which stalls the reconciliation bill Trump wants to ram through with $350 billion in new defense spending. His attorney general pick, Todd Blanche, just got harder to confirm. His $87.6 billion Pentagon funding request needs a committee where Democrats now have the votes. And the government runs out of money September 30.
Democrats have refused to rubber-stamp the GOP’s defense spending increases without matching investments in domestic programs. For the first time in this Congress, they have the numbers to make that refusal stick.
Every spending fight for the next two months now runs through Democratic votes. That means real leverage over what gets funded: your health care, your schools, your communities. Use it or lose it.
TRUMP’S SONS CASH IN ON DADDY’S PENTAGON
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have built an investment portfolio of defense contractors that has collected billions from their father’s government.
A Washington Post investigation published this morning found that funds linked to the Trump brothers invested in more than a dozen defense tech companies, most of them after their father won reelection. Those companies have pulled in at least $3.2 billion in direct government business since the sons invested, plus another $3.1 billion in future contract options and access to shortlists worth nearly $200 billion in future work.
Neither brother had any real defense industry experience before they started buying in. What they have is a father who controls the Pentagon. Don Jr. bragged at an investment conference that he helped craft the Defense Department’s messaging, and said on his podcast that he screened Pentagon personnel picks for candidates who wanted to spend more on drones. Drones that companies in his portfolio happen to make.
One example: Vulcan Elements, a three-year-old startup backed by Don Jr.’s firm, got a $620 million Pentagon loan in late 2025. It jumped the line ahead of other companies waiting for financing.
This is your money. It flows through a Pentagon run by the father, into companies owned by the sons, while the White House insists there are no conflicts of interest. They are not even hiding it anymore.
TRUMP’S IRAN WAR SPIRALS OUT OF CONTROL
Trump’s war just entered its most dangerous phase yet, and his ceasefire is falling apart in real time.
The United States and Iran are both claiming control of the Strait of Hormuz this morning after a weekend of the heaviest fighting in weeks. The Associated Press reports the U.S. military struck some 140 targets inside Iran early Sunday, and Iran retaliated by firing on Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Oman. Missile sirens sounded three times in Bahrain, home of the Navy’s 5th Fleet.
Trump called into Fox News on Monday to declare “we’re taking over the Strait” and claimed everything was agreed to in an 11-hour negotiating session before Iran backed out. The two countries are supposed to be halfway through a 60-day window to negotiate a permanent end to the war. Instead they are shooting at each other.
Oil hit nearly $120 a barrel at the height of this war. It jumped another 5 percent Monday morning. Every spike lands directly on your gas tank and your grocery bill.
Trump started a war with no plan to end it. You are paying for it at the pump, and American troops across the Gulf are sitting in the blast radius while he improvises on cable news.
MCCONNELL’S STORY DOESN’T ADD UP
Mitch McConnell finally broke a month of silence Sunday, and his explanation only deepened the mystery.
McConnell’s office released a statement and a photo of the 84-year-old senator sitting up in bed next to his wife, holding a Sunday newspaper. He says he fell at home, was briefly unconscious, developed a mild case of pneumonia, and is now recovering at a rehabilitation center. He insists he did not have a heart attack or a stroke, and his doctors say they found no fractures, tumors or hemorrhages.
Here is the problem. The New York Times reported that emergency dispatch audio from the morning of his hospitalization captured responders saying they were performing CPR on an unconscious person in cardiac arrest at McConnell’s Washington address. His statement does not mention CPR or cardiac arrest at all. It took four weeks, a demand letter from Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and Lindsey Graham’s death for his office to say anything.
The gap between the dispatch audio and the official story has skeptics on both the right and the left questioning the account, with some arguing that only unedited video would settle what actually happened. McConnell gave no timeline for returning to the Senate.
Kentucky has had one working senator for a month and nobody would say why. Voters deserve straight answers from the people they elect, not carefully staged photos after weeks of stonewalling.
HOW YOU CAN FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE OLIGARCH TAKEOVER OF MEDIA
The stories you just read exist because readers fund them, not billionaires. The oligarchs are buying up American media outlet by outlet, and every newsroom they swallow is one less place willing to report on Trump’s sons profiting from the Pentagon or a senator’s office stonewalling the public. The single best way to fight back is to fund the independent media they cannot buy. If you have been reading Really American on a free subscription, upgrade to a paying membership right now. Subscribe or upgrade today.
— The Really American Team
Surely Trump & his sons are committing insider trading which is illegal?
Or at the very least some form of corruption?
About Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, I believe the Iranians , just saying, and about McConnell, the picture they released has him with a gown , tubes and without monitors , that picture is more fake than Stormy Daniels boobs .