Latest news with #conspiracy
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jimmy Fallon Says Trump's Changing Story On Epstein Will Lead To Shocking Conclusion
Jimmy Fallon said Tuesday that President Donald Trump's evolving spin on the Jeffrey Epstein files will stop with a bonkers revelation. (Watch the video below.) Playing off Trump's recent suggestion that Democrats could have planted his name in the files of the heavily connected sex offender, the 'Tonight Show' host cracked: 'Trump went from saying there are no files to I'm not in the files to I'm only in there because the files were changed. By next week we're gonna find out that Trump is Jeffrey Epstein.' Fast-forward to 2:47 for a more complete look at Fallon's bit: Fallon's joke follows a run of twists in the president's reaction to the files. After hyping the release of documents related to the long-dead predator, Trump called the files a hoax and the Justice Department announced there was no client list. The list had been promoted by Republicans and dangled as red meat for conspiracy-minded supporters of the president, some of whom are angry over his about-face. Trump, who was reportedly told by Attorney General Pam Bondi that he is mentioned in the files (though the context is not known), recently urged GOP leaders to change the subject by making unfounded accusations about President Barack Obama and the 2016 election. The story of his friendship with Epstein has also taken a few turns. Related... Trump's Shifting Explanations Are Prolonging The Epstein Scandal He Wants To End Trump Implies Epstein Poached Virginia Giuffre From Mar-A-Lago Spa 'What The F**k?': Jon Stewart Stunned By 2 Words In Trump's Latest Epstein Denial
The Sun
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I wanted REAL truth about Area 51… my reckless idea cost military $11m & almost sparked ‘deadliest mass shooting' ever
IT started as a joke, posted by a bored keyboard warrior who couldn't sleep. But the invitation to Storm Area 51 - the top secret US military base where conspiracy theorists believe evidence of alien invasions is stored - caused a national security alert, involving the State Department, US Marshals and Air Force, the FBI and millions of dollars. 13 13 13 And the midnight post, by 20-year-old Matty Roberts, saw millions of alien-obsessed geeks hailing him as their spiritual leader and making plans to converge on the Nevada military base - with potentially fatal consequences. The extraordinary incident, in 2019, is told in the two-part Netflix documentary, Trainwreck: Storm Area 51. Living with his mum in California, Matty's long black hair and beard, pallid complexion, baseball cap and excitable talk, perfectly fits the mould of 'computer nerd'. Bored with his dead-end job selling vapes at a deserted shopping mall, he entertained himself watching humorous podcasts, memes and YouTube videos. One day he stumbled upon amateur Ufologist Jeremy Corbell on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast talking about the top-secret US Air Force base, Area 51, where he claimed alien space craft were hidden. 'I thought, 'Oh, my God, this finally explains the flying saucers stories,'' says Matty. 'It was fascinating but I filed it in the back of my mind and my shift ends and I go home.' It might have ended there but a decision made in the middle of the night to post a jokey message encouraging people to 'Storm Area 51' was to have unimaginable consequences. 'I have this sh**posting account on Facebook, which is my happy place,' he says. It is where he posts satirical and provocative material from his bedroom. 'It's great because nobody knows who you are. You can post stupid stuff – memes, random thoughts that come to mind, funny, zingy one-liners. 'That night, I can't sleep. My mind's kind of going. And then it comes to me. The ultimate sh**post. If the government won't tell us anything about this top-secret military base, what if every fool on the internet converged on Area 51? What would they do? Shoot everyone? I'm an Area 51 investigator – FBI raided my home & tried to silence me but I know secret UFO base is hiding new weapons "It seemed like a hilarious idea to me. Jokes are funnier when they're edgy. So, I'm going to make it sound like a real call to arms.' Having named the event 'Storm Area 51: They Can't Stop All of Us', he went back to bed. 'I just thought it would be a funny post for my page of 40 followers,' he recalls. 'I didn't think it would go anywhere.' Reality hits But the following morning, Matty was astonished to find hundreds signing up for the event. Over the next few days it continued to attract thousands, from people thinking they are aliens, to adrenaline junkies, conspiracy theorists and wannabe social media stars. All were competing with each other in posting humorous alien-related memes. But worryingly, as well as enjoying the fun, most were seriously intent on making the raid happen. 'I was like, 'What the f***?! I figured I had to tell my mom,' says Matty. She warned him that people might not understand it was a joke and that he could get into a lot of trouble. 13 13 13 Area 51 has been the testing site for some of America's top fighter planes, such as the U-2, the F-117 and the Stealth Bomber. Security forces who guard the base are authorised to shoot to kill anyone crossing the barrier. With Matty now receiving messages from people threatening to kill guards who got in their way, things were getting serious. 'I told Mom I would sort it,' he says. 'So, I added a line to the description saying that if we Naruto run, we can move faster than the guards bullets.' Naruto is a young Ninja character in a series of Japanese manga cartoon stories who has a distinctive run in which he leans forward and holds his arms out behind him. Matty's followers needed no such explanation. Instantly, he was bombarded with videos of people in alien and superhero costumes running Naruto-style down the street. 'I was just trying to help calm things down but the whole thing exploded even more,' he says. 'Now, I'm suddenly this renegade guy that's got this group of people where everything I say is funny. I had no idea what I'd started. I thought, 'For God's sake, this is just a joke. Nobody's actually planning on going there.'' But they were. On the long road in the desert-land of Nevada to Area 51, known popularly as the Extraterrestrial Highway, Connie West runs the only motel – the Little A'Le'Inn in the small town of Rachel, with a population of 56 people. The motel has a bar, just 10 rooms and a camping site. 'July 11 th, our phone started ringing,' she says. 'Somebody wanted to hire a camping spot. As soon as I hung up with that person, the phone was ringing again and again. It was insane. Everybody was wanting to come on the 20 th of September. I thought, 'What's going on?'' Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee, whose patch takes in Area 51, was growing increasingly concerned. 'When my friend texted me, saying, 'Have you seen this post?' I thought it was another one of those wacko things people say and it never happens,' he says. 'It wasn't until the days progressed and things started getting bigger and bigger, that I thought, 'Oh, this isn't funny anymore.' We have less than 12 officers to police an 11,000 square-mile county.' Celeb endorsements After the story was covered on mainstream TV news channels, things just got bigger and bigger with celebrities getting in on the joke. Miley Cyrus posted a selfie of herself with an alien captioned: 'That one time @ Area 51.' Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Elon Musk and the Jonas Brothers also joined in. With over a million people now planning to converge at Rachel, Nevada, Matty was desperately trying to think of a way to stop the momentum. 'It's gone from just being dipsh** on the internet to now I've got real people coming to a real place that can get really hurt. How the f*** did it come to this?' 13 13 After a messenger suggested they throw an electronic dance party in the desert, right by Area 51, he saw his opportunity to divert the focus. He gave it the green light and was then advised that only one man could pull off an event this big – legendary events organiser Disco Donnie. 'I was at my place on the beach and I got this call from a promoter explaining that this Area 51 post had gone viral,' says Donnie. 'He asked me if I wanted to get involved and do a festival. I was like, 'Sure. When is it?' And he said, 'In September.' 'I said, 'Two months from now? No way. That's crazy.' Normally, I'd have at least eight months to plan something like that. 'When I looked to see where they were trying to do it, it was in the middle of the desert. I knew it was impossible, but I also didn't want to be left on the sideline. This could be it.' Meanwhile, the mainstream media had discovered Matty's identity and were following him with cameras. With little time to spare, Donnie and Matty drove to Area 51 and met up with Connie at her motel, who decided to go into partnership with them. But Donnie was despairing of the logistics of holding the event. 'When you're doing a show in the middle of nowhere, you have to bring everything yourself – porta potties, fencing, staff, water, staging. We were building a city from nothing.' As the realisation of what was happening set in, locals did all they could to stop the invasion of alien thrill-seekers. 'People in this tiny little town live there for a reason,' says Matty. 'Now suddenly, some d***head from California is bringing a million people over there.' 'Mass shooting' fears Colonel Cavan Craddock commanded the 99 th Air Base Wing, which provided support for Area 51. 'Imagine someone has a gun,' he says. 'If people start shooting and suddenly, hundreds or maybe thousands of people get shot over this event, you're looking at one of the deadliest mass shootings in the history of our nation.' Sheriff Kerry Lee declared the Lincoln County to be in a state of emergency. 'I got a call from the Los Angeles Police Department,' he says. 'They were getting together every government agency they could to deal with this thing. So, I jumped in my patrol car and headed to Las Vegas.' 13 13 13 He sat at a big U-shaped table with the Las Vegas Police Department, the FBI, the State Department, US Marshals and US Air Force personnel. It was decided that the best way to stop the event from happening was to put pressure on Matty. That was when the FBI called at his home. 'I'm sitting there shaking, thinking I'm about to get a bag over my head and thrown into a van and shipped off to God-knows-where,' says Matty. 'And they are grilling me to find out whether or not I am actually a terrorist. 'I'm telling them the truth. I'm not actually planning on doing this. We're planning a music festival. They essentially let me know that it was my ass on the line if anybody decided to go in there and storm the base. 'After the meeting I needed to figure out a way to move away from Storm Area 51 and rebrand it so I can keep myself out of prison.' He starts looking at the famous 1960s music festival Woodstock, with its peace and hippy vibe and came up with the idea of a similar large-scale event called Alienstock. With Disco Donnie having pulled out, another promoter named Frank DiMaggio took over the running of the gig and finally persuaded Matty to hold it in Las Vegas, where there was a venue and infrastructure. The festival successfully took place but, worryingly to the authorities, that didn't stop the faithful from continuing on their mission to Storm Area 51. 'All of our forces were ready,' says Colonel Cavan. 'We'd been monitoring events and around 3am we were starting to see some increased activity.' People were congregating, chanting, 'They can't stop us all,' and then counting down from 10 to one before charging the base Naruto-style…. and stopping. To whoops of laughter, they spent the rest of the evening partying at their ad-hoc music festival in the desert. 'It was a joke,' says Sheriff Kerry Lee. 'They got their moment of fame and their picture and it was done. Three point five million people turned out to be just a few hundred in the end.' But the joke had ended up costing Lincoln County $250,000 and the US military an estimated $11 million for beefing up security. Matty made just $1700 from selling T-shirts at Alienstock and then slipped back into anonymity. 'I'd just gone through the most surreal and exciting moment of my life,' he says. 'And one week later, I'm back at the vape shop.' Trainwreck: Storm Area 51 drops on Netflix on July 29 13
CBS News
a day ago
- CBS News
There was no "missing minute" in Epstein jail video, government source says
The "missing minute" from the surveillance video at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center where Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019 may not be missing after all, CBS News has learned. When the Justice Department and FBI released nearly 11 hours of footage earlier this month, the time code on the screen jumped forward one minute just before midnight, prompting questions about the one-minute gap. The video shows part of the area near the cell where Epstein was being held the night he died in what the medical examiner ruled a suicide. A government source familiar with the investigation says the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice inspector general are all in possession of a copy of the video that does not cut from just before 11:59 p.m. to midnight of the night Epstein died by suicide in his cell. What is unclear is why that section was missing when the FBI released what it said was raw footage from inside the Special Housing Unit the night Epstein died, Aug. 9-10, 2019. The recording came from what officials said was the only video camera that was recording its footage in the unit. This video has been cited by multiple government officials as a key piece of evidence in the determination that Epstein died by suicide. Epstein's death, as with many aspects of his high-profile sex trafficking case, has become fodder for conspiracy theories. The missing minute added to the conjecture after the release of the video, when news organizations and amateur sleuths who reviewed the video quickly noticed that onscreen jump in the time stamp. Attorney General Pam Bondi was questioned about the gap during a July 8 Cabinet meeting with President Trump. She said the missing minute was the result of a nightly reset of the video that caused the recording system to miss one recording minute every night, and attributed that information to the Bureau of Prions. "There was a minute that was off that counter and what we learned from [the] Bureau of Prisons was every year, every night, they redo that video," Bondi said. The equipment was old — "from like 1999, so every night is reset, so every night should have that same missing minute," she said. Bondi said the department would share other video that showed the same thing happened every night when the video system reset. That video, however, has not yet been released. Experts in surveillance video, including video forensic professionals, told CBS News that a nightly reset would have been unusual and was not something they encountered in most video systems. One thing that is clear, forensic experts say, is that the version of the recording released by the FBI was edited and not raw, as the government stated. Bondi, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino and others have said publicly that the video would be released unaltered. When the DOJ and FBI shared the video with the public, they said in a news release that it was the "full raw" video, and that "anyone entering or attempting to enter the tier where Epstein's cell was located from the SHU common area would have been captured by this footage." Jim Stafford was one of several video forensic analysts who looked at the video for CBS News using specialized software to extract the underlying coding, known as metadata. He said the metadata showed that the file was first created on May 23 of this year and that it was likely a "screen capture, not an actual export" of the raw file. He also told CBS News the metadata showed that the video was in fact two separate videos stitched together. It was also slightly sped up, so the video covering 11 hours runs approximately 10 hours and 53 minutes in length. CBS asked the FBI and Justice Department for a response, but they declined to comment. The Bureau of Prisons said they "had no additional information to provide".
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Trisha Paytas Pushes Back on Reincarnation Conspiracies: ‘My Baby Is Just a Baby'
Trisha Paytas probably feels like a passenger on Ozzy Osbourne's 'Crazy Train' as the internet continues to push conspiracies that her newborn baby, Aquaman, is the musician reincarnated. 'My baby is just a baby y'all,' the social media figure captioned a TikTok post where she played the song with the aside, 'What plays in my head 12 days postpartum and the internet won't stop with the reincarnation conspiracies.' Paytas gave birth on July 12, but didn't make the grand reveal online until July 22. Within hours of her announcement, news broke that Osbourne had died at the age of 76. Suddenly, there was a collective sense of déjà vu. As her comment section filled with people joking 'Welcome back, Ozzy,' it called to mind the fervor around her daughter Malibu, who was born the same day that Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022. The reincarnation jokes had reincarnated themselves. More from Rolling Stone Lollapalooza 2025 Outfit Guide: What to Wear and Where to Shop Regina Spektor Confronts Pro-Palestine Protesters at Concert: 'You're Just Yelling at a Jew' How Labubu Fans Are Using Gaming Tactics to Nab the Summer's Hottest Trend 'I was so out of my trolling era, and I was in such a good space spiritually,' Paytas told Rolling Stone in 2024. 'The fact that my pregnancy got ruined by trolling — now, I guess, it's kind of funny and karmatic. But it just made me so upset.' In a follow-up TikTok, Paytas added: 'I know reincarnation theories about my babies are just a meme, it's just what the internet does, but I'm not gonna lie — being 12 days postpartum sometimes make you feel a little cookoo. I'm like, wait, why does the internet keep wanting to put souls into my baby? First of all, reincarnation is only one soul into one baby, if you believe in that. Second of all, you guys, I don't know much about reincarnation, I just know that the soul has to be passed along.' She admits that the Queen Elizabeth II jokes were 'kind of funny,' though she found the Pope Francis theories (she was pregnant with Aquaman when he died) less comedic. But more than anything, she said, 'It makes me sad, it makes me feel like I did something wrong.' The Osbourne jokes are even more uncomfortable for her. 'Ozzy has real family, he is such an icon,' she said. 'It's more real. Ozzy's more real. There's real people involved and I don't know if they would love being tied to [him] being reincarnated. They just lost him. And then everyone else passing away, it's not my uterus doing it.' Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Joe Rogan isn't letting go of Epstein — that's a problem for Trump
Joe Rogan says the Trump administration's refusal to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein is a 'line in the sand.' Epstein's name was mentioned more than 40 times on the most recent episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' which consistently ranks as the most popular podcast in the United States. The episode was another instance of Rogan, who endorsed Trump on the eve of last fall's election, heaping criticism on his Trump administration friends — and another indication that the conspiracy-coded Epstein controversy isn't fading away. We are now entering week number four of this scandal engulfing President Trump, largely because the outrage is coming from within Trump's normally steadfast circle of conspiracy-minded media boosters. And as arguably one of the most, if not the most influential of those figures, Rogan's criticism suggests Trump's headache will only grow from here. Rogan criticized the FBI and Justice Department's case-closed memo from early July, asserting that the administration is trying to 'gaslight' everyone. He predicted that it would not work. Referring to his own podcast conversation with FBI director Kash Patel last month, Rogan said Patel's responses about Epstein didn't make any sense. 'Then he's like, 'Well, we have a film, we're gonna release that film,' and the film has a f**king minute missing from it,' Rogan said, referring to a prison video that was meant to dispel theories about Epstein's 2019 death, which a medical examiner ruled a suicide. 'Like, do you think we're babies? Like, what is this?' Rogan asked aloud. Rogan's guest, former CIA officer Mike Baker, said the government should 'release everything' — a pithy phrase that has gained popularity in MAGA media circles this month. Government officials have pushed back on those demands by citing the explicit nature of the materials and concerns for the victims involved. On the podcast, Baker expressed bafflement at the way Attorney General Pam Bondi teased further Epstein-related revelations, and then said that nothing more would be forthcoming. 'The mob wants to eat,' he said, 'and they've been throwing red meat to the mob about 'Epstein files' now for years.' Rogan interjected, 'It's part of how they got elected.' And now, Baker said, 'the mob is oddly bipartisan because it's got the Dems, too, referencing the Democratic leaders who have charged President Trump with a coverup.' The Rogan conversation reflects the lingering questions about Epstein's crimes and his accomplices — questions that have been hyped by right-leaning podcast hosts and other media personalities for years. On Sunday, CNN's Fareed Zakaria pointed out that when Patel visited Rogan last month, Patel claimed 'that he has now found a secret vault in the FBI full of dark secrets no one had ever seen. Forget about Epstein, they seemed to be saying; it turns out there are hundreds more conspiracy theories to dangle in front of the MAGA faithful.' Patel's deputy, Dan Bongino, was roasted over the weekend for what might be dubbed 'dangling.' He wrote on X about FBI investigations that have 'shocked me down to my core. We cannot run a Republic like this. I'll never be the same after learning what I've learned.' While some of the people in Bongino's replies seemed persuaded, and expressed enthusiasm to find out more, others accused him of pumping up another Epstein-style mystery that will never be satisfactorily solved. 'The country is not a reality TV show with cliffhangers and teasers,' AEI senior fellow Robert Pondiscio wrote on X. 'Either tell people what has 'shocked you to your core' or hold your tongue until you can. Anything else breeds suspicion, mistrust, and cynicism.'
