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Matt Gaetz to have show on pro-Trump network OANN
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was President-elect Donald Trump’s first pick to be attorney general before removing his name from consideration, will have his own show on far-right, pro-Trump One America News Network, Gaetz’s wife, Ginger Gaetz, and the network’s website confirmed Tuesday morning.
Gaetz’s next steps have been unclear after he stepped down from Congress and but then withdrew from consideration to be the next U.S. attorney general, facing the release of a House Ethics Committee report about past misconduct allegations. CNN first reported Gaetz would have his own show on OANN.
Gaetz’s wife said in a social media post that the show, called The Matt Gaetz Show, will launch in January.
OANN has a reputation of being friendly toward Trump, and settled a defamation lawsuit with voting machine company Smartmatic following the network’s 2020 election coverage. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump repeated baseless claims about voter fraud that pushed by the network, and OANN personality Chanel Rion amplified baseless claims that there was voter in the 2020 presidential election.
The network was dropped by DirecTV in 2022, although it is still carried on Verzion FIOS and other distributors, and in 2020, YouTube suspended OANN’s account for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy.
The new show comes just weeks after Gaetz resigned from Congress immdiately after Trump announced his intention to nominate him as Attorney General, putting in question the release of a report stemming from a yearslong House Ethics Committee investigation into whether he engaged in sexual miscondut. House Republicans ultimately voted to block the release of the report since Gaetz was no longer a member of Congress.
CBS News
Earthquake rocks Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, deaths feared, U.S. embassy damaged
A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one housing the embassies of the U.S. and other nations. A witness told Agence France-Presse of bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told the Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I’ve experienced in my 21 years living in Vanuatu and in the Pacific Islands. I’ve seen a lot of large earthquakes, never one like this,” he said.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 35 miles, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the U.S, French and other embassies had been crushed under higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor housed the U.S. embassy, but that couldn’t be immediately confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “considerable damage” to the mission, the U.S. embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a message on social media. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, suffered “significant damage,” a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office said, adding that, “New Zealand is deeply concerned about the significant earthquake in Vanuatu, and the damage it has caused.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu, said, “There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, and most mobile networks were cut off, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, (the) kind(s) of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and that other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to three feet forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
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