SWANNANOA, North Carolina — A group of former special forces operators who converted the local Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership into a hurricane-relief supply depot is working so efficiently supplying aid to mountain communities that it drew a visit from the commanding general of the U.S. Army’s airborne forces. Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue of the XVIII Airborne Corps from Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, N.C., visited the makeshift Savage Freedoms Relief Operations center on Oct. 15 to see for himself what his commanders had been reporting about the all-volunteer supply chain. “All of the ground force commanders for the the 101st [Airborne] that have been in the area have reported back to General Donahue in their sitreps the effort that this group of volunteers has been doing here in Swannanoa,” said Adam R. Smith, 41, a former Army Green Beret who runs the depot. “Specifically how effective we have been in integrating with them on the ground and and how effective they’ve been in supporting our efforts on the ground,” Smith told Blaze News. Before Smith set up the military-style supply chain under his Savage Freedoms Relief Operations charity, he had to rescue his own family when rains from Hurricane Helene caused devastating floods and mudslides across Western North Carolina in late September. 'This is going to take years.' Smith was in Texas when the massive hurricane moved inland from Florida and rumbled north, inundating the mountainous area around Asheville, North Carolina. His home in Black Mountain is a short distance from the Broad River, so Smith feared his wife, Megan, 40, and 3-year-old daughter, Tove, were killed by the floods. Smith told the Charlotte Observer newspaper that on Sept. 28, a friend flew him by helicopter to his home and they airlifted his family to safety. It was one of the first Hurricane Helene rescue operations in Western North Carolina. The supply-chain nerve center relies on hundreds of volunteers to process a steady stream of humanitarian aid, sort it, pack it, and load it onto military and civilian helicopters, trucks, utility vehicles, and all-terrain vehicles — whatever mode is needed to get food, water, cold-weather gear, generators, and heaters to the most remote parts of Western North Carolina. Smith said there is a pressing need for cold-weather gear and supplies as nightly temperatures dip into the 30s. Financial donations can be directed to the Savage Freedoms website or a GoFundMe page established to support relief efforts. On Oct. 14, crews loaded huge rolls of hay onto a National Guard Chinook CH-47 helicopter that took off from Savage Freedoms Relief Operations. The flight and others like it will help farmers keep their animals alive while they are cut off from the usual modes of delivery. Recent airlift deliveries included livestock feed for cattle, pigs, goats, and chickens. The twin-rotor heavy-lift Chinook is used to ferry tons of supplies per flight and has also been used for rescuing people trapped by floodwaters. Smith said the U.S. Air Force Reserve supplied air traffic control specialists to help manage flights in and out of the depot. That expertise helped secure an official designation for the base as a helicopter landing zone. “They’re basically tactical air traffic controllers,” Smith told Blaze News. “We were directly supported with air reservists, and in so doing, it gave us a really great capacity to not only have better control of the airspace, but we got an official [notice] from the FAA making this an official HLZ [helicopter landing zone] with a dedicated frequency that became our controlled airspace.” The setup has been very efficient. “We’ve run a lot of sorties with a small number of birds,” Smith said. Operations centered at the depot range from humanitarian relief that goes out by air and ground to specially trained cadaver dogs that search for human remains in the mud and debris. A medical team does wellness checks on local residents and writes or arranges prescription medications “to make sure that people have what they need and can continue to live,” Smith said. Adam Smith (L) of Savage Freedoms Relief Operations gives a tour to Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue, commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps, at the hurricane relief depot in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on Oct. 15, 2024. Donahue (R) autographs a photo and flag at the operations center.Photos by Steve Baker/Blaze News Smith’s operation has an intelligence section that scrapes social media to find leads on people needing help and an operations group that confirms where help is needed and schedules transport. A community outreach team is working on providing potable water for schools and assisted living facilities. “We go out and vet information. Once the information is vetted, then it comes back and either goes to a ground operation or air operation,” he said. “We build pre-specified supply packages, and then once we get the thumbs-up, the supply packages get loaded into helicopter or on a ground vehicle, and then it gets pushed out to that location.” The extensive military experience of most of the volunteers has helped the depot integrate with various U.S. military assets and personnel around North Carolina, Smith said. “At this point, the fluidity of effort and the efficiency by which we’ve been able to mesh with the National Guard units, the air reserve units, and the active-duty units has been one of the principal reasons why we’ve been so effective utilizing [military air support], getting materials and supplies where they need to go,” he said. Elements from the 101st Airborne Division and the 82nd Airborne Division have been active in North Carolina disaster relief. Both are part of the XVIII Airborne Corps under the command of Gen. Donahue. More than 11,000 National Guard members are at work in a half-dozen states helping with recovery from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, according to the National Guard Bureau. More than 3,600 Guard members from 15 states are tasked with Hurricane Helene relief. Maj. Gen. Ronald Win Burkett II, National Guard Bureau director of domestic operations and force development, said more than 750 people have been rescued by Guard personnel in North Carolina alone, including 219 extracted by hoist to hovering helicopters. Adam Smith of Savage Freedoms Relief Operations addresses volunteers at a makeshift supply depot at the Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa, North Carolina, Oct. 15, 2024.Photo by Steve Baker/Blaze News One of the more pressing duties in recent days has been rumor control and disinformation. Smith and some of his leaders set out to contact every church and relief group in Buncombe County to ensure that they know how to request aid and to caution them to be on the watch for scammers looking to steal or hijack supplies. The personal communications also help to dispel rumors that operations like Savage Freedoms are part of some anti-government militia. Smith said the devastation brought by Hurricane Helene is staggering. “The amount of devastation is so much bigger than is being reported by the national news media,” he said. “And this message and the idea that everybody is A-OK is simply not true. The reconstruction effort is not going to take one week or two weeks or a month or two months. This is going to take years.” Smith has extensively supported Savage Freedoms Relief Operations with his own funds. He said he trusts that God will help him “see a way out of it.” “We spent all of our own money, all of our own savings,” Smith said. “As far as this goes, this could either make us or break us, and right now, financially it’s hurting. “But I think if we continue to say yes to God and we continue to do God’s work and we just don’t put fear in our hearts, then I think he’ll provide.” Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Former NFL linebacker Will Compton posted a video uniquely expressing his disdain for a question he received from the Washington Post following an interview with former President Donald Trump.Compton, along with fellow ex-NFL player Taylor Lewan, recently spoke to Trump on their podcast, "Bussin' with the Boys."As expected, the hosts asked Trump about his passion for sports, and the politician revealed he briefly played football but ended up not being a big fan."I played football, too. I didn't particularly like it. ... I didn't like it. I played tight end," Trump began."I could catch the ball good, but I didn't particularly like having some guy that was lifting weights all day long and came from a bad neighborhood ... and he sees me," Trump laughed.Compton and Lewan chuckled at Trump's remarks, and that laughter then became the focal point of a request for comment from the Washington Post.'Articulate, well thought out, [and] insightful.'Compton revealed in subsequent post on X that he received an email from the outlet with the direct question, "What is amusing about Trump's remark?"The unnamed Washington Post reporter specifically quoted Trump's comments and claimed the remarks had received "a lot of attention online.""We knew that there'd be a reaction," Compton said in the video on his X account. "We are getting our first media encounter.""Their question is: Why did we find that amusing?" Compton explained. "You already know what they want to do with this thing," he continued. "You know what kind of picture they want to paint, you know what kind of box they want to put us in. You know their vision for this entire question."The ex-NFL player joked that Trump's remarks were actually an admittance that he isn't tough enough to play football against a player like himself and that Trump would likely get his vertebrae compressed by a "middle linebacker." Compton played linebacker."I'll publicly tell you guys my comment. So Washington Post, here's my comment about why I thought it was amusing."Compton then positioned his phone underneath his crossed legs and farted into the camera.In an additional statement directed at the Washington Post, the 35-year-old asked the outlet to "please cover my response when you write the article."Fans jokingly thanked Compton for "clearing things up" and said he was "articulate, well thought out, [and] insightful."As for Trump, he noted on the podcast that hard hits contributed to his decision not to play football."They were tackling hard, and I had a quarterback without much of an arm," he laughed. "This wasn't high-quality football."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Harris-Walz campaign is a throne of lies – including Tim Walz’s phony hunting venture and Kamala’s new “man-enough” ad, both of which Sara Gonzales can’t help but laugh at. However, yet another lie has been exposed, and it’s a doozy. In the latest scandal, Austrian “plagiarism hunter” Dr. Stefan Weber unearthed an unbelievable amount of plagiarism in the book Harris co-authored with Joan O'C. Hamilton – “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.” According to Dr. Weber, Harris and Hamilton are guilty of 27 instances of plagiarism in the book. Harris’ plagiarism “was independently confirmed by Christopher Rufo,” says Sara, who goes over a handful of examples from Weber’s report. In perhaps the most embarrassing example, Harris plagiarized “a bunch of long passages directly from Wikipedia,” which “is not even a reliable source,” says Sara. “You can write whatever you want in there,” guest Matthew Marsden says of Wikipedia. “Not only did she not actually cite it, she just used a totally unreliable source to begin with and just copy-pasted it,” laughs Sara in disbelief. In addition to Wikipedia, Harris took passages verbatim or nearly verbatim from sources such as the Associated Press, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the Urban Institute. “She is just a total phony, a total fake,” condemns Sara. To hear more about the scandal, watch the episode above. Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Kamala Harris unveiled a race-based "opportunity agenda" Monday, revealing both her desperation to win back increasingly disenchanted black male voters and her prejudicial presumption of what might ultimately motivate members of the cohort. Critics have ridiculed the vice president's identitarian messaging and her cynical attempt to win over black men with the promise of legal marijuana nationwide, noting both that she previously helped prosecute multitudes of black men for marijuana offenses and that there remain far more pressing issues facing all Americans deserving of a presidential candidate's attention. American men, generally speaking, aren't particularly fond of Kamala Harris. This is not only true of likely white and Hispanic male voters, but increasingly of black men as well. A recent NAACP survey found that 26% of black men under 50 years old intend to vote for President Donald Trump, reflective of a broader increase in black support for Trump as compared with the 2020 election. "If Harris doesn't get above 90% [with black men], then she's in trouble," Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton recently told The Hill. "She really needs to energize black voters and figure out a way to get them to turn out, particularly men." Harris surrogates — including former President Barack Obama — recently rushed to brand those black men who might vote for Trump as misogynists, urging "the brothers" to fall in line. Since the strategy of belittlement was clearly not working, Harris has instead tried pandering. A campaign memo titled "Vice President Harris Will Deliver for Black Men" revealed this week how Harris would try to help Americans from that voting bloc now souring on the Democratic Party. "Today Vice President Harris is laying out an Opportunity Agenda for Black Men to provide them with the tools to achieve financial freedom, lower costs to better provide for themselves and their families, and protect their rights," says the memo. Harris promised to: provide 1 million loans up to $20,000 to black entrepreneurs; support education and mentorship programs to help black men "get good-paying jobs in high-demand industries and lead their communities"; give race-based financial support to struggling farmers; support a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets; launch a "National Health Equity Initiative" focused on black men; and legalize recreational marijuana nationally. Concerning the legalization of marijuana, which is presently legal in the District of Columbia and 24 states, the memo stressed that Harris "will also fight to ensure that as the national cannabis industry takes shape, Black men — who have, for years, been overpoliced for marijuana use — are able to access wealth and jobs in this new market." Harris' "opportunity agenda" was met with ridicule. 'I'm not really shocked you see us as this dumb.' Critics suggested, for instance, that Harris' concern over the fallout of drug laws rings hollow, given that she cheerily enforced them while San Francisco district attorney. Some users on X dusted off footage from the 2019 Democratic primary debate where Tulsi Gabbard noted, "[Harris] put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana." According to the Mercury News, Harris oversaw over 1,950 marijuana misdemeanor and felony convictions in San Francisco. Apparently she did so with unusual zeal. After all, the prosecutors working for her reportedly "convicted people on marijuana charges at a higher rate than under her predecessor." Although now a champion of legalized marijuana, evidently figuring it for a winning proposal among black men, Harris fought a ballot measure for marijuana legalization in 2010, going so far as to co-author an opposition argument in the voter guide. In 2016, she remained relatively neutral on the matter when a subsequent ballot initiative passed. The vice president only changed her tune in May 2018 when it became politically expedient to do so — around the time she began plotting her first presidential run. Years later, she told the titular host of "Late Night with Seth Meyers" that "nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed." Not all critics took issue with Harris' apparent hypocrisy and brazen opportunism. Others noted that the vice president appeared to be insinuating that black men disproportionately needed the drug. Matt Antar, chairman of the New York Young Republican Club, noted, "Why is illegal marijuana an 'unjust barrier' for black men? Is she insinuating that all black men are potheads? This is racist." Keith Barry, on the ads team at X, tweeted, "Of all the policy issues, this is what you choose *specifically* for black men? I'm not really shocked you see us as this dumb and that our top concern is to get high or sell drugs." Former NFL running back Herschel Walker wrote, "Every election, men of color become a focal point for Democrats — offering money and now marijuana but no focus on education or jobs. It's all about securing your vote, not creating sustainable change. Where was VP Harris the last 3 years?" Veterans on Duty chairman Jeremy C. Hunt told Fox News' Harris Faulkner that Harris "has this kind of caricature of black men in her head, that we're just these, you know, some California potheads that are sitting there looking for a government handout." While Harris is talking to black men about drugs and crypto, Quenton Jordan, vice president of the Black Conservative Federation, told The Hill that Trump's alternative "message is resonating because he's talking about issues that families talk about at the dinner table and men talk about in the barber shops." Pew Research noted in September that the economy and health care are among the top issues for black male voters in this election. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Former President Donald Trump plans to work the fryer at McDonald's this upcoming weekend, a not-so-subtle jab at his opponent.While visiting the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Sunday, Trump will stop at a McDonald's restaurant to "work the fry cooker," adding the Golden Arches to his resume.'I’m gonna work the french fries because I will have worked longer and harder at McDonald's than she did if I do that even for half an hour.' The Trump campaign has not yet announced at which McDonald's location Trump will work, though it will be a location in Philadelphia, according to WCAU-TV.Last month, Trump said he planned to work at McDonald's to get a leg up on Vice President Kamala Harris, who has repeatedly claimed that she once worked at Mickey D's. Trump, however, believes Harris is not telling the truth."We don't want to hear Kamala's fake promises, even something like she worked very long and hard hours over french fries at McDonald's. She never worked at McDonald's. It was a fake story," Trump said at a campaign rally. "It was a lie. She never worked at McDonald's over the hot french fries."I think I'm going to a McDonald's in two weeks actually, and I’m gonna work the french fries because I will have worked longer and harder at McDonald's than she did if I do that even for half an hour," he added.In August, the Harris campaign released an ad claiming Harris worked at McDonald's "while she got her degree," presumably a reference to her undergraduate days at Howard University. And in an interview with MSNBC last month, Harris said she worked at the fast-food joint "as a student." The legacy media, moreover, has uncritically regurgitated Harris' claim.The problem, however, is there is no evidence to prove it.Snopes, a left-leaning fact-checker, reported:Aside from the above-mentioned news reports, there was no tangible evidence of Harris working at McDonald's as a college student. We reached out to Harris' campaign, as well as McDonald's headquarters, seeking tax records or other proof — which could include photos or videos of her working at the restaurant, employment records or physical items such as a uniform or name tag. We also reached out to Harris' sister, Maya, as well as a close friend from Howard University seeking comment, and looked for public interviews by friends or family members of Harris' to confirm the story, with no luck. Not only is there no evidence of Harris' McDonald's employment, but, importantly, McDonald's has not confirmed that Harris once worked there. If it were true, it would be easy for McDonald's to quell the doubt. That the restaurant has not is telling.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Ready your AX-52 and set On-Lyne's Party of Your Lifetime to play on repeat because it's time to jump into the demo for Warframe's '90s-inspired winter expansion. Ahead of Warframe: 1999's release later this year, developer Digital Extremes has released the first-ever demo for the much-hyped expansion, allowing every player, no matter where they are in the broader story, to try it out. Continue reading After a year of waiting, a Warframe 1999 demo is finally playable right now MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Warframe on Steam Deck, Warframe builds, Warframe codes

See how well Kong: Survivor Instinct combines realistic platforming, challenging combat, and Metroidvania-style exploration with a thrilling quest of survival worthy of the Monsterverse franchise!

While we got a game based on King Kong last year in Skull Island: King Kong that was universally panned by critics (sitting at a "Weak" rating on OpenCritic), did you know there's another game based on the giant ape that's about to be released very soon? Kong: Survivor Instinct is in developmebt by 7Levels and wiill be out next week. If you're curious how game is shaping up, we just got our first gameplay look.

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