A competent administration would’ve worked to keep Meloni onside as a natural ally since 2024. They managed to not only fuck that up, but now he torches any chance for a do-over. It’s astonishing, really, how thoroughly narcissism, arrogance, and idiocy has dismantled Trump’s agenda.

"Our testing was done in action already," Arter added. "We don't have to do any more testing after that." Pretty sure that’s not how that works

Y’all 😵‍💫 It’s a content-first administration through and through. Even internally. Even when millions of lives are at stake.

I fear this may be fake but I am very much hoping it isn’t.

"unironic butlerian jihad guy" has a lot more in common with the unabomber than people are willing to admit

Lmaooo

The Lego videos are funny. The situation is not. A theocracy that blocks its own people's access to the internet is currently running circles around the United States in the information space of an active conflict. That does not happen by accident. open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

Oh man, Strategy Cheese is getting some rancid press. Heh.

The Virginia NO campaign has employed some of the dirtiest campaign tactics I’ve ever seen. Invoking Obama and trans color schemes in TV ads, Black narrators, focusing on how minority disenfranchisement (⁉️). Received this today. Cc: @bluevirginia.bsky.social

Oh word? Summers are always pretty brutal for presidents even under normal conditions…

A recently developed Defense Department program was meant to reduce civilian harm during military operations. But months before the Iran war, the mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority.

There's a pretty obvious pro-Pahlavi bot network coursing thru X. Fascinating stuff.

This is really impressive speed tbh. Not much gets by Powell.

Politico ran a piece yesterday on oil executives beating down the doors of the WH 🙃

The Iran Nuclear Deal was the most effective non-proliferation agreement ever negotiated. Trump threw it away, promising a “bigger, better deal” he never delivered. He put us on the path to war and the most serious defeat in US history.There was another path. open.substack.com/pub/joecirin...

New at CBS News - Army survivors of deadly attack in Kuwait dispute Pentagon's account, say unit "was unprepared" to defend itself — this is a photograph of the tactical operations center struck by an Iranian drone on March 1. www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-wa...

I have seen one good example of this plate

I hate to break it to people but a post-US led world order doesn’t look like global socialism. It looks like the Warring States Period but the states have nukes.

Or put differently, punish those NATO members who sought to uphold international law.

Netanyahu wanting the war was an important factor, but he’s wanted it all along and no previous president did it and Harris wouldn’t have done it. It hangs on Trump

So POTUS announced a ceasefire without all parties understanding the contours of the framework? The SecDef, CJCS, and PressSec took a victory lap based on a misunderstanding? No “big money” to be made? Iran should not start the reconstruction process? We’re vibing our way thru this. Not great!

The US press is going to hide this from you but the reason there are "strikes on Lebanon" and "confusion over the strait" is that TRUMP RANDOMLY AGREED TO THE CEASEFIRE TO ESCAPE HIS OWN BLUFF WITHOUT WORKING OUT ANY OF THESE DETAILS

The only player that truly seemed desperate for a ceasefire was Trump. Was only a matter of time, IMO, before one of the parties tried to scuttle it. The only question was whether or not they’d try to maintain deniability.

Wait, the *Defense Department* dressed down the Vatican's ambassador and then we invoked Avignon??? We are issuing implied military threats against the Pope???

They’re banking on folks not understanding the difference between strategic and tactical success (and that’s not a bad bet!). The *enormous* risk they’re opening themselves to is: “well it turns out we’re going to have to utterly defeat Iran for a THIRD time in less than a year”. No dry powder left.

Beginning to think that vibeplomacy led by a failson and a real estate developer may not extricate us from this war of choice.

On thing that stood out to me in that Swan/Haberman piece about the run-up to the war was: The Comms team were present for the final SitRoom meeting and Treasury, Energy, and ODNI (I know) weren’t… Well:

We even got what we wanted out of the negotiations to end the War of 1812. That’s probably not going to happen in this case.

Keeping HEU is pretty big card too…

Really makes you miss the strategic genius of Tommy Franks

Ok on a serious note, it cannot be exaggerated how bad formalized Iranian control of the Strait is for the world. The entire global economy rests on an American guarantee of free commercial shipping. That guarantee is gone. We don’t know exactly what will happen but none of it will be good.

If the result of this war is setting up a crypto booth for Iran to create a malign slush fund (and to send a cut to Mr. Trump?), then I’m going to need a whole box of these @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social hats.

This, in its own way, is as delusional and disastrous as his pledge to wipe out their civilization just yesterday.

International Brotherhood of Avuncular Jabronis local 951

Oman and Iran seeing Trump somehow agreed to let them collect their entire GDPs in taxes on shipping

Either (1) a humiliating defeat, leaving America in a weaker geopolitical position and Iran a stronger one, or (2) a brief pause, as incompatible narratives and demands lead to more shooting. No matter what, it’s one of the stupidest, most unnecessary, most harmful US foreign policy choices ever.

worth asking if the choice to ally with a diagnosable narcissist who has constantly proven himself willing to abandon any ally to save his own skin might have backfired for certain governments

Hard to see how this isn’t an unambiguous W for Iran. FFS…

Oh if this is what the deal actually looks like we lost this fucking war

Good. Now are the Israelis and IRGC on the same page?

The Pakistanis have thrown the lifeline. He needs to take it.

this stuck with me. one more point. we haven’t seen a story like this - a large chunk of the top cabinet tossing the president under the bus by talking to an elite paper - since george w bush’s 2nd term. & even then not until the final year when it was clearly a failed presidency.

“Even Richard Nixon, the author of the “madman theory”… never publicly threatened to wipe out Vietnam.” Nixon remained frustratingly silent during the Christmas Bombings so they would be viewed as cold and calculating as possible. Trump, by contrast, masks his weakness by loudly projecting terror

My best friend and personal hero was killed by an Iranian aligned group too. I don’t want more to meet the same fate so he can somehow be avenged. Absolutely absurd.

Of course he was. None of the uniforms wanted to stand on it and resign, and so its theirs too

Two utterly reprehensible combatants.