President Donald Trump held a conference call with the leaders of several Middle Eastern nations on Saturday to discuss a possible agreement between the United States and Iran. The Gulf states that joined the call were Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, Reuters reported. The call started at 1 p.m. […]
As President Donald Trump appears to inch closer toward authorizing a major U.S. military operation this weekend, renowned international security expert Robert Pape warned the president on Saturday that he may very well be walking directly into what he called “the biggest trap yet.”Reporting suggests that the Trump administration is actively preparing to launch a new wave of strikes against Iran, and officially end the ongoing but weak U.S.-Iran ceasefire. The president teased a full U.S.-takeover of Iran Saturday morning, and later said there was a “solid” chance he decides to blow Iran “to kingdom come” by Sunday.“The administration may be approaching a dangerous decision point. And the real danger is not simply another round of strikes on Iran,” wrote Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, writing on his Substack. “The real danger is that Trump may be approaching the biggest Smart Bomb Trap yet.”The “Smart Bomb Trap,” as he called it, was the notion that a quick resolution to the U.S. war against Iran could be achieved with “one precise strike” targeting Iran’s new supreme leader or senior leadership. As noted by Pape, the U.S. war against Iraq began with a series of strikes targeting former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, similar to how the ongoing U.S. war against Iran began with strikes targeting former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.With the U.S. war against Iran hammering Americans’ pocketbooks both at the gas pump and elsewhere, and with the GOP’s midterm outlook growing more dire, such an option would be hard to resist for Trump, Pape argued.“The possibility that one precise strike could suddenly end the crisis, collapse the regime, restore deterrence, and produce a dramatic political victory,” Pape wrote.“For any president under pressure, that possibility becomes extraordinarily difficult to resist. Especially for Trump, whose instinct in crisis has repeatedly been to search for decisive demonstrations of strength through precision force.”However, the unique and asymmetrical circumstances that have allowed Iran – which has military spending roughly 130-times less on its military – to block the Trump administration from achieving its stated war objectives, Pape cautioned, could very well backfire spectacularly.“Iran would still retain dispersed missile capability, underground infrastructure, asymmetric escalation pathways, and – most importantly – the ability to widen economic disruption across the Gulf faster than Washington could stabilize it,” Pape wrote.“Especially if the US attacks Iran’s leaders, retaliation could well include Saudi, UAE, and Kuwaiti leaders – the leadership of countries that Iran would surely like to weaken decisively as US allies crucial to future basing of more military power against Iran in the future. That is the key asymmetry in this war.”
A framework agreement to end the Iran war is being “fine-tuned,” according to a security official from Pakistan, who has been helping media negotiations between Iran and the US.
Over the last 12 months, the Trump administration has moved to use nearly every tool it has to deliver a nuclear energy renaissance in the United States and power its race for artificial intelligence dominance. Saturday marks one year since President Donald Trump signed four executive orders aimed at bolstering the nuclear energy industry and […]
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Appearing on MS NOW on Saturday morning, the New York Times' Glenn Thrush claimed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has no one to blame but himself as he gets battered by Democrats, Republicans and in the press as he does Donald Trump’s bidding.And it shows in his face, he noted.As bad as Donald Trump’s week was, the man who took fired Attorney General Pam Bondi’s place was raked over the coals in a Senate hearing and then was berated by Republican senators in a closed-door meeting described as "incredibly hostile."That led Thrush to tell the hosts of “The Weekend” that Blanche has looked deflated in all of his public appearances.“The one thing you can say about Todd Blanche is you definitely want to play poker with the guy, because just look at his face I mean, he looks miserable,” he observed. “He, like, wears his agony on his face and he's just being he's just reaping what he has sown as somebody who refuses to say no to Donald Trump, he has simply not turned down any request.”“And this, as we were reporting and figuring out how this all came down, it seems that this huge thing that he has sort of blown up the Senate and created this enormous rift in his party was an expedient so that they could get out of having to actually pay Donald Trump money, which Blanche and folks at the White House actually believed would have been a bridge too far,” he added.“So believe it or not, this fund, this weaponization fund, which everyone is calling a slush fund with no rules, no guidelines on who will distribute the money, and apparently no guardrails was actually considered to be the best of other alternatives. This was actually their best possible plan,” he revealed. - YouTube youtu.be
Brought on to discuss acting Attorney General Todd Blanche using his DOJ position to boost the fortunes of Donald Trump, the president’s niece lashed out at Trump’s kids who are also benefiting.Speaking with MS NOW host Ali Velshi, psychologist Mary Trump attempted to explain why Blanche is gaming the system for his boss, particularly by approving a sweetheart deal that blocks the IRS from reviewing tax filings that Trump, his family and his associated businesses made in the past. As the New York Times reported on Saturday, “…the IRS faces its most profound legal and ethical test yet: a demand to drop any audits of Mr. Trump, his family members or their ‘affiliates’.”Asked by host Velshi why the president is getting away with such abject corruption, Mary Trump replied, “Because the corrupt, illegitimate supermajority of the Supreme Court made it clear that Donald can never be held accountable as long as he was acting, no matter how criminally in his official capacity.”“And now, again, the DOJ, which is, let's be clear, Donald Trump's personal defense firm,” she remarked. “And you said earlier, Todd Blanche is his personal attorney, and has just said that Donald and his useless children can do whatever they want with their businesses and with American taxpayer dollars. And there will be no accountability whatsoever.”“This is the thing,” she later added. “I mean, this fits right into Donald's psychopathologies. He's always needed to convince people, including himself, that he's a winner. Right? So, therefore, he deserves to win and he should be allowed to do whatever it takes in order for him to win, including cheating by rigging a system in his favor.”"[It’s] much deeper than that, and this is the problem,” she added. “Donald knows that he's not a winner, and he is incapable of winning without cheating. What is mind-blowing is the long line of people who continue to be willing to engage in the most abject sycophancy and corruption in order to help him, and that's why we have to stop seeing him as the main problem. Right? And look at the system, and particularly the Republican Party and the corrupt supermajority in the Supreme Court.” - YouTube youtu.be