Tag: nato
Serial Liar Trump Is Angrily Overselling His 'Bomb Iran' Mission

Serial Liar Trump Is Angrily Overselling His 'Bomb Iran' Mission

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called reporters “scum” for not parroting his rosy assessment of the air strikes he ordered against Iran last week. Trump has frequently lied on a dizzying array of issues but now appears to believe that his claim that Iran’s nuclear capability has been decimated should be accepted without question.

Appearing at a NATO meeting at The Hague in the Netherlands, Trump was asked by NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell to address a recently leaked assessment from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency that indicates the strikes did not achieve Trump’s goal.

“Real scum, real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. It should be the opposite, you should make [the pilots] heroes and heroines,” Trump said.

Trump also claimed he got a “call from Missouri” that said the pilots who flew the missions were “devastated” because reporters were “trying to minimize the attack.”

Trump constantly claims that he receives phone calls from unnamed figures that reinforce the falsehoods and narratives that he wants to promote. Those claims are part of his tradition about lying on issue after issue, big and small.

An assessment of the bombing leaked from the Pentagon to CNN indicates that the bombing did not destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program. The report did say that the attack set Iran’s nuclear timeline back a few months.

Trump has argued that the bombing runs “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s facilities, a sentiment echoed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Trump also called the media “scum” on Tuesday when reporting first called into question his proclamation about the success of the strikes.

There has yet to be a publicly available, independent assessment of what the bombings accomplished. But what is known is that Trump has a record of serial lying and is the current leader of the Republican Party, which was infamous for lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under former President George W. Bush.

Trump has lied dozens of times about the results of the 2020 election, falsely arguing that he defeated former President Joe Biden, who handily won the election that year. Trump recently lied and claimed that “professional agitators” were behind protests against his attacks on immigrants in Los Angeles. Trump has lied about issues like egg prices, falsely describing price declines under his presidency despite economic data showing otherwise.

Perhaps most infamously, Trump lied for nearly a decade about former President Barack Obama, in the process becoming the most notable figure pushing the racist and thoroughly debunked birther conspiracy that Obama was born abroad and was ineligible for the presidency.

In fact, during his first four-year term in office from 2017 to 2021, the Washington Postcatalogued 30,573 lies from Trump.

A person with a track record like that needs far more evidence than just his verbal assurances to sell the world on the result of something as serious as a military strike.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Leaked Intel On Iran Strike Dud Punctures Trump Bluster At NATO Summit

Leaked Intel On Iran Strike Dud Punctures Trump Bluster At NATO Summit

President Donald Trump arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday in high spirits, eager to showcase his role in orchestrating both a bold military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran. But his confident demeanor quickly unraveled just hours after touchdown, when a leaked U.S. intelligence report directly contradicted his repeated claims that the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The leaked assessment, which originated from within the Pentagon and was first reported by CNN, painted a far less triumphant picture. It concluded that the strikes had only delayed Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a few months. This finding cast serious doubt on the sweeping victory Trump had been touting.

The revelation punctured the narrative he hoped to dominate the NATO summit: that of a decisive leader who achieved what his predecessors had not.

Trump had begun using the term “obliterated” even before receiving his first battle damage assessment, and he closely monitored which members of his administration echoed the language, per the Times.

According to the report, the leak not only undercut his version of events but also raised fresh questions about whether he had misled allies and the American public in the lead-up to the summit.

Trump, the report notes, had hoped to bask in praise from NATO leaders, including Secretary General Mark Rutte, who privately applauded his “decisive action” in a note that Trump eagerly shared on social media.

“That was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do,” Rutte wrote in a message to the president. “It makes us all safer.”

Instead of celebrating an unqualified military success, Trump found himself fending off questions about the accuracy of his statements and the true impact of the strikes. The leak cast a shadow over what was meant to be a diplomatic victory lap, the Times report said.

When asked about the leak by a reporter Tuesday, Trump said, "CNN is scum."

The Times report claims that by the end of the day, Trump’s mood had notably shifted because of the leak.

"The upbeat demeanor crumbled once the intelligence reports started to leak out, with Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, blasting the findings as 'flat-out wrong' and a 'clear attempt to demean President Trump,'" the report stated.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Donald Trump Has A Family Policy -- Now Stop Laughing!

Donald Trump Has A Family Policy -- Now Stop Laughing!

The animating beliefs of this administration range from dangerously wrong to head-spinningly crazy. Tariffs are in the first tranche, along with the myth that NATO has been ripping off the United States for decades, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans and that "He who saves his country commits no crime" (just to name four). The beliefs that vaccines cause autism, that fluoridated water is a public health threat, that threatening allies and neighbors enhances national security, and that taxing foreign holders of Treasuries would be a good way to solve the (nonexistent) problem of trade deficits belong in the second tranche.

The Trump administration marries insane ideas to gross, bullying tactics. But even when this administration stumbles upon an idea that is not deranged, illegal or immoral, it has the capacity to do great harm. I'm thinking of the reported plans to encourage marriage and motherhood. The administration is considering proposals to award mothers $5,000 "baby bonuses," to reserve 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships to parents, to reduce the costs of IVF (not clear how) and to fund programs to educate women about ovulation cycles (I kid you not).

I've been promoting marriage for decades, not as part of a religious agenda but as the result of studying the social science literature demonstrating that marriage makes adults happier than non-marriage and that stable, two-parent homes are the very best environment for raising children, building thriving neighborhoods and reducing crime, homelessness and substance abuse.

The Trump administration cannot adopt this message without turning it rancid. If you hope to persuade people, you must start by showing good faith — that your intentions for them are good. This crowd has displayed open contempt for women — at least those women who vote for the other party or otherwise assert their individuality. In light of the president's apparent requirement that any nominee for a major cabinet role have at least one serious accusation of sexual misconduct, the vice president's sneers about "childless cat ladies" seem mild. Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Linda McMahon all trailed accusations that would have been disqualifying in any other administration. (Only Gaetz was undone.)

But then, the thrice-married, adulterous president himself has been found legally liable for sexual assault in the E. Jean Carroll case and has been accused of similar behavior half a dozen or more times by other women. What that may mean is that Trump must convince himself and others that accusations of sexual misconduct are always and everywhere "fake news." Also, he just doesn't give a damn. Trump has endorsed and campaigned with sexual predators ranging from Roy Moore to Herschel Walker, and one of his first acts as president in the second term was to effectuate the release of Andrew and Tristan Tate from custody in Romania on rape and human trafficking charges. (So they can effectuate releases from foreign countries.)

The Trump crowd's approach to fertility is not the joy of parenthood or the warmth of close families. It's more like the "great replacement" theory made flesh. As Elon Musk admits, he wants a "legion" of offspring "before the apocalypse" and is creating a harem to achieve it. He has been married but is also father to at least 14 children by four different women and willing to outsource his semen upon request. "No romance or anything," he explained to one baby mama, "just sperm."

It's remarkable to consider that Musk is a pin-up for the GOP these days. I well remember the party of "family values." Musk is the most famous progenitor of illegitimacy in the world. (William Bennett, call your office.)

The Trump crowd worries about America's declining fertility rate and yet treats immigration as a mortal threat.

You don't convince women in a free country to have more babies for the sake of the fatherland. If you want to encourage family formation and increase the birth rate, you can't treat women as breeder mares. It helps to model good behavior. That includes being good husbands who don't cheat on their wives, good fathers who actually live with their kids, and good parents who don't commit or condone adultery.

Baby bonuses have been tried in other countries with poor results. Hungary, Singapore, South Korea, and Russia have all adopted policies to support families that are far more generous than what the Trump administration is considering, but the results have been disappointing.

There are many things governments can do to ease the burden on parents — tax credits, parental leave and banning smartphones in schools, among other ideas — but policymakers should keep their expectations in check about the effect these initiatives will have on fertility. If they just make family life easier and better, that's a good start. But frankly, we'd all be better off if the Trump people stay far away from family policy, lest they besmirch it.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Cowardice Of Conservative And Business Elites Led Straight To This Disaster

The Cowardice Of Conservative And Business Elites Led Straight To This Disaster

A Wall Street Journal editorial described President Donald Trump's tariffs as the "dumbest trade war in history." It's important not to overrate intelligence, even in leaders. Judgment and maturity may be more crucial. But Trump is no ordinary dunce. He displays a stubborn stupidity that threatens to plunge the world into chaos and potentially into depression.

It should go without saying that our constitutional system was never meant to be so vulnerable to the whims and fantasies of one man. Nothing as critical as the entire world trading system or the maintenance of the NATO alliance should be decided by which side of the bed the emperor woke up on today, but due to the cowardice and cupidity of the GOP and others, we've gradually lost our antibodies to strongman rule and find ourselves bowing before a power-drunk man/child.

His peculiar blind spots and obsessions now threaten everyone. All of those supposedly worldly-wise Wall Street types who either supported or did not oppose Trump's return to power deserve some of the blame today. One thinks of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who has a long history opposing tariffs but was becalmed to the point where he told a Davos audience in January that tariffs are a good "economic weapon" and that critics should "get over it."

This kind of insouciance in the face of a severe economic threat is breathtaking. Even if Wall Street executives and others who chose to believe that Trump was preferable to Kamala Harris were indifferent to the civil liberties implications of a Trump second term and uninterested in public health and the administration of justice, you'd think they'd be interested in their own bottom lines. You would think they might have noticed that one of Trump's only long-term convictions was that America had been victimized by world trade and that tariffs would solve all of our problems.

Trump has an obsession with trade. He always has, and his views are wrong historically, economically and even morally. At his Rose Garden declaration of "Liberation Day" he repeated his oft-stated view that the U.S. has been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far" for 50 years and more. Long-term trade deficits, he declared, are a "national emergency" that "threaten our way of life."

In vain did a procession of first-term advisers attempt to disabuse Trump of his absurd views about trade. They patiently explained that it is Americans, not foreigners, who pay tariffs. He was deaf to this. They noted that trade deficits are not a measure of wealth, far less who is "winning" or "losing." If we buy coffee from Costa Rica and they buy nothing from us (which isn't true, but just as an illustration), in no sense has Costa Rica taken advantage of, far less "raped," America. We gave them dollars and they gave us coffee in return.

That is called commerce, and nearly every exchange between a willing buyer and willing seller yields two winners, not one. Besides, as those first-term Trump advisers also tried to convey, those Costa Rican businessmen then take those dollars and buy American assets.

The global trading system the United States shepherded into existence in the post-World War II era has been a boon to people around the globe, and no one has benefitted more than the people of the United States. We've run trade deficits with many nations for many reasons. Sometimes that's a reflection of savings versus investment rates in other countries (think Germany). Sometimes it's a reflection of relative wealth (Vietnamese consumers can't afford to purchase as many American products as Americans can afford to purchase of Vietnamese products).

But in any case, it doesn't really matter because countries that run big trade deficits can be super wealthy. The United States has run trade deficits since the late 1970s and has also been the richest nation on the globe during those years. In fact, even during Trump's first term, which he has widely proclaimed to have been the greatest economy in the history of the universe, we ran consistent trade deficits. In fact, the trade deficit increased during the first Trump administration from $481 billion in 2016 to $679 billion in 2020.

In a saner world, Trump's delusions would not guide U.S. policy. They'd be checked by his own advisers, the Congress and the public. But here we are.

This is not the first time in history that a leader's misconceptions have been implemented on a broad scale, but you have to reach into the history of dictatorial regimes to find parallels. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the ideas of agronomist Trofim Lysenko gained acceptance not because they were true but because Stalin wanted them to be true. Lysenko promised a new golden age with dramatically improved crop yields that would transform even Siberia into a paradise of orchards and gardens. This was touted by Stalin as the "new biology" and ruthlessly enforced. Naysayers were arrested and executed. The result was repeated famines in the USSR and in China, where Mao also embraced the fallacy. Millions of men, women and children starved to death because a leader was able to impose his fantasies on a whole society.

Global trade is an engine of prosperity, and one man's stupidity now threatens billions.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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