Culture of Truth

Author of The Bobblespeak Translations🌊

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Ryan Goodman has the right frame and the NBC reporting fills in the piece that makes this more than a pattern story.

Hegseth pressed Army Secretary Driscoll for months to pull these officers. Driscoll said no. So Hegseth did it himself, without the legal authority to selectively remove individual names - the system is specifically designed to prevent that.

When Gen. Randy George asked to meet and discuss the blocked promotions, Hegseth refused. Then fired him. Mid-term, two years before his tenure was up.

Nine officials. All four branches. “Not a single service has been immune.”

The Pentagon called it fake news. They haven’t disputed a name.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The Army Chief of Staff, a combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, asked Pete Hegseth why he was blocking the promotions of two Black officers and two female officers who had earned them.

Hegseth refused to answer. Then he fired him.

Nine U.S. officials told NBC News that Hegseth has blocked or delayed promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military.

Hegseth has now fired or sidelined more than a dozen generals and admirals.

He is an out-of-control, unqualified former TV host and nobody in the Republican Party will say a word about it because they don’t want to make Trump angry.

https://t.co/WgdehtOAC3

[Acyn @Acyn]

“I'm really scratching my head because I voted Republican, and most of us in the fishing industry did, and we're not seeing the the positives come out of it, why we voted that way.”

[Culture of Truth @Bobblespeak]

Unbelievable

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Rep. Scott Perry: "I would actually like to see Iran pay for this. Whether it's $20 billion or $200 billion, whatever it is. Look, they've been at war with us for 47 years and it's finally being ended by the president, which is awesome, but it comes at a cost. They have resources. They could pay that bill."

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Tim Miller is identifying something that deserves more traction than it is getting inside the larger Iran coverage.

Kash Patel removed Iranian counter-intelligence specialists. The stated basis was their connection to the Trump classified documents case. Some of those classified documents detailed Iranian war plans. The removal happened immediately before a military escalation against Iran.

Follow that chain slowly.

The professionals fired for knowing about the files are among the professionals with the deepest operational knowledge of the adversary those files described. The loyalty test that produced their removal created an intelligence gap in the specific domain where the gap is most dangerous. And it happened on a timeline that suggests the score-settling did not pause to account for the war that was coming - or worse, that it did not need to.

Non-partisan intelligence professionals are not a political convenience. They are the institutional memory that keeps decision-makers from operating blind inside an active conflict. Purging them for involvement in a legal process that touched documents about the current enemy is not personnel management. It is the definition of placing personal protection above collective defense.

A republic does not get to call itself strong while punching holes in its own intelligence shield. The people flying the missions over Iran right now deserved better than the vendettas that preceded them.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Hegseth on how US troops died: “Every once in a while you might have a squirter that makes it's way through”

[Culture of Truth @Bobblespeak]

also Minneapolis

[Jim VandeHei @JimVandeHei]

🚨🚨Trump's lethal, interventionalist presidency -> No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Trump.
He's attacked seven nations, three of which — Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela — had never been targeted by U.S. military.
https://t.co/gi1TJpASxc

[Jim VandeHei @JimVandeHei]

🚨🚨Trump's lethal, interventionalist presidency -> No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Trump.
He's attacked seven nations, three of which — Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela — had never been targeted by U.S. military.
https://t.co/gi1TJpASxc

[Jonathan Lemire @JonLemire]

“Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff on Sunday that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first” https://t.co/ynSIBVs554

[Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom]

Trump is basically calling up every journalist in his phone to workshop different timelines and goals for his war. In the past two days:

@washingtonpost: the aim is "freedom for the people" of Iran

@axios: maybe we can "end it in two or three days" with a deal

@nytimes: might be "four to five weeks", I have "three very good choices" who might take control in Iran

@abc: actually, nevermind, we killed those choices

He doesn't sound convinced by any of it. He's throwing spaghetti at the wall. Ultimately I suspect he just wants to say he "solved" a problem that has vexed every American president since Jimmy Carter.

But there's no clear idea what that looks like and no plan for how to get there. And there are plenty of possible scenarios in which Trump declares victory and leaves the region with an absolute mess

[Culture of Truth @Bobblespeak]

"Donald the Dove"

[The Associated Press @AP]

BREAKING: President Trump says the U.S. has begun "major combat operations in Iran." Follow AP's live updates. https://t.co/wqnEZUFOM3

[Peter Baker @peterbakernyt]

For the first time since @Gallup began asking the question in 2001, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians (41%) than with Israelis (36%), a seismic shift with profound political implications. https://t.co/Xak5uy3wEq

[Linda @Lindademocat]

@stengel

[Richard Stengel @stengel]

The president campaigned on ending wars, not starting them. With the attack on Iran, he has now launched strikes on 7 other nations. None of these actions have had Congressional authorization. He says Iran was an "imminent threat" to the American people. Really? Do the American people feel that way? The Iranians do not have missiles that can even reach our shores.

[Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸 @Amy_Siskind]

The grift is never ending:
“[W]hile you were championing these illegal tariffs and telling the American public to ‘rest assured, tariffs are not going away,’ your son Brandon Lutnick—as your immediate successor as chairman of your former firm Cantor Fitzgerald—was reportedly betting millions of dollars that they would be struck down by the courts,” Raskin wrote. “Now that the Supreme Court has finally rejected President Trump’s brazen and unlawful power grab, the firm reportedly stands to make extraordinary profits of millions of dollars at the expense of American taxpayers.”
https://t.co/fU9EQdbho8

[Culture of Truth @Bobblespeak]

Trump supported invading and occupying Iraq

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Trump is now the “neocon” that he has ridiculed for all of his public life.

Trump has just openly called for regime change in Iran. He is using the American armed forces to facilitate that outcome.

This is a complete reversal of what he has been promising his supporters for decades.

[Richard @ricwe123]

Imagine starting a major war with Iran over their nuclear program when this is on the official White House website.
😂😂😂

[EU says Elon should not lie abt my blue check @emptywheel]

Reminder that the reasons Trump says he has to start an illegal attack on Iran would not have existed BUT FOR his withdrawal from JPCOA in 2018.

***He*** is responsible for the underlying problem here. No one else.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Guess he changed his mind. Does anyone know why?

[Rodger Williams @kiddwikked]

@ABC