CunninghamPM2

a dude hanging out in West Africa

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Massie: "I think it's ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling 'election fraud'? I mean, we won all the damn elections."

[CunninghamPM2 @CunninghamPM2]

@StateDept Except in America! ICE wrongfully detains Americans constantly. Hell, Trump even wrongfully detains people because he is made about the reflecting pool.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

BREAKING: Trump's Postmaster General just admitted that the USPS won't send mail ballots this fall to anyone in states that do not give the administration their private voter list — this is part of a larger effort to enact mass voter purges and suppression.

[stranger @strangerous10]

Nick McKim completely unloads on Pauline Hanson’s fake patriotism & ‘Israel First’ agenda,
“One Nation is Israel first, US & Donald Trump second, Pauline Hanson herself third & the rest of us dead last.”

A party made up of “white collar criminals”, “sex offenders” & “Nazis”🔥🎯

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist with zero national security experience, is now Acting Director of National Intelligence. And it is going about as badly as you would expect.

Trump handed Pulte control of our entire intelligence apparatus in the middle of a foreign war and directed him to start firing personnel, telling the Wall Street Journal he wanted Pulte to move without worrying about the “shackles” of congressional oversight.

Days into the job, Pulte ordered staff to identify roughly 400 employees to cut from our National Counterterrorism Center. That is the office our government built after 9/11 to track terrorist threats and share warnings across federal agencies before an attack can happen.

Former intelligence officials are already saying what should be obvious to anyone. Gutting the National Counterterrorism Center weakens our ability to detect and stop terrorist plots before they reach American soil.

In my eight years in Congress, I have not seen such incompetence or recklessness.

Pulte is sidelining national security and waving off expert warnings because the President told him to. That is an unforgivable gamble with the safety of American families.

And where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

They took the same oath I did.

Their silence right now is its own kind of betrayal.

https://t.co/YNuiWo3yuS

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Ross Ulbricht built one of the largest anonymous drug marketplaces in internet history, where people bought fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine. People died using drugs purchased through it, and federal prosecutors called it the most sophisticated criminal marketplace the internet had ever seen. He was serving two life sentences for it.

On day two of his presidency, Trump pardoned him. Then he went online and called the prosecutors who put him there scum.

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Pardon Powers.

The presidential pardon was designed as a last resort, a tool of mercy for when the justice system genuinely gets something wrong. It was never meant for this. That’s why I'm pushing for a constitutional amendment to put real limits on this power, for this president and everyone that follows.

[Steve Rattner @SteveRattner]

The top 1% now hold as much wealth as the entire bottom 90% of Americans combined — about 32% each.

This is what runaway inequality looks like, according to the Fed's most recent data released this month.

[CunninghamPM2 @CunninghamPM2]

@RepNancyMace You don’t seem to understand American citizenship law. This is shocking for a Member of Congress to be this ignorant AND this hateful.

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

This is not a normal statement from a normal cabinet member of a major nation. 

This statement from Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir is the statement of a war criminal. 

The racist, extremist Israeli government does not deserve one nickel of U.S. support.

[Jeffrey Goldberg @JeffreyGoldberg]

Donald Trump summoned the Smithsonian's Lonnie Bunch to the White House in order to criticize him for excessive wokeness. But he forgot the purpose of the meeting, and instead talked about Oval Office chandeliers, the space shuttle, his need to rename Dulles Airport after himself, and his desire to paint the Old Executive Office building white. All the details in this story:
https://t.co/dIjguQVYFT

[Steve Rattner @SteveRattner]

The Trump admin waived Russian oil sanctions to mitigate the disastrous impact of the Iran War on energy markets.

Russia made about $22 billion from that 98-day lapse, and roughly 40% of that likely went to fund its illegal war in Ukraine.

@CREACleanAir @KSE_Institute

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

The Pentagon has failed 8 consecutive audits. Why should they be given a dime of taxpayer money if they can’t explain how it’s spent?

[capitolhunters @capitolhunters]

Wired knows who's in the secret society, and points out the conflicts: "executives appear.. with senior officials overseeing their industries" "Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale..in the same society as Army secretary Dan Driscoll" who gives him contracts. That's the Deep State. 10/

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Back in March I wrote 👇 that Iran was winning, and not only strategically but tactically too, but I genuinely didn't expect it would eventually lead - 3 months later - to a complete US surrender.

Because, make no mistake, this is what the "deal" that was just signed is: a complete US surrender, the likes of which it has never signed in its entire history.

Let's compare it with the 2 other most famous US capitulation agreements: the Paris Peace Accords with Vietnam in 1973 and the Doha Agreement with Afghanistan in 2020.

The most significant difference is that both the Vietnam and Afghanistan deals, despite being documents in which the US effectively conceded defeat, contained at least some face-saving provisions for the US.

For instance, in the Vietnam deal, North Vietnam accepted the continued existence of the South Vietnamese government, promised peaceful reunification, agreed to maintain the 17th parallel as a dividing line, and accepted international supervision. These were real (if ultimately unenforceable and unenforced) concessions.

Same thing with the Taliban: they guaranteed Afghan soil would never again be used to attack America, and agreed to negotiate a political settlement with the then Kabul government. The latter commitment was never seriously pursued - but both existed and gave the US a narrative: at least it could claim its post-9/11 objective had been secured on paper.

The deal with Iran is completely different: it doesn't contain a single meaningful concession from Iran. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is merely the reversal of a wartime measure they took in response to the US-Israeli attack. And the "reaffirmation" that Iran won't build nuclear weapons is just this: a reaffirmation of a position Tehran has had for decades.

As a reminder, there is a 2003 fatwa by Khamenei that forbids the production and use of any form of weapon of mass destruction, so "reaffirming" it costs Iran exactly nothing.

Meanwhile, the list of concessions and costs on the US side is staggering:
- Permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon
- A US pledge to respect Iran's sovereignty and not interfere in its internal affairs
- Full lifting of the naval blockade
- Withdrawal of all US forces from the region within 30 days after the final agreement
- A $300 billion reconstruction and development fund for Iran
- Termination of all sanctions: UN, IAEA, and every unilateral US sanction, primary and secondary
- Immediate Treasury waivers for Iranian oil exports and all related banking, insurance, and shipping services
- Full release of all frozen Iranian funds and assets, to be spent however Iran's central bank sees fit

So very concretely this is the US agreeing to 1) end the war and withdraw its forces, 2) end all hostile measures towards Iran that were in place before the war (the sanctions, the frozen funds, the interference in internal affairs, etc.), and 3) send hundreds of billions of dollars in what are, effectively, war reparations.

If that's not a complete surrender, I genuinely don't know what is.

And, cherry on the cake, in an absolutely perfect touch of historical irony, Trump literally signed this surrender agreement in Versailles (I'm not kidding: https://t.co/VLSduQtRJW).

History rhymes, but rarely this loudly, all the more because the historical 1919 Versailles Treaty was also signed in June!

Of course, it's fair - very fair, even - to suspect that Trump will not honor this deal. If he's proven anything in his political career, it's that he is agreement-incapable. Plus there's the Israel dimension: the document does say that the war should "end on all fronts, including Lebanon," but Israel has already made clear it considers itself unbound by the agreement.

As such, what I suspect will happen - as I wrote the day the MOU was announced (https://t.co/Hbh669Gvta) - is that the deal will split in two. The immediate concessions - blockade lifted, oil flowing, funds unfrozen - will happen (some already have) and probably stick, because reversing them would mean restarting the very war the US humiliatingly lost.

The deferred provisions - the negotiations on nuclear, the sanctions schedule, the reconstruction fund - will probably enter permanent limbo because, as I wrote then, the US won't get better terms on nuclear after showing they couldn't get them on the battlefield. And given sanctions relief and the $300 billion are tied to a final deal that requires resolving the nuclear question, and the nuclear question requires leverage the US no longer has, the whole structure is circular and never-ending.

On the Israel-Lebanon question, things are trickier. Israel, in some way, finds itself in a South Vietnam situation with its patron having negotiated a surrender over its head. The difference is that Thieu was too weak to sabotage the Paris Accords, whereas Netanyahu isn't: his ability to escalate in Lebanon gives him a de facto veto over the deal's most fragile provision.

Realistically speaking though, it's hard to imagine the US willing to restart the war, which is its own form of deterrence: if Israel keeps striking Lebanon in violation of the ceasefire, Iran can now retaliate with far greater confidence that the US won't come to the rescue - which ought to give Israel pause.

In effect, the end result is that the US security umbrella over Israel just got a lot thinner. Which means that, for the first time in a long time, Israel has to calculate the cost of provoking Iran without assuming the US will absorb the consequences. This points towards restraint, at least for any rational actor. But then again, the same government that dragged the US into this war in the first place has not exactly been a model of strategic rationality...

In any case, it's undeniable that Iran has just achieved something no other country has managed, ever: it withstood the full force of the US and Israeli military machines, and extracted a surrender agreement that makes the Paris Peace Accords look like a US victory by comparison.

To refer back to the title of my article below 👇: this was the first multipolar war, and Iran has definitely earned its place as one of the poles.

[CunninghamPM2 @CunninghamPM2]

@WhiteHouse @CarlaBNatSec Dumbest war in American history. Americans are paying hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild what we destroyed. Fuel prices through the roof. Fertilizer shortages around the world.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

I know people on here think having a trillion dollars is fine but it is simply not possible to have any semblance of a democracy when wealth is concentrated like that: https://t.co/bB2fUyWfiR

[CunninghamPM2 @CunninghamPM2]

I can’t believe I’m agreeing with this guy

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Henry Ford was generally a racist and a bad person, but he understood something our current broligarchs have completely forgotten.

He said: I have to pay my workers enough to afford the products they’re building.

Give them a house, decent schools, reasonable healthcare.

If I do that, they’re not descending on my Dearborn mansion with pitchforks while I eat my caviar.

We’ve lost that plot entirely.

We have broligarchs who want to be trillionaires and they’re missing the lesson that a deeply flawed man figured out a hundred years ago.

Capitalism works, but only if people believe the game is worth playing.

Right now they don’t and history is very clear about what comes next.

[ThePatrioticBlonde™🇺🇸 @ImBreckWorsham]

Reading what a traitor I am in my comments.

So, JUST TO BE FAIR..... let me get this straight.....

We taxpayers just blew $75 billion to attack Iran, UNPROVOKED, then dropped another $300 billion to REBUILD it, even though it didn't NEED rebuilding before we ATTACKED it, (unprovoked) all so we could "reopen" a Strait of Hormuz that was already OPEN before we ATTACKED Iran (unprovoked), wind up with $4 gas for NO REASON and I'M the bitch for pointing it OUT?

That's fair.

Sounds legit. 👌

[Luke Miani @LukeMiani]

> save $15M a year by cutting a screwworm monitoring program

> screwworm outbreak almost immediately

> $1B to combat it

Government efficiency

[CunninghamPM2 @CunninghamPM2]

@statedeptspox @StateDept @POTUS @SecRubio @ufc This is absolutely egregious