Olivia
Online
Ed Kabat
@KabatEd
Retired Army and DoD civilian. Enjoying retired life and fostering dogs with my wife.
Indiana, USA
Joined July 2009
711 Following
143 Followers
714 Posts
I'm watching Pete Hegseth testify and anyone who does so with an open mind, will readily see that he is a caricature. He has delusions that he is starring in an action movie.
He is arrogant and ignorant. His narrative never has any depth. He speaks as if what's good and what's right are not even complex subjects, or debates borne of perspective.
He loves American Exceptionalism but believes that it's only defined by musculature and pomposity. He couldn't care less for us being a shining example for others, or a force for a greater good. He couldn't care less for sharing strategy or being accountable.
He creates lasting disdain for America on a global level like few others ever have and make no mistake - this disdain will permeate for generations.
He doesn't present arguments. He doesn't share justifications. He doesn't care for transparency, and the only thing he cares less for than that, is humanity.
As a behaviorist, I can feel the things he's been accused of - like alcoholism and misogyny and reckless sharing of info - underlying his attitude and every utterance, and you can feel how unapologetic he is for any of it.
He is a brazen politician serving an audience of one.
He is a Made for TV concoction, and a vacuous mishmash of hormones and neurotransmitters.
That he's running the US Defense Dept. is incredibly dangerous and disturbing.
🚩Note: Critical international response to the White House Correspondents Dinner (#WHCD) incident and post-facto “ #ReichstagFire” political implications:
🔥🔥🆘The international 🌏press has been quick to frame the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting as a potential "Reichstag moment," with several non-American outlets expressing skepticism about how the incident will be leveraged for political gain by Trump, his party and core supporters.
Foreign Media Skepticism (Last 4 Hours)
• 🇫🇷Le Monde (France): A lead editorial suggests the incident is being "meticulously staged" to justify a broader crackdown on domestic political opposition. The analysis notes that while the trauma is real, the speed with which the administration pivoted to "enemies within" rhetoric suggests a prepared response.
• 🇩🇪Der Spiegel (Germany): Using the most direct historical parallels, commentators have questioned whether this represents a "Washingtoner Reichstagsbrand" (Washington Reichstag Fire). The skepticism centers on the immediate call for emergency decrees and the suspension of standard legal oversight following the shooting.
• 🇪🇸El País (Spain): Reports focus on the "transactional use of tragedy," noting that the incident provides a convenient distraction from recent setbacks in the Middle East and domestic economic pressures.
• 🇬🇧The Guardian (UK): Coverage emphasizes the "security-industrial complex" of the administration, suggesting the shooting will be used to permanently "fortify" the executive branch against judicial and legislative scrutiny.
The prevailing sentiment in these original-language reports follows three distinct lines of skepticism:
The "Pre-Written" Script:
Observation that the political messaging—targeting specific "radical" groups—emerged before the shooter was even fully identified.
The "Bargaining Chip" Theory:
In Asia, particularly in 🇹🇼Taiwan (United Daily News), there is concern that a "shaken" administration might use the domestic crisis as an excuse to pull back from international commitments, focusing instead on internal "purification."
The "Basket Case" Narrative:
Across European outlets, the shooting is cited as final proof that the U.S. has devolved into a "failed state" where even the most secure elite gatherings are subject to the same chaos as rural schools.
Fareed Zakaria has reached a sharp conclusion this week, and it deserves attention. In his Washington Post column and accompanying video, he argues that Trump's contempt for America's allies has finally crossed a threshold from which there is no easy return.
The point Zakaria keeps coming back to is structural, not emotional. In Washington, Trump's insults toward Europe get treated as routine reality-TV noise. In European capitals, the accumulation has hit a tipping point. The Iran war, layered on top of the Greenland threat, has forced Europe to grow a spine, as he puts it. Leaders are no longer interested in dropping to their knees to stay on Trump's good side.
He opens with a striking anecdote from Shenzhen. A senior Chinese businessman told him that Trump's attack on Iran mattered less to Beijing than his threat to seize Greenland. The moment Trump turned on America's oldest allies, the Chinese understood that Europe would never follow Washington's lead on China.
Zakaria's central argument is the one worth sitting with. Countries have started making long-term policy shifts, and those shifts will soon take on a life of their own. Allies have realised they handed their security and prosperity to Washington, and Washington used that dependence to squeeze them. So they are buying insurance. Many are already in talks with Beijing on energy security and green technology.
The recurring question about Trump's foreign policy has been whether the damage is reversible. Zakaria's answer is becoming clear. Once trust is gone and the hedging begins, it does not unwind.
If you like what you read, follow Gandalv on X: @Microinteracti1
https://t.co/dtlpFlNYaD
@RonFilipkowski This fellow says the truth from this administration is hanging by a thread.
I’d say that thread broke on the day Trump was elected.
Trump is once again groveling before Putin.
Russia has been invited to the G20 summit in the US, – Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Pankin.
Inviting a country with 217,000 documented war crimes to the G20 summit in the US is not diplomacy – it's a disgusting trivialization of mass murder. While Putin and his cronies are already wanted in The Hague on arrest warrants, Trump grovels before the war-criminal state and rolls out the red carpet for it.
This is a disgrace, a slap in the face to every Ukrainian child, every raped woman, and every bombed city. Anyone who brings mass murderers to the table instead of bringing them to justice has lost all moral legitimacy and is spitting on the graves of the victims.
For you all who think the US naval blockade will be successful just bc we have US Navy ships in the gulf …
Ask yourself this. Are we going to sink Chinese, Indian and Pakistani merchant ships defying the blockade or just write their names down and cry?
This will be unenforceable and speed up the collapse of the global economy.
This is Madness disguised as a policy.
So far, Vance’s foreign policy record is yelling at Zelensky for not thanking Trump enough, campaigning for AfD in Germany and Orban in Hungary, getting rejected by the Pope on his invite to the US, and failing in the Iran negotiations.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head. This is so spot on.
Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.
Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”
An hour after announcing his resignation, the US Army Chief of Staff says: "A madman is about to lead the great US military to ruin."
Retired 4-Star Navy Admiral and former Navy SEAL William McRaven on Donald Trump: "Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation."
RETWEET if you stand with Admiral McRaven!
The Man Who Broke America Without Firing A Shot.
Trump stood in front of cameras this week and complained that Australia had let him down. “Australia was not great. I was a little surprised by Australia,” he said.
This is the state of American foreign policy in 2026. Start a war. Tell nobody. Then blame the allies who weren’t invited.
Watch what Trump does every time an ally declines to join his war. He doesn’t move on. He catalogues it. He looks at the camera and says remember this. Remember who showed up and who didn’t. He is not venting. He is building a case. Every ally that hesitates goes on the list. The list that will one day justify the thing he has always wanted to do. Pull America out of NATO entirely. And when that day comes, his base will be ready for it. They will have watched months of footage of ungrateful allies failing America. The argument will write itself.
Now ask yourself one question. Which of Trump’s actions over the past year has actually benefited America?
The tariffs strangling American businesses. The Iran war that closed the Strait of Hormuz and pushed oil above $110. The humiliation of NATO allies. The trade war with Canada. The threats against Denmark. The cosying up to Hungary while Europe quietly builds defence structures that no longer include Washington.
Every single one weakens America. Every single one delivers exactly what Putin has wanted since 2016. A divided West. Expensive energy. An America its allies no longer trust and its enemies no longer fear.
You don’t have to believe in conspiracy to see what is happening. You just have to look at the results. If someone hired a consultant to destroy American global power as efficiently as possible, they would struggle to improve on this.
No friends left except Hungary and a handful of Gulf states. Markets in freefall. Oil above $110. The world’s most critical shipping lane closed.  Allies who were not consulted going on television to say so.
Putin didn’t need an army. He needed one man in one office, systematically burning everything America spent eighty years building.
He got exactly that.
@Microinteracti1
A French senator just said what American media won’t.
Claude Malhuret took the floor of the Luxembourg Palace this week and delivered what may be the most surgical dismantling of the Trump administration ever spoken in a legislative chamber. No diplomatic niceties. Just a point-by-point indictment from an ally who has clearly had enough.
If you missed the video, here are the highlights.
“A year ago, here in France, I compared Trump’s presidency to Nero’s Court. I was wrong. It’s the miracle court. An anti-vaxxer, former heroin addict as Minister of Health,” he said, referring to RFK Jr.
Malhuret’s comparison to the mad Emperor Nero is fitting. It’s said that he fiddled while Rome burned. In Trump’s case, he’s building a ballroom while the entire world goes up in flames.
“A climate-skeptic Minister of Economy. An alcoholic TV host, Minister of the Armed Forces,” Malhuret continued, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“An old Qatar agent, Minister of Justice. A groupie of Putin, Minister of National Security,” Malhuret went on, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Bondi previously worked for the Ballard Partners firm which raked in $115,000 a month by lobbying on behalf of Qatar.
“A Turkish proverb says ’When a clown settles in a palace, he does not become king, it is the palace that becomes a circus.” “His fine team has decided to create a competitor to the UN. Since the creation of the Board of Peace, Trump has triggered more military strikes than Biden during his entire term.”
“Every time the Epstein affair resurfaces, bombs explode somewhere in the world and cause a distraction,” he continued. “Bomb more to win more.”
“There isn’t a single country where Trump did not take advantage of the situation to enrich himself without ever forgetting his family. A Boeing plane offered by Qatar,” he said, referring to the $400 million jet that Qatar gifted to Trump. “Investment in all Gulf projects or elsewhere. Stock market manipulation that only a few insiders benefit from.”
“Any one of these conflicts of interest would have caused here an immediate procedure of impeachment,” Malhuret said. “But we are not here. We are in MAGA’s America where public business is conducted in favor of private interests.”
Rarely does a politician manage to be both exhaustive and entertaining. Malhuret pulled it off. He named names, cited numbers, and still found time for a Turkish proverb. That is not a speech. That is a controlled demolition.
Every American news anchor who spent this week debating whether Pete Hegseth’s group chat was “really” a security breach should be made to watch this on a loop until something resembling shame registers on their faces.
They won’t run it, of course. So share it yourself. Loudly.
Stay connected,
Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1
I look forward to that day!!!
When Trump leaves office:
The Department of War will go back to being the Defense Department.
The Trump Kennedy Center will go back to being the Kennedy Center.
The Gulf of America will once again be the Gulf of Mexico.
The unfinished East Wing (it won't be finished by the end of Trump's term) will be rebuilt by the next president, and it will not be a ballroom.
Federal agencies packed with unqualified loyalists will fire those people and rehire the career experts Trump fired.
The Department of Justice will go back to enforcing the law instead of protecting the president.
Scientific agencies like NOAA, the EPA, and the CDC will go back to publishing research without political interference.
The U.S. will re-align with its allies and not with its enemies.
The presidential pardon power will stop being used as a rewards program for loyalists.
Inspectors General will go back to investigating corruption instead of getting fired for it.
The White House press room will go back to having briefings, with real journalists and not podcasters.
U.S. foreign policy will stop revolving around flattering dictators.
And the world will progress as though Donald Trump never existed.
BREAKING: French General Michel Yakovleff HUMILIATES Trump for begging Europe to get involved in his Iran War, says that it would be like "buying cheap tickets for the Titanic" after it hit the iceberg.
This is beyond brutal...
"We have five reasons to say no to him, in fact," said Yakovleff. "So, the first one is that he didn't understand that if he wants to carry out a NATO operation, NATO has to take command. So, there will be an American general, but it's a single operation."
“You can’t have an American operation where they’re bombing whatever they can and then below that, the Europeans doing something else,” Yakovleff said. “No, no, no, it has to be one sole operation, under a NATO flag. I don’t think he understood that.”
Yakovleff served as a three general in the French Army, was commander of the French Foreign Legion, and served in top positions in NATO. He's a highly respected military expert in France and regularly weighs in on issues of international importance.
Trump has been pleading with allied nations to get involved in his Iran fiasco. Iranian missiles and drones have made it impossible for oil tankers to obtain insurance to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's petroleum normally passes. Oil prices are skyrocketing. So far, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have refused Trump's request.
General Yakovleff went on to point out that Trump's strategic goals, beyond forcing open the strait, are vague and undefined. If NATO nations were even going to consider involvement, they would need the United States to explain explicitly in writing what the goals are.
"And it's not tweets, and it's not things that change every two minutes. So, already there, it's going to be necessary for Trump himself to know what he wants," said the general.
He said that there's also the issue of the lack of "confidence" in Trump. It's well-known that he regularly abandons his allies and he could do so here immediately after other nations got involved.
“He would let us down whenever it suited him," said Yakovleff.
He ended his tirade by comparing Trump to the captain of the Titanic trying to "sell cheap tickets" for his voyage "after having hit the iceberg."
“And the last argument is American: you don’t reinforce failure. I learnt that at the U.S. Army War College. You don’t reinforce failure, you move on, you find something else.” he added. "So, there are a lot of reasons to say no."
Please ❤️ and share if you think that the Iran War is a total disaster!
It’s crystal clear now that Trump has lost control of this war. He badly misjudged Iran’s ability to retaliate. The region is on fire.
1/ I’m going to explain to you in this🧵what I’ve learned - in part from closed door briefings - about the four biggest current crises.
So aptly put. Trump is the worst President ever to occupy the office. For those waiting for Republicans to stand up to him, it'll start after Congressional Republicans get past their primary elections when they're past the possibility of being primaried.
President Trump says the US in conjunction with "many countries" is sending war ships to the Strait of Hormuz to keep it "open and safe."
Trump also calls on China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others to send war ships to Hormuz.
Oh. Oh this is beautiful. This is the geopolitical equivalent of the guy who starts a bar fight, gets his head put through the pool table, and then looks up at the bouncer with blood pouring out of his nose going "Are you gonna DO something about these guys?!"
Let me get this straight. You bombed Iran. YOU started this. You launched Operation Epic Fury like a kid naming his Nerf gun. You flattened their cities, cratered their infrastructure, killed God knows how many civilians, and now that they've done the ONE thing that every single analyst on Earth said they would do... close the Strait of Hormuz... you're asking CHINA for help?
CHINA. The country you've spent three years tariffing into oblivion. The country you called an enemy of civilisation. You want THEM to send warships to protect YOUR oil supply chain? In what universe does Xi Jinping take that phone call and not just put it on speaker so the whole room can laugh?
And here's the bit that should be printed on a plaque and hung in the Smithsonian under the heading "Weapons Grade Cognitive Dissonance Dipshit." Direct quote from the man himself:
"We have already destroyed 100% of Iran's Military capability."
Next sentence. LITERALLY the next sentence:
"But it's easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway."
I'M SORRY, WHAT? You destroyed ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of their military capability and they can STILL mine one of the most important shipping lanes on the planet? What kind of shit maths is that? That's not 100%, mate. That's not even close to 100%. If you hired a pest exterminator and he said "I've eliminated 100% of the termites, but they can still eat your house," you'd want your money back.
He calls the Strait closure an "artificial constraint." ARTIFICIAL. Brother, there is nothing artificial about it. You dropped bombs on a sovereign nation and they blocked a chokepoint that carries 20% of the world's oil. That's not artificial. That's called CONSEQUENCES. That's cause and effect. That's the thing that happens AFTER the thing you did. Toddlers understand this concept. You touch the stove, you get burned. You bomb Iran, they close Hormuz. This is not complicated.
And the absolute cheek of calling Iran "a Nation that has been totally decapitated" while simultaneously admitting they're holding the entire global energy market hostage with speedboats and sea mines. Pick a lane, Donald. Either they're decapitated or they're not. You don't get to claim total victory AND beg France for naval escorts in the same paragraph.
Speaking of France. And Japan. And South Korea. And the UK. Notice who's NOT on that list? Australia. Not even worth asking apparently. Which, honestly, fair enough, because we've got about four days of fuel reserves and a navy that couldn't project force to Bondi Beach, but it does sort of highlight how far down the pecking order we've fallen while our politicians were busy kissing the ring at Mar-a-Lago.
But here's the real headline buried under all the tough-guy cosplay. He's LOSING. This post is what losing looks like when you're a narcissist who can't say the word. He can't reopen the Strait alone. The US Navy, for all its power, cannot clear mines and fight asymmetric warfare across a narrow waterway while simultaneously bombing the shoreline AND keeping tanker traffic flowing. It's a logistical nightmare and he knows it. That's why he's begging. That's why a man who has never asked anyone for anything in his life is out here publicly requesting that other nations come bail him out.
And they won't. Because why would they? China's already getting its oil overland from Russia. France has no skin in this game. Japan and South Korea are furious about tariffs. And the UK is trying to figure out how to diplomatically distance itself from a war it never supported without losing its trade deal.
He's alone. He did this to himself. And the only people who'll pay the price are the rest of us, watching fuel prices rip through the roof while this spray-tanned catastrophe stands at the podium claiming everything is going exactly to plan.
One way or the other, he says. OPEN, SAFE, and FREE, he says.
Mate, the only thing that's open is the hole you've dug yourself into. And it's getting deeper by the hour.
@GPX_Press Corruption is the family business.
This is exactly how the press should be reporting this story: “Orbán’s government robbed a Ukrainian state bank — then a Fidesz tabloid ran AI fakes to justify it.”
So, what actually happened?
An armored convoy belonging to the Ukrainian state bank Oschadbank was stopped in Hungary. Seven Ukrainian citizens were detained and the cash was confiscated.
Oschadbank is a Ukrainian state bank that has a legal license to transport cash across borders. In this case, the cash was being moved from Austria to Ukraine. This is routine banking logistics.
Ukrainian banks must regularly import foreign cash (dollars and euros) because Ukrainians buy far more foreign currency than they sell each month. Before the war, this cash often arrived by plane. With Ukrainian airspace closed, it now travels by land.
Every step of such operations is documented and monitored — the source of the money, the route, the insurance, and the banks involved. These are tightly regulated international financial procedures. You simply cannot move “corruption money” through such a system.
But, of course, this became a perfect opportunity for Orbán and russian propaganda to push false narratives. A disinformation campaign quickly followed, using AI-generated fake images of Ukrainian cash-in-transit guards. The images were published by Ripost, a tabloid controlled and funded by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party.
And people, incapable of critical thinking, eagerly helped spread the fake images and propaganda narratives — including the claim that the cash was “money laundering by Zelenskyy.”
But in reality, all that happened was this: Orbán’s government seized the funds of a Ukrainian state bank — and then a Fidesz tabloid published AI fakes to justify it.
🍟 A Gentle Reminder of How Washington Once Answered Strategic Warnings: By Renaming French Fries
The line is funny because it lands on something darker than the joke itself. American foreign policy often marches into countries it does not understand, armed with supreme confidence, television-grade simplifications, and a fantasy version of reality built somewhere between cable news studios, think tank vanity, and patriotic self hypnosis.
The United States spent twenty years, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars in Afghanistan only to end where it began. The Taliban were replaced by the Taliban. When the withdrawal finally came, enormous stockpiles of American military equipment were left behind, worth billions of dollars, quickly absorbed by the very movement the war was supposed to defeat. A full generation of war closed in a circle.
In Iraq the same blindness appeared earlier. Jacques Chirac and other European leaders warned that invading Iraq would open a geopolitical Pandora’s box across the Middle East. Washington answered that level of strategic warning with the intellectual depth of renaming french fries to “freedom fries.” That was the atmosphere of the moment. Childish symbolism at home, catastrophic disorder abroad.
And then came the familiar pattern. Troops cross oceans carrying slogans, certainty, and maps drawn by people who confuse regime change with reality. They arrive in a world shaped by sectarian fractures, historical grievances, tribal loyalties, regional rivalries, and religious authority structures that cannot be erased by air power. The result is not merely failure. It is humiliation on a grand scale. Prestige erodes. Chaos spreads. The people who issued the warnings are dismissed until events prove them right.
Iraq did not simply collapse into disorder. It became a factory of consequences. Out of the shattered state structure emerged ISIS, one of the most destructive terrorist organizations in modern history. The shockwaves reached far beyond the Middle East. Terror attacks struck European cities. Regional instability triggered vast migration pressures that reshaped political debates across Europe and the United States. The warnings about Pandora’s box turned out to be literal.
Which is why the joke about replacing leaders only to arrive back where you started stings so sharply. It reflects a deeper pattern. A superpower repeatedly assuming that force can substitute for knowledge, that slogans can substitute for strategy, and that reality will eventually bend to political messaging.
You cannot bomb your way past civilizational ignorance. You cannot build strategy on talking points and expect history to cooperate. And you cannot keep presenting disasters as victories simply because the television optics looked patriotic at the time.
So the joke writes itself. America once spent twenty years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. In doing so it spent trillions of dollars and left behind warehouses of military equipment. The circle closed exactly where it began.
The real question is why the same mistake keeps repeating with the same confidence, the same slogans, and the same refusal to listen to warnings before the damage is done.
How many times can a former superpower confuse symbolism with strategy before it begins to understand the world it is trying to reshape?
Stay connected,
Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1
Most Popular Users
Elon Musk 
@elonmusk
240.1M followers
Barack Obama
@barackobama
119.3M followers
Donald J. Trump
@realdonaldtrump
111.6M followers
Cristiano Ronaldo
@cristiano
108.7M followers
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
106.9M followers
Rihanna
@rihanna
97.2M followers
NASA
@nasa
92.1M followers
Justin Bieber
@justinbieber
90.5M followers
KATY PERRY
@katyperry
86.7M followers
Taylor Swift
@taylorswift13
80.5M followers
Lady Gaga
@ladygaga
72.1M followers
Kim Kardashian
@kimkardashian
69.3M followers
YouTube
@youtube
68.6M followers
Virat Kohli
@imvkohli
68.4M followers
Bill Gates
@billgates
63.3M followers
The Ellen Show
@theellenshow
62.5M followers
CNN
@cnn
61.9M followers
Neymar Jr
@neymarjr
60.9M followers
X
@x
60.9M followers
CNN Breaking News
@cnnbrk
59.9M followers