No one actually knows what’s in Trump’s deal with Iran since the administration refuses to release the text, but here’s what I would like to hear Democrats say about what we know based on news reports:
✅Ending the war immediately and reopening the Strait is the best available outcome. Every day Trump delayed would’ve made things worse.
✅Trump lost the war to Iran. Iran now knows it can control the Strait of Hormuz at any time and cripple the global economy.
✅Trump achieved none of his core objectives: Iran still possesses its highly enriched uranium, most of its ballistic missile and drone arsenal, and will almost certainly continue to support proxy groups.
✅The US/Israeli regime change strikes were a disaster for the Iranian people. Iran now has a younger, hard-line Supreme Leader and a more powerful IRGC in place.
✅If the reports about the unfreezing of assets/sanctions relief/reconstruction fund are true, Iran will have access to far more money than it ever got from the JCPOA.
✅Trump could have had a strengthened JCPOA-like deal through negotiations. He was just too impatient to try, and his team was too inexperienced to understand what was on the tabl
✅America did enormous damage to its standing in the world and real harm to poor and developing economies all over the world, which will still face fuel crises and potential famine in the foreseeable future as a direct result of the war.
✅We still don’t know the full scope of the damage to US military bases in the Middle East because the Pentagon is covering them up, but it's safe to estimate this disaster could cost up to $100B in direct costs.
✅Democrats should be skeptical of every claim this administration makes about what's in the deal, and whether Iran follows up. Trump wants this humiliation to go away and change the subject. The result would be an emboldened Iran with de facto control of the Strait.
The reason I want to hear Democrats making all of these arguments is because the narrative around this conflict will be set in the coming weeks, and we need to kill off for good this insane, hawkish neocon/FDD worldview that the US can bomb its way to peace.
This is a devastating interview.
Scott Pelley tells the NYT that Bari Weiss directly put a “thumb on the scale” for Trump over the killing of Renee Good.
Here’s his explanation of exactly what happened.
Ossoff: He’s trying to put his face on the money. He's building a monument to himself . But see, Atlanta, he's doing these things now because no one will honor him when he’s gone… because he's a failed president and a national disgrace.
Ossoff: This is what small men like Donald Trump and JD Vance and Stephen Miller will never understand—that our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas.
Americans are not a race, we're a people united not by ethnicity, but by our shared convictions, and that is what makes us exceptional
“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.
About three months before the Pentagon announced plans to lend money to Vulcan Elements, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took an undisclosed stake in the company. https://t.co/q1i7ylna8q
Reporter: “To what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal? [with Iran]”
Trump: “Not even a little bit…. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation”