According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.
How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs.
An American-made Mark 84 has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor. The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep. Until the war with Iran, the US military generally avoided using the Mark 84 in urban areas. It kills too many civilians.
For the Netanyahu government, that’s been the upside. In the weeks after October 7, the IDF dropped nearly six hundred 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including on more than 100 officially designated civilian evacuation zones. The slaughter was so grotesque and embarrassing that for a moment the Biden administration paused a shipment of Mark 84s. Those shipments quickly resumed under Trump. Now they’ve accelerated.
It’s hard to overstate the scale of the crime the Israeli government is committing in Gaza. Over the last three years, more than a quarter-million Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces there. The majority of them have been noncombatants: women, the elderly and tens of thousands of children. Many thousands more remain missing, presumably entombed under the rubble of 200,000 collapsed buildings. So far the Israelis have destroyed 92 percent of all homes in Gaza, and 34 of the 36 hospitals. By comparison, the 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden, now acknowledged as a war crime, destroyed about half of the city’s inhabited buildings.
By any definition, what the Netanyahu government has done in Gaza is genocide. The 40,000 new bombs the Trump administration is sending will be used to do the same in Lebanon, and likely in other countries in the region. If you wanted to extend the Iran war into the indefinite future, this is exactly what you’d do.
So far none of this has received public scrutiny. At some point, inevitably, it will be described in media accounts as an “arms sale.” It is not an arms sale. It is a gift, funded by American taxpayers through the Foreign Military Financing program, an arrangement designed to disguise welfare as capitalism: Congress appropriates money to the executive branch, which transfers the cash to Israel to “buy” American-made weapons, in this case from General Dynamics. Politicians claim this is a win for America. Most voters have no idea they paid for it. The bill in this case is about $3 billion. Add that to the $352 billion the US Treasury has transferred to Israel since 1951.
How did this happen? The request for 40,000 new high-explosive civilian-killing bombs originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin. From there it moved to the State Department, where Marco Rubio enthusiastically approved it.
At this point, only four more people need to sign off before the bombs ship to Israel: Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Congressmen Brian Mast and Gregory Meeks, the top two members of the equivalent House committee. All four are committed neocons. Collectively they’ve taken millions from the Israel lobby. In 2015, Brian Mast traveled to Israel to volunteer for the Israeli military. In 2023, Mast showed up in the House of Representatives wearing an IDF uniform.
It’s hard to imagine any of them hesitating before sending more free bombs to Israel. Only public outrage can stop this.
Been saying a lot lately on the show that I am finally able to smile more when I reflect on Charlie. The anger and grief has transformed into something else: Like he’s with us, somehow.
Charlie was the one who aggressively trained me how to debate. With flashcards— on the topic of BLM. Day in and day out.
“Stay calm” “Know the subject inside and out”
“Stay away from personal attacks”. I can almost hear him.
Today felt like an absolute cakewalk of a debate on a subject that I care about, deeply.
The student has become the master, Charlie.
I assume TPUSA still has this audio. They should release it if they disagree with the coverage today by @RealCandaceO.
If the Rode mic continued recording after Charlie was taken down, then it should be easy to put the Rode mic theory to bed.
BABY BOOMERS vs. MILLENNIALS
🚨The debate that everybody will be talking about comes THIS WEDNESDAY NIGHT!
The MAGA Divide is not just ideological- it's also generational. And if we don’t confront it honestly and try to build a bridge, the movement risks permanent fracture.
Featuring: Owen Shroyer (@OwenShroyer1776) Harrison Smith (@HarrisonHSmith) Alex Stein (@alexstein99) Frank Gaffney (@frankgaffney) George Rasley (@GeorgeRasley) Karen Siegemund
Moderator: Brandon Straka @BrandonStraka
Wednesday • May 27 • 7PM ET on WalkAway Campaign YouTube/and X @BrandonStraka/@RealWalkAway
Topics include: America First. Iran. Israel. Free speech. Foreign influence.The economy. The future of MAGA.
Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. #ApostolicJourney#Cameroon https://t.co/bKteFZ3iWE
Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest. But no gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.
They are murderous gypsies.
They will inevitably do this to the entire Middle East, and to America as well. They believe the entire world is their birthright.
Ceaseless murder and theft. A Godless people.
Trump believes he is threatening Iran with destruction, but it is America that now stands in danger.
If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilization, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilizing force in the world, but as an agent of chaos—effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.
This would upend our economy and shatter the global order. The process is already underway, yet we still have time to avert catastrophe if Trump finds the courage to pursue serious negotiations rather than reckless rage and destruction.
Jesus rose from the dead and the first person He went to was His brother who thought He was crazy.
Not Peter. Not John. Not the twelve.
James.
His kid brother. The one who grew up sharing a room with God and didn’t know it.
Think about James for a second. His older brother is Jesus. Not “Jesus the Christ.” Not “Jesus the Savior.” Jesus the guy who worked in the carpenter shop and came home smelling like sawdust and sweat. Jesus who snored. Jesus who ate too fast. Jesus who their mother treated different and James never understood why.
Because Mary kept her mouth shut.
Luke 2:19. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Angels showed up at His birth. Shepherds fell on their faces. Wise men brought gold. And Mary told nobody. She just watched her firstborn grow up in a ghetto in Nazareth and kept the secret in her chest like a coal she couldn’t put down.
James didn’t know his brother was God.
He knew his brother was weird.
He knew his mother looked at Jesus different. He knew Joseph moved the whole family to Egypt when they were little and never fully explained why. He knew that one time his parents lost Jesus at the temple and found Him three days later arguing with rabbis like He owned the place. Twelve years old. Already gone.
Then Jesus grew up. Worked the shop. Paid the bills.
Because Joseph died — the Bible doesn’t say when but Joseph disappears from the story — and in Jewish custom the eldest son takes over. So Jesus wasn’t posing for paintings in that carpenter shop. He was feeding His family. Putting bread on the table for His mom and His brothers and sisters in a town so poor Nathanael said “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Then one day He left.
Walked away from the shop. Walked away from the family. Left James holding the hammer and the bills and the responsibility for a widowed mother.
James was pissed.
Mark 3:21. His own family went to collect Him because they said He was out of His mind. That’s James. That’s the brothers. Showing up to bring the crazy one home before He embarrasses the family worse.
John 7:5. His brethren did not believe in Him.
His own blood. Ate dinner with Him for thirty years. Didn’t believe.
Then Wednesday happened.
The brother James thought was insane got arrested at night by temple guards. Got beaten until His face swelled shut. Got whipped until His back looked like raw meat. Got nailed to wood and hung up on a garbage hill outside the city.
And James had to stand somewhere — maybe in the crowd, maybe at home, maybe hearing it secondhand — and process the fact that the brother he called crazy just died like a criminal.
Three days and nights of silence.
Three days of James sitting with the guilt of every eye roll. Every argument. Every time he told people “I don’t know what’s wrong with Him.” Every time he showed up to drag Jesus home because He was embarrassing the family name.
Then Sunday morning.
Jesus rose. Conquered death. Walked out of the tomb.
And He went to James.
1 Corinthians 15:7. He appeared to James.
Not in a crowd. Not at a distance. He went to His brother. The one who didn’t believe. The one who thought He was crazy. The one who was pissed that He left the family behind.
He showed up and let James see the holes in His hands.
Matthew 28:10. Go tell my brethren. Not my servants. Not my followers. My brethren.
John 20:17. My Father and your Father. My God and your God.
He rose to the highest position in the universe and His vocabulary didn’t change.
Most men get a promotion and stop returning phone calls. Jesus conquered death and called the brother who doubted Him family.
James went from “He’s out of His mind” to leading the church in Jerusalem.
James went from trying to drag Jesus home to writing a book of the Bible.
James went from skeptic to martyr. They threw him off the temple wall and when he survived the fall they beat him to death with a club. He died for the brother he once thought was insane.
That’s what happened when Jesus showed up after the resurrection and said brother.
One word changed everything.
He’s not calling you servant today.
He’s not calling you subject.
He’s calling you what He called James.
Brother.
The same James who didn’t believe. Who rolled his eyes. Who showed up to take Him home. Who sat in the dark for three days choking on regret.
He went to THAT guy first.
If He went to James, He’ll come to you.