Richard Tisinger jr

[Erick Erickson @EWErickson]

The pressure campaign is on. If you are on the right and you decline to salute the President’s deal with Iran, you are to be otherized — branded a warmonger, a neocon fossil, a man itching to put other people’s sons in the sand. The choice, we’re assured, is binary: boots on the ground or the President’s memorandum. That is a lie, and the people repeating it loudest know it is a lie.

Start with the alternative they pretend never existed. Israel had a plan to destabilize the regime from within — and the President personally refused to allow it, at the behest of the Turks. Erdogan picked up the phone, and the option that wasn’t a land war and wasn’t surrender quietly disappeared. So spare me the two doors. There was a third, and Washington bricked it up to keep Ankara comfortable.

Now look at what we took instead. The memorandum reopens the Strait of Hormuz “for 60 days only,” after which Iran and Oman decide who passes and what they pay. It dangles a $300 billion reconstruction fund, with Gulf money — Qatar’s prominently — already moving toward Tehran. Iran now says Israel must leave Lebanon or the deal is breached. And the grandson of the regime’s founder has called the war the “lesser jihad,” declared that the “greater jihad” begins now, and hailed the agreement as a victory for Tehran. When your adversary calls the deal a victory, believe him.

Then there is the Strait itself — the tell. The entire point of the campaign was to take that chokepoint out of Iran’s hand. Instead, the memorandum leaves the regime holding the switch, free to flip it whenever a strike in Lebanon gives it a pretext, as it has done again and again. A waterway we can reopen by permission of the Ayatollah’s heirs was never reopened. It was rented.

And consider the clock. We bombed Iran for roughly thirty-nine days. Then we let nearly seventy days bleed away between the last bomb and the signature — almost twice the length of the war itself — while panic over oil did Tehran’s negotiating for it. Momentum is perishable. The President took a campaign that was working, put it in suspended animation, and is now selling the thaw as a triumph.

https://t.co/xQpaqvbX11

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Trump is desperate, so the Iranians are raising the price of American surrender.

[Jamie Gangel @jamiegangel]

New CNN has obtained new Trump book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveals how Trump compared himself to Mao, Stalin, Attila the Hun
— and how a top aide found him with Superglue trying to decorate the Oval Office…. w/ @jeremyherb #Regime
https://t.co/r43mmffFdn

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

This time, his clever pool trap will kill Batman for sure

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

Vance Humiliation Week ends on a banger.

[Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz]

“In the aftermath of the outbreak, the Air Force issued an exception to the voluntary vaccine policy, requiring that all recruits at Lackland AFB get flu shots.”

[Erick Erickson @EWErickson]

The community notes turn on the President by simply quoting the memorandum of understanding.

[Nicholas Burns @RNicholasBurns]

Sorry. This is no way to lead NATO. The European allies are ready to help open the Strait of Hormuz and are far ahead of us in supporting Ukraine against Putin. Be grateful.

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

Here we go again. Ted Cruz — who is right on the substance — thinks there are bad advisors to blame for this debacle. Trump can never fail, he can only be failed.

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: Ukraine launched what appeared to be its biggest drone attack of the war on Moscow, striking an oil refinery and shutting down air traffic. https://t.co/5ADCoB8wWq

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

My friend Jamie Raskin is one of the most careful and principled people in Congress. So when he says the director of the FBI may be running a taxpayer funded slush fund, I pay attention.

Here is what he found.

Kash Patel directed more than $1 million in bonus payments to a small circle of agents in his inner circle and on his security detail.

Some were getting nearly $8,000 every two weeks on top of salaries that were already maxed out at the federal ceiling. A number of them collected close to $40,000 over consecutive pay periods.

The payments came so fast that the FBI’s bonus reserve accounts ran dry and some checks bounced.

So who got the money?

Agents on Patel’s so-called "director’s advisory team."

That is the unit created in 2025 and described internally as a payback squad, built to dig up dirt on the law enforcement officials who investigated Trump and his allies.

Raskin has given Patel until June 29 to account for every payment, every recipient, and any internal review of whether this was even legal.

Patel should answer for all of it.
https://t.co/HZPeRJ2Kqg

[ProPublica @propublica]

When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.

We found that the request came directly from the White House.
https://t.co/ejXPkLasNM

[Ross Dellenger @RossDellenger]

QB Brendan Sorsby's attorneys have filed a voluntary motion to dismiss his case in Texas court, stating that Texas Tech informed him on Monday that he could not play for the Red Raiders this season.

[Greg Bluestein @bluestein]

Tuesday's losses amounted to a stunning setback for a GOP governor who entered his final year in office at the height of his influence. Now add to that today's reversal, when lawmakers rejected Kemp’s push to overhaul political boundaries. #gapol
https://t.co/4XBY0btmT8

[ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki]

1/ Ukraine's massive drone strike against Moscow – with a reported 555 drones and missiles fired, and 180 claimed to have been shot down over Moscow – has prompted anger, defiance, and resignation from Russian warbloggers. "Tehran is safer", one says. ⬇️
https://t.co/4AbBn5QoNz

[Ben Rhodes @brhodes]

The amazing thing is that Trump is just realizing this.

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

He literally signed the surrender at Versailles like the Germans after they lost a war???

You can usually count on Trump to at least be clever about staging.

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

Wow. Never thought I'd see the GOP as the party of "Iran has legitimate self-defense requirements for missiles"

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Frustrated senators threatened to withhold Defense Secretary Hegseth’s travel budget unless the Pentagon provides answers about an apparent U.S. strike on a girls’ school in Iran and the military’s attacks on alleged drug smuggling boats in Latin America. https://t.co/XszIdumWzt