🚨 U.S. COMMANDER QUITS: Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, has submitted his retirement papers after reportedly clashing with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to CBS News.
Donahue, a former Delta Force commander and the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021, had long been viewed as a leading candidate to become the next Army Chief of Staff.
His departure comes amid a growing wave of exits and removals of senior military leaders under the Trump regime, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Coast Guard Commandant, and other top commanders.
One former senior U.S. official called Donahue "among the most consequential commanders of his generation," while a colleague described him as "unequivocally one of our Nation's best."
Donahue is expected to retire in July.
The Reflecting Pool is a perfect metaphor for the Trump administration:
- Ignore experts and science
- Overspend
- Declare early, historic victory
- "THE LEFT HATE THIS"
- Ends in total failure
- Unfounded conspiracies about sabotage
- MAGA pretends it doesn't actually matter
Trump was able to quickly put together $300 billion in recovery money for Iran after he decided to bomb it.
He stood in Swannanoa NC not far from my house in October 2024 and said he’d build back bigger, better, more beautiful, and faster than Biden after Hurricane Helene inflicted $60 billion in damage in the Blue Ridge . . . and then he went MIA.
Imagine if @realDonaldTrump cared as much about rebuilding Western North Carolina for Americans as he does about rebuilding Iran for Iranians.
So let me get this straight:
When Zelenskyy came to the White House in the same military-style clothes he’s worn since Russia invaded his country, MAGA media melted down about how he “disrespected” the Oval Office because he wasn’t in a suit and tie.
But now, for Trump’s America 250/UFC spectacle, they’re totally fine with:
✅The South Lawn turned into a corporate fight cage for a UFC card tied to Trump’s 80th birthday and a private foundation.
✅Fighters treating the White House grounds like a locker room, walking around barefoot and using it as their backstage.
✅Fighters literally wrapping themselves in the American flag as a costume and marketing prop.
So a wartime president wearing the same practical gear as his soldiers was “offensive” to MAGA, but turning the People’s House into a pay-per-view backdrop is “patriotic” now.
This isn’t about “respect for the office.”
It’s about obedience to Trump.
If you’re useful to him, you can stomp around the White House lawn barefoot under a 90-foot steel UFC truss and they’ll call it freedom.
If you’re standing up to Putin in clothes that remind people there’s an actual war going on, they call you disrespectful.
BREAKING: Political analyst Charles Blow STUNS a Trumper hack live on air by boldly calling out his bullsh*t to his face: "You are a liar!"
These crooks aren't used to direct confrontation...
"I just believe that this is a news show on a news channel. I have an ethical responsibility to say that you are lying," Blow said on CNN to Hal Lambert, a hardcore MAGA supporter and Republican donor. "You are lying."
Lambert was amplifying the completely false allegations of election fraud that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Mike Johnson, and their entire party have been pushing about the Los Angeles mayoral election. Republican Spencer Pratt was recently knocked out of the running (an unsurprising development given how blue the city is) and conservatives are crying foul.
Lambert tried to interject but Blow plowed through him.
"I didn't interrupt you and you will not interrupt me," said Blow.
"You don't call me a liar on national TV, sir!" whined Lambert. "Do not call me a liar on national TV, sir."
"LIAR!" said Blow, pointing defiantly at him.
"You're a liar," Lambert weakly shot back.
"I can spell it too. I have an ethical responsibility," said Blow. "If people are going to go over here and poison voters' views of an election system that has no proof that it is rigged in any way, spouting the same lie that the President is spouting, we have an ethical responsibility at this table in a news show, on a news channel, to call that out. And I'm going to do that. You can huff and puff. You can huff and puff and be mad all you want, and I don't care."
Blow should be commended for his bluntness and moral clarity. We have allowed our political discourse to rot so thoroughly during the Trump era that men like Lambert feel comfortable going on television and spouting the most absurd, laughable lies with a straight face.
We know for a fact that there was no election fraud. There has never been a shred of evidence for any of these MAGA claims, but the Republican Party has become so warped by Donald's egomaniacal, insecure psyche that they simply can't accept the fact that their political platform is radioactive. Rather than change their pitch to the American people, they screech about rigged elections.
"You keep ignoring what I've said. There is... You're saying..." tried Lambert.
"I'm going to keep ignoring it. Because you're lying," said Blow.
Lambert then tried to jump into a rant about alleged Medicare fraud but host Abby Phillip shut him down, forcing him to focus on his false claims about the California election. He spun his wheels a bit, making vague claims, and Philip pointed out that he has no evidence to back up his outlandish accusations.
"They won't allow evidence to be gathered," Lambert complained.
"The absurdity of your point is that you don't have proof," said Blow. "And then I have to say this. He doesn't have proof. And then he says, 'I don't have proof, and I can prove that I don't have proof because they won't let us investigate.' So you don't have proof, and you just proved that you don't have it!"
"Hal, let me just give you some more information on this," said Phillip. "The federal government has received, I think it's millions of voter registrations from some Republican-led states that have given them access to it. Do you know what percentage of those votes or those registrations where they found actual fraud of any kind?"
"Do you?" asked Lambert.
"Yeah," said Phillip.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It is a fraction of a percentage," she said. "And in some cases, when they double-checked, those flags that they thought were fraud were actually not fraud.
"You're claiming that it's never been looked at. That's false," she added. You're claiming that this administration hasn't been able to look at it. That's also false. You are claiming that just the fact that the federal government hasn't looked at all the state voter rolls as proof that there is fraud is not true."
This is how every Trump proxy should be dismantled whenever they open their mouths to spew their toxic lies. The time for civility is over. Call them out and shame them!
Please ❤️ and share if you don't believe the MAGA lies!
Does anyone know what happened to:
• the DOGE checks (payments)? • the tariff rebate checks? • the hospital ship for Greenland? • the promised 10% credit card interest rate? • the medications that were supposed to be $1,500 cheaper? • the $2-per-gallon gasoline? • the Epstein files? • cheaper groceries? • the promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours? • the “privately funded” ballroom? • reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which was already open?
Does anyone know what became of all that?
BREAKING: NOT SO FAST! Federal judge reopens Trump’s IRS case and demands to know if her court was defrauded.
Judge Kathleen Williams has had enough.
In a brief but devastating order Friday, the federal judge in Miami reopened Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS — a case Trump had voluntarily dismissed last week specifically to avoid her scrutiny — and ordered Trump's lawyers to explain by June 12th why she shouldn't find that the entire scheme was a fraud perpetrated against her court.
The judge's language was pointed and precise. She said she wanted to investigate "grievous allegations" that the deal to resolve the case was "premised on deception." She asserted that she was "empowered to investigate serious misconduct" and demanded answers to two devastating questions: was "the court the victim of a fraud," and did Trump collude with his own government to settle the case specifically "to avoid judicial scrutiny"?
The answer to both questions, based on everything that has already been reported, appears to be yes.
Judge Williams had been circling this case for weeks before Trump pulled it. She had openly questioned how Trump could sue an agency he controls, with government lawyers who answer to him, producing a settlement negotiated with officials he appointed. She ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually adversaries or secretly colluding. Trump dismissed the case the day before those briefs were due.
Then, after she closed it, the Justice Department released not one but two extraordinary agreements — a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump's allies, and a separate one-page document permanently barring the IRS from ever auditing Trump, his family, or his businesses. Agreements that had apparently been negotiated while the case was supposedly active before her court.
Judge Williams cited the New York Times report revealing that the IRS had prepared a 25-page memo outlining strong defenses against Trump's suit — defenses the Justice Department never raised in court, never filed, never mentioned.
Her order came directly in response to the filing by 35 former federal judges — appointed by presidents of both parties — who called the scheme a fraud and urged her to reopen the case.
She listened.
"We stand ready to work with the court as it investigates this matter," said Norman Eisen, who represented the former judges.
Trump tried to flip the table before she could see the cards. She just put them back on the table.
If you can’t wait to see the Justice Department try to explain itself, please like and share this post everywhere.
The second of the Ten Commandments, which prohibits creating, bowing down to, or serving any physical likeness or carved image representing God, or anything in heaven, earth, or water.
The MAGA crowd in Washington has decided that since Europeans don’t sufficiently appreciate Trump, the American bases on the continent must go. This is the strategic reasoning of a man who burns down his own kitchen.
American bases in Europe were never a favour. They are the logistical spine of every war the United States fights east of Gibraltar. Ramstein moves the cargo, Aviano launches the jets, Rota services the ships. Without them the Pentagon does not project power into the Middle East. It projects PowerPoint.
The fantasy assumes the alternative is aircraft carriers gliding majestically into the Persian Gulf. That era is ending. A modern carrier is a thirteen-billion-dollar trophy that can be reduced to scrap by a couple of hundred cheap missiles fired from the Iranian coast. China noticed.
The other fantasy is that America simply fights from home. Picture the alternative: twenty thousand transatlantic sorties shuttling spare parts, munitions, fuel bladders, mechanics and replacement pilots from Norfolk and Dover to wherever the war happens to be. A C-17 burns through roughly 35,000 dollars of fuel every hour it flies, and the round trip from the American east coast to the Gulf is the better part of a day. Multiply that by every bolt, every missile, every spare engine. The war becomes a sustained airborne traffic jam with the bill arriving by the second.
So you need land, specifically land near the war. Modern combat aircraft are not Spitfires you fuel up and send off with a wave. An F-35 demands an entire Walmart of spare parts, a small city of technicians, climate-controlled hangars and a supply chain stretching halfway round the planet. Drones need operators, networks, satellites and a steady diet of components no carrier can store. Modern war arrives by container ship and lives in a warehouse.
Close the bases, and Washington loses the warehouses. Lose the warehouses, and the next confrontation with Iran is either fought by phone or fought from Kansas with a flight schedule that bankrupts the Treasury before the first missile lands.
MAGA thinks shutting Ramstein punishes Europe. It punishes America. Europe will be inconvenienced. America will be unarmed.
And so, after a thousand insults, a thousand sneers, a thousand late-night posts about freeloading allies, Europe is quietly drafting the politest letter in diplomatic history. It thanks America for its service. It wishes the troops a safe journey home. It suggests, with great warmth, that Washington might now turn its attention to its neighbours in Latin America, where a fading superpower can busy itself with whatever a fading superpower busies itself with.
Spain had its century. Britain had its empire. The Soviets had their parades. Each ended the same way: as a shadow of itself, with the historians left to argue, volume after volume, about precisely when the rot set in and why nobody noticed in time. America is welcome to join them on the shelf.
If you like what you read, please follow Gandalv on Substack:
https://t.co/2TO5x2O8nI
During talks between U.S. and Iranian delegations in Pakistan, the topic of Ukraine unexpectedly came up.
While discussing U.S. guarantees in the event that Iran halts uranium enrichment and abandons the development of nuclear weapons, the Iranian side asked how the United States is fulfilling the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which it pledged to respect and protect Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The U.S. delegation left the question unanswered.
Iran Deal By Obama:
•Strait of Hormuz open for free
•Iran limits Uranium enrichment
•Iran agrees to make no nuclear weapons
•Iran allows Int'l inspectors to ensure compliance
•Inspectors confirm Iran's full compliance
Iran Ceasefire By Trump:
•Strait of Hormuz closed, only open for $2M Per Ship
•Iran makes no guarantee of limit on uranium enrichment
•Iran makes no guarantee of no nuclear weapons
•Iran makes no guarantee to allow Int'l inspectors
MAGA: Trump Playing 5D Chess! Art Of The Deal!!
I'm not sure I'd call it an "attack" but—other than the ongoing war—this should be the biggest story in the defense world right now, and maybe even in the broader media.
The warning signs are all there, blinking bright red for all to see. 🚨🚨🚨
https://t.co/2nOl4LHasC
Trump spent months calling NATO obsolete.
Threatening Canada with the 51st state. Slapping tariffs on allies.
Demanding Europe pay up or lose protection.
Insulting world leaders to their faces.
Abandoning Ukraine.
Calling Germany weak and France irrelevant.
Now he needs them.
France: no.
Germany: no.
Norway: no.
Canada: never.
Japan: officially no.
Switzerland: airspace closed.
You don’t spend a year burning every bridge and then call for backup when the building is on fire.
$21 billion spent. 14 Americans dead. Oil at $102. The Strait mined. Taiwan surrounded. Baghdad evacuated. NATO threatened with a “very bad future.”
The allies didn’t abandon America.
America spent a year telling them to leave.
They listened.
Never stop connecting the dots.
VIDEO EXPLAINER: The most important map of the Third Gulf War — the oilfields, the Strait of Hormuz, and the bypass pipelines.
Plus a look at how, two weeks into the war, Iran is still exporting lots of its oil, and most of it, via the strait.
@opinion
And I’d like to remind everyone that not so long ago, by helping Ukraine with weapons, America was:
- securing valuable contracts for its own defense industry and spending a large part of U.S.-Congress-allocated funds in America
- gaining massive global advertising for American weapons, which in Ukrainian hands performed superbly in a war against a vastly superior enemy (just look at the impact systems like the Bradley, HIMARS, and Patriot had)
- gaining an extremely loyal ally in Ukraine, ready to share its cutting-edge experience from a new era of warfare, especially in drones and highly intensive missile defense
- reinforcing its image as the arsenal of democracy and the powerful leader of the free world, sending a clear signal to dictatorships worldwide: don’t even think about wars of conquest, we will support our democratic allies
- sending Ukraine, to a significant extent, older weapons from its stockpiles that would have had to be written off anyway in the future, while simultaneously modernizing its own arsenals
- achieving the radical military weakening of an aggressive militaristic Russia, a dictatorship fundamentally built on revenge for the Cold War, hatred of America and the West, and a desire to dismantle the American-led world order
And all of this -- without a single American servicemember having to get deployed and fire a single shot.
Ukraine pleaded, humbly asking for nothing more than a simple win-win partnership: with your weapons we save ourselves from extermination -- you get a defeated fascist Russia.
I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could trade all of that for absurd lies about “$350 billion,” then smear and humiliate Ukraine, insult America’s key NATO allies, side with that KGB cyborg in the Kremlin -- and then to squander billions of dollars, cost American lives, and derail the global economy in a poorly thought-out war in the Middle East.
And then eventually end up asking Ukraine to help defend American bases in Jordan from Iranian-Russian drones.
“U.S. pressure on Ukraine, to make territorial concessions and sue for peace, is encouraging Putin to keep fighting and refrain from making compromises necessary for an enduring peace….The way to end this war is not to rescue Putin from a failing campaign, but to help Ukraine make it fail faster.”
https://t.co/sVaHz26QPw