Robert Nelson

Senior Foreign Policy Advisor @ThirdWayTweet | Views my own.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

With Iran dominating the news, you've probably missed the corruption scheme Trump is running in Venezuela.

Since he's going to meet this with the dictator he installed to grease the wheels for his oil friends, it's a good time to tell you the story.

1/ Here it is:

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

Lots of talk of regulating AI, which is important. But, in some cases, it might be more useful to restructure the question as, "How do we update regulations in [INSERT SECTOR] to account for AI?" Nuclear weapons, bio labs, elections, etc - what changes are necessary given AI?

[Bill Scher @billscher]

I think that dunk bounced off the rim

[Will Freeman @WillGFreeman]

Would be hard to capture the way Cuba's humanitarian crisis is deepening in fewer words.

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

Fools rush in.

[Marc Thiessen @marcthiessen]

This was the most courageous decision an American president made in my lifetime, and it is all the more courageous for the fact he made it while so many around him were discouraging him. He did it anyway. That’s true greatness in action.

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

Hard to square this with the Pentagon’s constant praise of South Korea as a “model ally.”

This mercurial treatment of our allies by Trump is a real problem for US national security.

[Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X @TrumpTruthOnX]

Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises! While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!” Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

( TS: Aug 16 2026, 5:04 PM ET )​​​​​​​​‍‌​​​‌‍‌​​‌​​‍​‌‌​​‍‌​‌‌‌‍‍‍​‍‌‌​​‌‌

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

It’s impossible to overhype how disastrous this war has been. It was unwinnable from the start. Trump’s hubris has led to the biggest foreign policy disaster since Iraq.

[Juan S. Gonzalez @Cartajuanero]

A personal ask of this community.

My brother-in-law, Patrick O’Brien, died suddenly on August 5 after a severe allergic reaction to a bee sting. He leaves behind my sister, Paola, and their young son, Liam.

Patrick’s death has left our family devastated, and Paola is now confronting both an unimaginable loss and the financial realities of raising Liam on her own, compounded by substantial ICU medical costs.

Friends have organized a GoFundMe to support them. If you are in a position to help, I would be enormously grateful for a donation—or simply for helping us share this with a wider community.

https://t.co/T9B04wteUR

[Adam Jentleson @AJentleson]

I am begging people to understand that the voters who decide primaries and those who decide general elections are two totally different groups of people.

If you vote in a primary, you are much more likely to be a high-information voter with strong preferences for one party over the other. Accordingly, primaries tend to filter for more ideologically rigid candidates, which is not the same thing as filtering for candidates who are most likely to beat m Republicans.

Often it is the opposite.

In contrast to the high-info, ideologically-committed voters who decide primaries, the swing voters who decide elections tend to be loosely committed and low-information, often tuning into the election only after Labor Day and only consuming only a few minutes of political news per week (often less).

These are structural facts, backed up by decades of polling and political science findings, no more worth arguing over than the fact that the sky is blue.

The proof is in the pudding. The roster of candidates who won primaries based on a surge of grassroots support but proved to be bad general election candidates is long: Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Herschel Walker…

Of course it is also true that any candidate who wins the general election also won their primary.

Basically, the whole ballgame comes down to figuring out which candidates can win their primaries—winning over ideologically rigid voters—while maintaining the right appeal to win over the entirely different population of swing voters who will decide the general election.

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

@mattduss @AJentleson But his blowback point is also dumb. Bin Laden's chief grievance was US troops defending KSA after Iraq invaded Kuwait. That was reasonable US policy; 9/11 wasn't a reasonable response. Unintended consequences exist. But at some point you've got to blame the guys hijacking planes

[Elissa Slotkin @ElissaSlotkin]

Congratulations to @AbdulElSayed for winning the Democratic nomination for Senate. It’s been a long primary, but now it’s time to gear up to beat Mike Rogers (again) and win up and down the ticket.

There is nothing more important than the mission of the next 90 days: uniting, keeping this seat blue, flipping the House and Senate, and providing a real check on President Trump.

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

@zachdcarter I do not understand this take. When Biden had more centrist cred in 2020, he won. In 2024, it was the Left (Bernie, AOC) that were the last to call on him to drop out. The nomination then fell to the very progressive former Senator from CA, and she lost.

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

@charlesmurray What claptrap. There is no evidence that female pilots are any more likely to crash than men.

https://t.co/jjb9UknOYa

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

2) And no, China isn't testing because we test. Beijing is testing because it wants to modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal. A mutual pause would lock in a balance China views as unfavorable. China's tests are driven by its own prerogatives. They aren't a reaction to US tests

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

Moved earlier this month and missed this surprising post. Van's argument here seems to boil down to two claims:

1) US criticism of China's SLBM test is hypocritical because we test missiles in the Pacific too.

2) If we stopped testing, so would China.

Neither holds up.

[Van Jackson @RealVanJackson]

It's really important to understand that if you don't want Chinese missiles flying over the Pacific, you can't have US missiles flying over the Pacific. And as long as the US treats the Pacific as a formal sphere of influence, those missiles will fly https://t.co/1BOktDWrsv

[Robert Nelson @RW_Nelson]

1) Yes, the US tests in the Pacific, but much more responsibly. Under the Hague Code (China refuses to join), we pre-notify 140+ countries of such missile tests. We also offered Beijing a bilateral notification pact like ours with Russia, but China walked away from the talks.

[Will Freeman @WillGFreeman]

In January, the Fiorella was fishing near the Galápagos.

The captain reported drones overhead.

Days later, he and 7 crew vanished.

The U.S. denies a strike.

Ecuador didn't search.

So I went to investigate.

My first piece for The New Yorker:

https://t.co/kGf2fiN6GG

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

I actually think this statement is a big deal.

Because it tells you all you need to know. They believe, in their bones, in an imperial presidency where the executive rules absolutely and uses his power to destroy enemies and enrich himself.

[Phil Gordon @PhilGordonDC]

Spin is one thing, but it is worth noting that virtually everything Vance says about the JCPOA in this clip is wildly misleading or outright false:

1. "The Gulf Coast Coalition loves this deal." (The "Gulf Coast" is in the southern US along the Gulf of Mexico but he is presumably referring here to the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC.) GCC states don't "love this deal" but support it to end the war that Trump started that led to thousands of attacks on their countries and shut off their exports.

2. "The Obama deal allowed enrichment, ours will not." The Obama deal allowed enrichment that was strictly limited in level, amount, location and types of centrifuges, and carefully monitored by the IAEA. The Trump MOU says nothing about enrichment except that Iran "agreed to discuss the issue...related to Iran's nuclear needs."

3. "The Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiles of weapons-grade material, ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched material." ??? The Obama deal did not allow the accumulation of any enriched uranium, let alone "weapons-grade material." In fact, the JCPOA required Iran to ship out 98% of all its enriched uranium, leaving it with no more than 300kg of LEU. It was only after Trump tore up that deal that Iran was free to expand that stockpile to thousands of kg, and to start accumulating 60% highly enriched uranium, 400kg of which is still in Iran. All the MOU says about that is that the US and Iran "have agreed to resolve" its disposition and that this will be done "on-site" (not in the US as Trump promised) and does not say to what level.

4. "The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money." Once again simply false. The JCPOA unfroze some of Iran's own assets and suspended oil sanctions in exchange for comprehensive and nuclear commitments, and did so only after the IAEA had verified their implementation. The Trump MOU gives Iran "immediate" waivers for exports not just of oil but of derivatives and associated services, commits to making frozen assets available without restrictions, and pledges to develop a $300 bn fund for reconstruction and development in Iran. It also undertakes, in any final nuclear deal, to terminate "all types of sanctions" against Iran, which include sanctions for human rights abuses, ballistic missile production, and sponsorship of terrorism.

It's one thing to try to sell an agreement that even your own supporters consider astonishingly weak. It's quite another to try to mislead the American people with blatant distortion of the facts.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

Who knows if there will be a final agreement. But if there is, two things will be true at the same time:

a) It's essentially surrender to Iran.

b) We should be glad about it, because every day this insane, illegal war continues, we get weaker.

1/ Let me explain.