Rob Wittmann

[Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy]

Canadian oil makes up ***62%*** of the amount of oil the U.S. imports and ***25%*** of every barrel that goes into U.S. refineries. how's that for "energy independence"? let that sink in.

[Rob Wittmann @wittmannrob]

@CFR_org F*ck ya!

[Jonathan Lemire @JonLemire]

“Trump’s old methods will be turned to a new task: trying to deceive the American people and the world into believing that the war he lost was really a big win, the biggest ever, so big you cannot believe it” https://t.co/pVflzxP4Je

[Ken Boessenkool @KenBoessenkool]

This is the most important, most brilliant, and most well written thing you could read today.

If you’re an Albertan, or a Canadian, and read nothing else, fine. Just read this.

Goodness me. Every word. https://t.co/TliiUbwj6H

[Rupa Subramanya @rupasubramanya]

For the first time, Canada overtook the U.S. as the most attractive destination for infrastructure investment among surveyed investors who manage about $1 trillion in investments.

Capital is flowing back toward countries seen as politically stable, resource rich, energy secure, and strategically useful in a fractured world order. Canada suddenly matters again. https://t.co/kGPzFiqnF6

[🇨🇦 The Liberal Elite 🇨🇦 @The_Elite_Lib]

To all the Alberta separatists who lost before it ever started: Now is the perfect time to start your process of leaving Alberta. However, if the reality I point out below sounds like too much work, maybe it is finally time for you to stop being a useless drain on Canada and actually contribute to society for once... But if you are still dead set on running south, here are some super helpful little tips for your big brave move:

• Green Card first: Marry an American (good luck with that personality), beg for a real US job offer, or drop hundreds of thousands on an investment. Diversity lottery? Absolutely laughable odds. Rejection will destroy what is left of your fragile little dreams.
• Then survive 3 to 5 years actually living in the US as a permanent resident: pay taxes like a big boy, stay out of trouble, and keep your status. Temporary TN visas? How cute. They are not a ticket, just more expensive disappointment.
• Finally, file Form N400: pass English and civics tests, background checks, interviews. Based on your posts, spelling, grammar, and basic thinking clearly are not your strong suit, so this part is going to be extra humiliating and hilarious for the rest of us.

Total timeline? 5 to 10 plus years of pure frustration and paperwork hell. We know it is hard, patriots. Better start now before you change your mind again. If America is too difficult, maybe Russia will take you instead.

Safe travels south or anywhere but here! 🇺🇸/🇷🇺

RT if you want to help these clowns get the info they need to leave.

[United Canada 🇨🇦 @UnitedCanucks26]

“The only democratic solution to this is that what happens to Canada is decided by all Canadians. Not by a group within it.
Or if I can really boil it down: You absolutely have a right to leave this country. It’s a free country. You have a right to leave Canada. You do not have a right to take a piece of it with you.” Well said @acoyne! 🇨🇦 Quote by: Andrew Coyne Canadian columnist.

[Rob Wittmann @wittmannrob]

@Reil76 And unicorns and rainbows…..

[Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪🇲🇩 @acoyne]

Just an utter and unmitigated disaster. He has got himself into a mess, has no clue what to do, and wants the rest of the world to bail him out.
The sum total of the effort: not only $25 billion in costs and a depleted US missile arsenal, but the loss of US credibility and an Iranian regime that is more radical than ever, more entrenched than ever, and in some ways more powerful than ever, having possession of not just all of their nuclear material, but also the Strait of Hormuz. Hard to think of a more complete catastrophe.

https://t.co/PsMsKIKfzo

https://t.co/gRiPZvTlwI

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

On direct orders from Putin, following a 90-minute phone call, Trump has announced he is reviewing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany.

The tweet says the United States is “studying and reviewing” a possible reduction. But the effect is the same. You threaten to remove the forces that have kept Europe stable for eighty years, and the only person on the planet who benefits is the one sitting in the Kremlin.

The stated reason is punishment. Trump wants to penalize NATO allies who did not support his Iran war. Germany is the primary target. Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Greece stand to gain whatever troops Berlin loses. 
The problem is that Ramstein Air Base in Germany served as a logistics hub for those very Iran operations. Trump is threatening to dismantle the infrastructure that made his own war possible.

U.S. forces are not stationed in Germany as a favor to the Germans. They are there to deter aggression, support rapid deployment to the Middle East and Africa, and use facilities provided free of charge by German taxpayers. 

The tweet closes with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Signed, apparently, by a man who just handed Moscow a foreign policy victory without firing a single shot.
Putin did not need to invade Germany. He just needed to wait for Trump to empty it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you like what you read, follow Gandalv on X: @Microinteracti1

[Paul Stewart II @PaulStewartII]

The Canada Strong Fund debate is easier to understand once we stop treating a sovereign wealth fund as a pile of cash.
✔️ A sovereign wealth fund is not a pile of cash. It is a public investment vehicle that holds assets.
✔️ Canada has the fiscal capacity to create a wealth fund that attracts domestic and foreign capital. It has the strongest net debt position in the G7, has held that position for years, and has one of the strongest credit profiles in the G7.¹
✔️ Strong credit ratings are tools to build. They offer fiscal capacity. That capacity, well deployed, creates more capacity when it builds productive assets.
✔️ The Canada Strong Fund is best understood as a Canadian ownership vehicle and economic development facilitator: public capital taking equity-style stakes in strategic Canadian projects and companies.
✔️ The private-capital test is prudence. If private investors join on commercial terms, that helps test whether the risk and return make sense.
✔️ Canada attracts and generates a lot of capital. Recent federal materials show Canada receiving the most FDI per capita in the G7, FDI into Canada reached $96.8 billion in 2025, and Canadian capital continues to flow abroad at scale.²
✔️ The fund arrives as Canada seeks to diversify trade, deepen energy systems, develop critical minerals, expand defence capacity, build infrastructure, scale companies, and raise productivity.
✔️ The Canada Investment Summit aims to catalyse $1 trillion in total investment in Canada over five years. The fund can help place Canadian public capital beside domestic and foreign private capital in projects that build national capacity.³
✔️ Norway shows what disciplined public ownership can become when fund rules protect long-term compounding. Alberta shows how changing the rules can reduce long-term compounding potential.

Canada is testing a third model.

✔️Fiscal capacity provides the capacity.
✔️Equity ownership creates the opportunity.
✔️Compounding builds the wealth.

Governance defines success and endurance.

#CanadaStrongFund #MarkCarney #cdnpoli #cdnecon #SovereignWealthFund

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

“We have all the cards.”
Iran has the strait. Trump is offering to take the call. That’s not a man holding all the cards.
The world isn’t just watching. It’s laughing. Beijing, Moscow, Riyadh, Brussels, every capital that spent decades calculating American power into its foreign policy is quietly updating its spreadsheets. The most expensive military in human history planned an operation against a regional power, failed to secure its primary strategic objective, and its president is now waiting by the phone like a teenager after a bad first date.
Iran controls Hormuz. American warships are in the gulf. The gap between those two facts is the most expensive humiliation in modern military history, and no amount of capital letters on social media changes it.
Call them, don’t call them. It doesn’t matter anymore. The damage is done, and the whole world has the receipts.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Let me be precise about what is happening here.

Trump keeps saying “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.” He says it like a grievance. He will keep saying it. Expect it at every rally between now and 2028.

Understand what he is actually doing. He is not venting. He is building a case.

Because he knows what Russia is planning for the Baltic states, and he is pre-loading the public argument for why Article 5 does not apply when that moment arrives.

“We asked, they refused.” That is the exit ramp. Simple. Memorable. Wrong, but effective.

Article 5 covers armed attacks against members in Europe or North America. It was never designed to cover offensive wars the United States chooses to launch in the Middle East.

Article 6 makes this explicit. The Americans insisted on that language in 1949 precisely so they could not be dragged into Europe’s colonial wars.

Trump is now furious at a clause his predecessors wrote. 

He called allies cowards. He told the United Kingdom to “build up some delayed courage.” He threatened France after Paris refused airspace for weapons bound for Israel.  None of this is anger. It is choreography.

NATO allies had no legal or treaty obligation to join this war. The United States was not the victim of an attack. It was the instigator.  What Trump is calling betrayal is allies reading the actual document.

Now to the harder question: can NATO hold without Washington?

Yes.

European members have every incentive to maintain the alliance, even in radically different form. Germany’s chief of defence has already ordered the military to be fully equipped by 2029, when Russian forces may have reconstituted sufficiently to test the eastern flank. That clock is running regardless of what happens in Washington.

European leaders have been forced to confront the need for a security architecture that can stand without the American pillar. That conversation was theoretical eighteen months ago. Iran made it operational.

The alliance survived the Suez crisis, when the United States humiliated Britain and France. It will survive this.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[CityNews Toronto @CityNewsTO]

Destination Canada says the tourism sector is outpacing the country’s broader economy this year.

https://t.co/8XQcE1lEn3

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Trump spent six years handing Iran the rope. Now he’s annoyed they’ve tied a knot with it.

In 2018, he tore up the Iran nuclear deal, called it the worst agreement in history, and walked away convinced maximum pressure would bring Tehran to its knees. It didn’t. Iran responded by enriching uranium at a pace the original deal had specifically prevented, stockpiling enough material to alarm everyone who understood what stockpiles lead to.

Now Trump is in a war, partly of his own making, demanding Iran surrender the atomic capability it only developed because he gave them the incentive to develop it.

This is roughly equivalent to kicking over someone’s beehive, getting stung repeatedly for six years, and then demanding a legally binding agreement that the bees stop existing.

The Obama deal was imperfect. Most deals are. But it had inspectors, verification mechanisms, and a functioning lid on enrichment.

Trump had a press conference and a signed withdrawal letter. Iran had centrifuges.

The negotiations in Islamabad this weekend are therefore haunted by a very specific ghost: the agreement that could have made all of this unnecessary, killed by the man now demanding a better one.

[Shiv Malik @shivmalik]

The headline says that the costs of Trump’s tantrums are “starting to show”. I don’t think Americans get that for Europeans, the Greenland debacle changed everything. It’s over. No one can trust the US. It’s not because of Trump. It’s because we know your system can’t/ won’t stop him or the next guy after him. And also that there’s enough of you who think it would be ‘cool’ to invade just to rub it in our faces. That’s a good enough reason to never trust you again and make everything far more transactional.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Right. Let’s flip this entirely.

So Washington wants to punish Britain and Spain. For what, exactly? For declining to participate in a war nobody asked for, nobody voted for, and nobody outside Mar-a-Lago particularly wanted. A war that has shut the Strait of Hormuz, torched the global economy, and handed Vladimir Putin the geopolitical equivalent of a winning lottery ticket.

The Pentagon, in its infinite wisdom, has been circulating an internal email proposing to reward European restraint by suspending Spain from NATO and revisiting America’s support for Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands.  The Falklands. A conflict that was settled in 1982 with 900 dead and has not been in dispute since. Trump’s new diplomatic weapon of choice is apparently a forty-year-old war.

It is time to stop asking why Europe won’t sanction America and start asking why Europe hasn’t already.

While Washington was dragging its allies into an illegal war in the Middle East, it was simultaneously shipping goodwill to Moscow, abandoning Ukraine, and threatening to pull out of the very alliance it now demands sacrifice in service of. 

Trump called NATO countries cowards. He called British aircraft carriers toys. He called Keir Starmer “no Winston Churchill,”  which is rich coming from a man who can’t spell Churchill and whose only military instinct is to bomb things and then ask Pete Hegseth why it didn’t work.

Spain has been completely clear: no bases, no airspace, no participation in what Prime Minister Sanchez has repeatedly called an illegal war. Good for Spain. That is not betrayal. That is a functioning democratic government with a spine.

The betrayal is Washington’s. The betrayal is two years of gutting Ukraine aid, cosying up to the Kremlin, treating Article 5 as optional and European security as a bargaining chip.

If Brussels wants to send a signal, here is what it looks like: targeted sanctions on American officials who have actively undermined European security. Asset freezes. Travel bans. A formal review of all bilateral defence agreements that assume American good faith, because that assumption is no longer supportable.

NATO has confirmed that no mechanism exists to suspend or expel a member state.  Which means Washington cannot throw Spain out. What Washington can do is sulk, threaten and bluster, which is, come to think of it, the entire foreign policy of this administration in capsule form.
Britain and Spain didn’t fail America. America failed the alliance. And the sooner Europe stops waiting for Washington to remember what side it’s on, the better.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

PM Carney on the Americans calling the alcohol ban an irritant: "You know what's an irritant? 50% tariffs on steel. 50% tariffs on aluminum. 25% tariffs on automobiles. All the tariffs on forest products. Those are more than irritants, those are violations of our trade deal."

[Randy Mott @randymot4]

This is very significant. Maybe the beginning of the end. Russian civilians largely do not care about Ukraine and see nothing but economic disruption because of the war. Now they might actually see a physical threat or at minimum the puncturing of the myth of Russian might. Things could happen a lot faster than most imagine.

[Rohoza (Дев'ятий) Mykhailo 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇨🇦 @Oct7NeverForget]

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have carried out a major breakthrough in Donbas — advancing by as much as 60 kilometers.
Ukrainian troops rapidly broke through Russian defenses and have already reached the outskirts of Donetsk. Fighting is now taking place practically in the suburbs of the regional center.
The Russian army is retreating in panic, abandoning equipment and entire positions. Some units are surrendering without a fight.
This could become the final battle for the Donetsk region.