Trumpworld: Where experts go to die.

 

We could be on the cusp of entering another kind of war very different from the one we might find ourselves in against Iran. It could, for one example, be against a lethal and highly contagious form of Ebola, bird flu, or Covid. 

Regardless of the decisions a president must make, whether about tarrifs and their effects on the economy, cutting programs both Americans and people around the world depend on (check this out about Social Security), or the long term ramifications of his anti-immigrant mania, our current president should be listening to the best and brightest unbaised experts he can find. 

The image on the top of the page shows the group that Trump is getting advice from about authorizing the US to go to war with Iran:

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I’ve added my view as to who I trust to give Trump advice he doesn’t want to hear. Who will stand up to his mini-maxi Me Stephen Miller? You know Miller? He’s the guy who bears a striking physical resemblence to Goebells… 

Not only does he look like Goebbbels but he has the same position of influence and trust that Goebbels had with Hitler 

This is from RawStory today:

Excerpt (emphasis mine):

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night that Trump 2.0 has Miller's fingerprints all over it, with Miller "emerg[ing] as a singular figure in the second Trump administration, wielding more power than almost any other White House staffer in recent memory—and eager to circumvent legal limitations on his agenda."

Miller has drafted or edited each of Trump's signed executive orders, according to the report, giving him considerable influence over Trump's second term. This comes after the president refused to give him a leading role at the Department of Homeland Security, reportedly telling aides he didn't see Miller as leadership material, according to the report.

The pressing issue today is, of course, what to do about Iran. Experts are weighing in. For example in this article in HUFFPOST >

Excerpts:

“An immediate, face-to-face U.S.-Iran meeting would offer the surest offramp to deescalate tensions,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, in an email. “U.S. officials should provide Tehran with assurances that they won’t move forward with direct military involvement in Israel’s campaign while talks are in progress.”

DiMaggio told HuffPost the Trump administration could see a path to an eventual agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that involves significant concessions toward Washington. (Trump abandoned the previous Iran nuclear deal, calling it too weak, in 2018.)

“The U.S. has strong negotiating leverage — it would be a blunder of epic proportions not to use it,” she wrote.

Once upon a time, it seems like ancient history now, presidents, even Trump 45, selected real experts to advise them.

Today, alas, in the Trumpworld 47, it is the cemetery where real experts go to die.

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Why, oh why, did I post these on BlueSky?

 

Welcome to my house. Here I am watching MSNBC and drinking my coffee (photo above). 

The news is telling me (click audio on top of page) that the country may be at war with Iran any day now.

I did have some thoughts about the pros and cons of the US entering the war, which as we know would begin by trying to destroy the Iran nuclear site at Frodo. 

I wrote the following as a comment to Sabrina Haake’s Substack “Israel is pulling us into a forever war.”

This is a complex matter and I have said before that I doubt Trump will dispassionately analyze the long term consequences of getting into a war with Iran. Check out what eight experts have to say: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/18/us-attacks-iran-expert-predictions-analysis-00413901

I am hardly an expert but what I have been thinking wasn't even addressed by any of the experts. It seems to be an accepted given that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon which they can use to threaten Israel.

Is it worth risking a prolonged war in the region to have the US enter the conflict?

I haven't heard anyone explain how a nuclear exchange between the two nations would play out. Because they are so close to each other it seems like mere seconds for one country to retaliate a missile launch from ground based missiles which might or might not have a nuclear warhead. Even worse, a nuclear bomb if small enough could be smuggled into Israel.

The only way to guarentee the MAD (mutually assured destruction) scenario would be for Iran (who we assume will be the aggressor) knowing that Israel had a way to blow their country off the map with their nuclear weapons in retailation of a nuclear attack. I don't know for certain if they have their version of SAC with nuclear armed bombers always in the air but I assume they do. I just checked and I see that Israel has subs which I would guess are armed with nuclear missiles. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/israel-submarine-capabilities/

This is all crucial since Iran would know that if they attacked Israel and managed a first strike their country would be still be destroyed even if it was an hour later and much of Israel was leveled.

So my question boils down to why can't we view this as similar to the situation with India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed and unable to attack each other, and to what it has been between the US and Russia ever since both had nuclear weapons? There is no country that can attack the US (or Russia and China) using nukes with impunity.

I can see the point of view of the Iranian leadership knowing that Israel (though they never admit it) can use their nuclear weapons against them. I don't see Israel as ever doing this even if provoked more than they already have been, but this doesn't mean that Iran's leaders will ever accept that their arch enemy has nukes and they don't.

Update: An then there's this via RawStory, a reminder from David Frum:

"One obvious move that the Iranians would have, for example, if the United States struck at them, would be to activate terror networks inside the United States," Frum continued. And standing against those terror networks, he said, are "an FBI, that has laid off all the counterterrorism professionals, headed by jokers. You’ve got a Department of Homeland Security that has spent ... millions and millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to say thank you, Trump, again, with a kind of play-acting director. You've got a Defense Department who is under leadership that no one would put this Defense Department under on the way to war. It just doesn't add up." https://www.rawstory.com/trump-frum/

Earlier this morning I read this in The NY Times (subscription). 

Excerpt: 

On the 10th floor of a federal building in Lower Manhattan, there is a holding area where immigration authorities have typically held a few dozen immigrants at a time for a few hours before transferring them to detention centers.

But as the Trump administration expands its immigration crackdown, the space has become overcrowded and people sleep sprawled on the floor, sometimes for days, according to those who have spent time there.

Descriptions of the conditions at the center, the New York City field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have prompted several congressional Democrats to demand that they be allowed inside for oversight purposes. Those demands have been denied.

These two peices of news led me to post what I did on BlueSky. 

My first message, sent out into the cosmic world of cyber space where in a mystical world it would fall from the heavens and thaw out the ice cold hearts of every ICE agent, was prompted by the aritcle about their NYC headquarters. 

The second about stupidity should be understood in the broadest definition of the word. I use it to mean that any decision made purely on emotion and not rationality and logic is ipso facto stupid. All decisions to not be stupid must be made with due consideration given to both short and long term consequences.

The message is meant for everything Trump and everything MAGA, not only as related to what Trump decides to do about Iran.

There is almost nothing Trump has done since being elected that is not stupid. He either does things based on his mood of the moment, or when he even thinks rationally it involves only what will happen in the short term, not the long term. For Trump and some of his decisions short term could be as short as one day. For other it could be a week or two. He is making decisions now that we can see will have a negative, even catastrophic, effect a year or two from now.

Addendum:

I bought my stupidity kills stickers in a store, but you can get them on Amazon here.

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Who's got the balls, Bondi and Noem or Gabbard? By Hal M. Brown Tulsi Gabbard been making the news for standing up to the biggest baddest ballsy bully boss in the country.

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This story has been updated here.

The image above is from Instagram. It saves me the trouble of making my own picture. Below is what was posted in reply to it:

By now you’ve no doubt read stories like,'“Outside looking in': Intel official reportedly 'rubs Trump the wrong way' “ about Tulsi Gabbard disagreeing with the assessment that Iran was on the verge of devoloping a nuclear bomb.

This has been all over the news. On MSNBC they’re showing images from the times when Tulsi Gabbard was on Trump’s good side.

Yesterday balls were in the news courtesy of Sen. Elissa Slotkin:

We know what the expression means:

Here’s a lengthy explanation of how the idiom is used.

Now we have a woman who has been making the news for standing up to the biggest baddest ballsy bully boss in the country and actually, from all we can tell, having done her job properly. She seems to have met with actual experts, in her case top analysts in the country’s intelligence agencies, and instead of demanding that they justify something Trump wanted to hear, told them to tell her what their assessment was.

I suspect that they told her not only that Iran wasn’t poised to construct a nuclear bomb in any minute, but that doing so was a lot more difficult than many laymen think it is. 

Could it be that a Trump woman created an atmosphere among her top tier of advisors, and within all the agencies under her purview, where politics didn’t play the major part of doing their job?

I think it is worth taking a look at just who Tulsi Gabbard, the Democrat who turned Republican and supported Donald Trump, really is. Check out the Wikipedia profile here. (Clicking below will enlarge image)

Holy shit! Perhaps she actually is qualified to do her job!

Among the Trump’s bevvy of bullying beauties maybe she’s the only one who really has balls… and also the Aloha Spirit.

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I was going to write about how long Push-up Pete and other members of the Trump cabal have to bother testifying before Congress and then Trump came on and launched into a rant. This was supposed to be a one topic Substack. Thanks to Trump and an unhinged weave I ended up writing about two.

We learned one thing yesterday about members of Trump’s cabal, sometimes referred to as his Cabinet. They are not all invulnerable. At least not invulnerable to allergy attacks serious enough to require hospitalization. Of course I am referring to Kristi Noem. What I didn’t know until just now is that not only does she like to visit prisons in El Salvador but she, for whatever reason, decided to visit a biohazard lab with Rand Paul and RFK Jr.. (See Newsweek article.)

Perhaps she feels she must live up to her image as being fearless. Consider this from the Newsweek article:

Bruce Levell, an ally of President Donald Trump on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday: "My dear friend @Sec_Noem, our fearless Secretary of Homeland Security, was just rushed to the hospital. My heart is with her during this challenging time, but I know her strength and determination will shine through.

All this being said, Noem is one of the members of Trump’s Cabal (aka Cabinet) who has testified before Congress.

My point is that we will know when Trump has firmed up his dictatorship 100% when he tells members of his cabal to ignore Congress when they are asked to testify.

Today I thought of writing this while watching MSNBC this morning and saw this:

He’s on as I write this:

In case you wonder why I call Hegseth “Puch-up Pete” here’s a photo:

He’s competing onscreen with Trump who is talking about the glorious giant two flagpoles -with his blah blah blag braggadocio abut how great they will be.

He’s throwing in something about the fake news and the Fed lowering rates, he’s rambling on insulting Jerome Powell, abruptly shifts to talking about the best poles in the world, blah blah. He’s distracting me with the weave. He’s now insulting Biden and everyone who pops into his mind.

Holy shit… I can’t even get through writing a Substack while MSNBC is on without being led into my own “weave” thanks to Trump and his weave. 

He even compliments the construction workers and gets them to laugh and throws in Harvey Weinstein and talks about the word erection without saying it. He calls it the e-word. I wasn’t going to use the image below. I made it yesterday to post in a comment on a RawStory article about the flags:

Shit, he’s still rambling on and trying to joke with the construction workers about what would happen if any of them are illegal immigrants. He is now touting the $5 million Trump Card which would allow foreigners to buy their way into the country.

This is pure Trump. Perhaps he was frustrated when he couldn’t unleash his vitriol in his mercifully brief parade speech.

He just blasted Biden for having no clue and the autopen and men playing in women’s sports. 

Thank you, MSNBC, for restoring my sanity as they just cut away from the rant.

Okay, I can’t resist reflecting on Trump’s bringing up the e-word. Trump is obsessed with size. He just admitted that he knows damn well what he admires about how big, tall, and upright his glorious flagpoles are going to be. 

I wonder if he knows that at 100 feet it doen’t come close to being the world’s tallest flagpole (see list). The tallest is 662 feet and is in Cario. Now, that a damn tall flagpole (watch video).

Here’s a minute long segment of his “weave” rant:

Now I can have Ann proofread this for typos and send it to you.

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