Matt

@Gandalf_da_Grey @DrJStrategy Biden was a moron. Trump makes me pull my hair out everyday. I cringe every time he tweets. He's painful to watch sometimes. But President Trump has my FULL RESPECT for actually taking on Iran and ending their constant menace in the world. Ditto his achievements in Venezuela.

This is very interesting thesis but has one big flaw: Trump is a moron and isn’t thinking about any of that. He is vain, self centered, greedy, thin skinned, and extremely emotional with no discipline or self control. He’s just going off his gut feelings and then reacting to what the Iranians (and to a lesser extent, the Israelis) are doing. He’s not playing 4D chess, he’s putting the pieces in his mouth. And before the MAGA cultists show up ask about Biden, yes, I also thought he was a moron.

Food for thought. Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface. The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities. Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed. In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines. In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive. A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent. By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right. In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

@laralogan Or @tedcruz would be a good pick. Knows law, knows issues, and knows how to talk!

With Pam Bondi gone from DOJ, the big question is whether her replacement will have the same mindset - or whether the American people will get the warrior they voted for who will find the means to dismantle the deep state & bring an end to the treasonous conspiracy still subverting & undermining the American people.

@laralogan @IngrahamAngle would make a good pick. She knows the law and the issues.

@LauraLoomer Blondi had a DEI career. Blanche is a Democrat and Trump is doing nothing to bring accountability.

Stanley Woodward is now the #2 most powerful person at the DOJ. Total disaster. He needs to be FIRED before he inflicts more damage on the Trump administration. It’s crazy how he hasn’t been fired even though President Trump wanted him fired. How come he hasn’t been fired?

@farrmacro Cochran is wrong. The news came from Iran first.

Stocks started rallying today and clients (smart hedge fund types) were asking me if there was any news out. I couldn’t find anything, nor could they. Then this announcement popped up thereafter. Someone is now manipulating the tape in ways we haven’t seen before … and nobody seems to be investigating.

An electric tricycle designed for easy wheelchair access

@chrismartenson DEI career I guess? Too bad had high hopes. Zero accountability.

With zero significant arrests or prosecutions, the hard truth is that Pam never started being AG.

@Grok says this: Mario Nawfal is right that it came via Iran's IRGC-linked Tasnim. Cochran is highlighting what he sees as manipulative US-side handling/timing of the news for market effect, but the story itself didn't “originate in the US” as a fabrication—it was Iranian-sourced content amplified in English markets.

The Trump admin is grifting the American people. >Insiders place massive bets >leak old news to the press as if it’s new information coming from Iran >headline services print it >Markets rally they cash out >Markets revert This literally grifts billions including from major pension funds who try and accurately hedge their risk. Utterly criminal.

@chaserbest1 @KobeissiLetter It sends the message she's incompetent doing her job. She's been a total disappointment.

Changing your Attorney General in the middle of a war with Iran and a massive energy crisis is a recipe for disaster. The DOJ needs stability right now, not a revolving door. If Bondi is forced out, it sends a message that no one is safe, which usually leads to a wave of career-level resignations that could paralyze the department for months

BREAKING: President Trump has informed Attorney General Pam Bondi that “her time as Attorney General is nearing its end,” per Semafor.

@realBlagojevich Ain't nobody loves you when you're down and out.

When you are sent to prison for 14 years you get the answer to the question Donald Trump asked in this video. Let me take this opportunity to thank all of the friends who stood with me during my years of trial and tribulation- grateful to all 3 of you.

@PaulDMauro mishtalk.com/economics/trum…

She was young, it was the times, blah blah blah. UNFORGIVABLE. She’s a war criminal and a traitor who should’ve been prosecuted. And this over-indulged fossil has clearly learned nothing.

@KobeissiLetter The boy who cried wolf.

At 4:11 PM ET, President Trump extended his “pause” of US strikes on Iranian power plants and oil prices fell -6%. 40 minutes later, that entire decline was erased. Markets are becoming numb to the headlines.

@onlyyou_5510 127

Brain test 98% failed

@EricLDaugh Bessent has been one of the biggest positive surprises amongst a forest of deadwood.

🚨 BREAKING: Scott Bessent tells Kristen Welker to shove it when baited into condemning President Trump's celebration of Robert Mueller's death "Given what was done to Trump and his family, it's impossible to understand what he went through." "I think we should have a little empathy for what has been done to Trump and his family." "I watched the look in his eye. Neither one of us can understand what has been done to him and his family."

@Jeni41671 @RealSLokhova Yeah like why did we bother to vote?

@RealSLokhova John Brennon still walks free. Wonder why our DOJ allows that? Very frustrating

At the height of the Mueller investigation, this woman contacted me pretending to care about my story. I was falsely accused of having an affair with President Trump's National Security Advisor, and of being a Russian spy. At the time, I was an academic at University of Cambridge, and I just had a baby. The false allegations tore my life apart. It later transpired that this woman worked for former CIA Director John Brennan at NBC, and her approach was ordered by him to dirty me up so that Mueller can "investigate" President Trump.

Mueller was destructive and vindictive. He ruined people for a living. He was a terrible person and responsible for one of the worst manipulations of US intelligence in history - and he did it with full knowledge that he was lying.

@SeaBreezin @LauraLoomer Mueller was part of the conspiracy....or too senile to know what was going on. Either way he spent his respect basket associating himself with this lawfare. And here we are, still waiting for accountability.

@LauraLoomer Never forget 🤨

President Trump says what everyone is thinking. He’s right. We shouldn’t be sad when bad people die.

@EricLDaugh TACO Trump

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump announces the US is ON THE VERGE of 100% completing the Iran war, and that America will NOT be responsible for securing the Strait of Hormuz once it's won "We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider WINDING DOWN our great Military efforts..." NO FREE RIDES! "The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not!" "If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them."

@leladeldredge @TRHLofficial @GovRonDeSantis Why didn't the church get a permit? This story lacks details. After 12 years they had to have known they were being fined. Why? doesn't it seem odd?

@TRHLofficial @GovRonDeSantis This is why when people complain about churches not doing enough, I call bullshit! Plenty try and stuff like this happens.

The city has been fining Father Bob $125/day for running a soup kitchen without a permit. @GovRonDeSantis