@Mr_Andrew_Fox @NoContextBrits Well spotted. Absolutely correct. Rookie mistake.
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Choostas
14.6K posts
Choostas
@Choostas
Posts about American politics, English football and Irish weather.
Dublin, Ireland, Old Europe Katılım Ekim 2013
1.8K Takip Edilen414 Takipçiler
@NoContextBrits More separation needed between the egg and the beans. Use a sausage as a breakwater.
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Choostas retweetledi
I agree with some of this directionally, but my God the refusal to acknowledge that Trump has worked assiduously to poison the alliance and heap all the blame on Europe is just water-carrying hackery.
Saying "NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause" is like writing a movie review when you missed the first half of the movie.
Ari Fleischer@AriFleischer
When this is over, the western part of NATO will never be the same. Spain, England, France and Italy have sold us out, as they too often have a history of doing. Eastern European nations are the heart of NATO. They spend money on defense, know how to fight and love the US. France particularly deserves fault and blame. From supporting China and Russia at the UN to denying Americans overflight rights, they’re doing what they’ve always done - showing weakness, while cutting deals with terrorists. (The reason the US has a Marine Corps and Navy is unlike France, we refused to pay a ransom to the Barbary Pirates. France is always happy to cut a deal.) Wars have unintended consequences as nations show their true colors. NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause.
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When this is over, the western part of NATO will never be the same. Spain, England, France and Italy have sold us out, as they too often have a history of doing. Eastern European nations are the heart of NATO. They spend money on defense, know how to fight and love the US.
France particularly deserves fault and blame. From supporting China and Russia at the UN to denying Americans overflight rights, they’re doing what they’ve always done - showing weakness, while cutting deals with terrorists. (The reason the US has a Marine Corps and Navy is unlike France, we refused to pay a ransom to the Barbary Pirates. France is always happy to cut a deal.)
Wars have unintended consequences as nations show their true colors.
NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause.
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@marcthiessen @dpletka Marc, 20 years ago, over Iraq: You're either with us or against us.
Marc, today, over Iran: You're either with us or against us.
Lessons learned: Zero. Wisdom attained: Zero. Intellectual growth: Negative.
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Great piece by @dpletka: "Tell me, as a supporter of NATO; as a stalwart of the transatlantic alliance; as someone outraged by Donald Trump’s earlier threats to withdraw from the alliance; what am I to say? How am I to defend the indefensible? In short, I cannot."
open.substack.com/pub/whatthehel…
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Choostas retweetledi
Trump’s comments last night about “Obama’s Iran deal” were simply wrong. It wasn’t perfect, but it capped uranium enrichment at 3.67%. Since Trump scrapped it, Iran has enriched to 60%—much closer to weapons-grade. And that stockpile still hasn’t been eliminated.
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Choostas retweetledi
It is incredible how concerned MAGA parrots are with the 5% muslims in the EU.
It is the go-to argument regardless of whether you are discussing tariffs, NATO, China or postal stamps.
Who programmed all of these anonymous accounts that have nothing else to offer in every single thread on Twitter?
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@jemimajoanna He doesn't miss anything anyone says about *him*, no doubt. But substance, policy, debate, alternate viewpoints? I don't buy that for an instant.
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Everyone saying how ridiculous this is but I disagree. She's not talking about books! "He is always reading the papers and watching the TV, he doesn't miss anything anyone says," she goes on to say. I've often been struck by the same thing
Aaron Rupar@atrupar
Leavitt: "You always want to be the most well-read person in the room, and I try to be every day. But Donald Trump always is."
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Choostas retweetledi
The U.S. spent a year threatening to invade one European country and castigating all the others as useless deadbeats who shied away from action in Afghanistan, all while Europe spent that year inheriting the full cost of Ukraine’s defense.
Then the U.S. went to war in the Middle East without even trying to build a coalition or formally asking for European assistance—something Trump says he doesn’t need even though its absence in the middle of the war he launched and claims to have already won has made him rethink U.S. membership in NATO, an alliance he characterizes as a busted flush.
This is like a crazy uncle no one wanted over for dinner complaining about the spread and blaming everyone else for not stopping him from shitting his pants and passing out drunk at the table. And insisting he be invited back.
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That’s how bad it was
🇦🇪 HGS@Sajwani
Do you know why Zuby was banned by Twitter ? Because he wrote to someone “Ok Dude …” 🤣
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Choostas retweetledi
Getting really bored of MAGA ranting about "freeloading" Europeans.
The US does not spend a trillion dollars "on NATO." It spends it on a vast global military empire, with a mere 3.6% going toward their bases in Europe.
Meanwhile us "freeloading" Europeans spend $454 billion on our own defence.
The "freeloading" story is and always has been a lie to keep Americans angry and Europeans compliant.
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Choostas retweetledi
Choostas retweetledi
Let me walk you through what happened one hour before Trump announced the five day moratorium on Iran strikes.
$1.5 billion in notional S&P E-mini futures contracts. Four to six times normal activity.
One hour before the announcement.
Simultaneously, $192 million in crude oil futures purchased at the same time.
They made between $300 and $400 million dollars off those trades.
Trump claimed he spoke to an Iranian official to negotiate the moratorium.
The Iranians said that person doesn't exist and the conversation never happened.
This is not the first time.
It has happened multiple times. He says something. The trade goes on. He says another thing. The market moves.
But whatever you call it — they are laughing at you and they are laughing at me while they do it.
Hunter Biden sold a painting and Washington lost its mind.
These people are making hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars trading on information that only exists inside the most powerful office in the world.
I think we are dramatically underreporting how much money is actually being made here.
This isn't politics anymore.
This is a financial operation running out of the White House.
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Choostas retweetledi
The absurdity of the Iran War is epitomized by the Trump administration’s decision to partially ease sanctions on Iran and Russia, allowing both countries to rake in huge profits.
Russia is set to earn three times more per month from its energy resources.
@Morning_Joe
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@KDilanianMSNOW Bondi's inability to deliver prosecutions was greatly hampered by a lack of crimes.
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Pam Bondi was fired largely because Donald Trump grew dissatisfied with her inability to deliver on prosecuting his perceived enemies, sources tell me. Her allies find that reasoning frustrating, because they say she was hampered by the legal system, not by any unwillingness on her part. Critics say that whole project was corrupt, and that she “took a sledgehammer to the Justice Department and its workforce,” in the words of one former official.
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@shashj I don't believe any of this is a worry once Trump is gone. Your Iraq example: the US-Euro split was substantive and well-litigated. Bush even offered Blair a late off-ramp.
Point being, even deep splits pre-Trump were fixable. What's not fixable atm is Trump himself, solely.
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As well as reading the North Atlantic Treaty & Article Six, people also need to read a history book.
- In 1973 European allies mostly refused landing and overflight rights for the US airlift to Israel
- In 1986 Italy, France and Spain refused overflight rights to the Reagan admin during the bombing of Libya
- In 2003 many Europeans broke with the Bush admin over Iraq. France, Germany & Belgium blocked NATO planning; Turkey refused the use of its bases.
- In 2011 Germany stayed out of the Libya war
The current anger at Europe is rooted in a much larger transatlantic rupture. European allies have lost confidence in US judgment and decision-making under this administration; the situation would probably be different if this was seen as a necessary war to stave off an Iranian nuclear weapon. That loss of confidence & trust will have wider repercussions. I worry what it means for a crisis over Taiwan, for instance. It's hard to imagine effective US-Europe co-ordination if a war were to break out while transatlantic relations are at such a low ebb.
Peter Meijer@PeterMeijer
It would behoove our NATO allies to appreciate that this sentiment is *very* widely shared, including amongst erstwhile boosters of trans-Atlantic relations.
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@guypbenson @EdMorrissey It sounds like you have absolutely no idea what NATO is, which I know can't be true, and yet here we are. Trump is turning all your minds to goo.
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I mean, I also support NATO, but watching our supposed allies close their airspace to us as we destroy the “death to America” regime’s nuclear & missile threats (having just learned the regime has been lying about missiles that can reach Europe) is going to make a lot of Americans question the alliance. That’s on France/Spain/Italy, not Trump.
Andrew Desiderio@AndrewDesiderio
Sens. Shaheen (D) & Tillis (R) pan Trump’s NATO threats: “Any President that contemplates attempting to withdraw from NATO is not only fulfilling Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s greatest dreams but would be undermining America’s own national security interests.”
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Choostas retweetledi
Since Liberation Day, a year ago today:
* US foreign direct investment is lower
* US factories employ 89,000 fewer people
* US goods trade deficit is UP 2%
npr.org/2026/04/02/nx-…
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Here’s an idea: Why don’t we open the Strait of Hormuz, and then instead of Iran charging $2M per ship to pass through we charge a $2M per ship “escort fee” — which could be waived for counties contributing to the mission to secure the Strait?
Automatic identification system (AIS) data shows that the strait was averaging more than 153 vessel transits per day in the weeks leading up to the conflict.
That’s more than $300M a day, or $9.2B a month, we could take in. It’s like a tariff on all travel through the Strait!
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