AAA

I keep seeing all these comments scapegoating for Trump. "It's his handlers"...."He's not aware...." I worked two of the man's presidential campaigns. He was hands on to every aspect of his staff, PR image and campaign. If someone sneezed in the next building over, he knew it. Every move he makes is a conscious decision on HIS part. Including the decision to bow to Israel. It's not his staff. It's not his advisors. It's Trump.

The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE.....

Marco Rubio 2 days ago: “Imagine if Iran funded the well-being of its people, rather than its military” Trump today: “We can’t fund daycare or Medicaid, we need more money for our military” Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

Trump didn’t suddenly start lying last week, he’s always lied to you … about everything. You didn’t care then because you were not harmed by the lies and stood to benefit. Wonder what’s changed?

Only reason for Pete Hegseth to fire top generals in middle of a war is that they refused to follow orders. Only reason well-respected generals would refuse to follow DOD Secretary's orders was that those orders were insane. Americans are going to die for Pete & Donald's egos.

You’ve got this way wrong. The difference is not courage. The difference is stupidity. He wrongly thought that his approval would go up. He thought he could declare victory quickly and they wouldn’t fight back. He’s an imbecile.

@ShellyCuel78160 @gregkellyusa This simply isn’t true. They just changed the maximum age to enlist from 35 to 42. You know why they did that? To increase the pool because numbers are down and they haven’t hit their recruitment targets. Get out of here with your bullshit lies.

Funny because my son is walking through the process of joining the military and through the process we’ve found out there’s a waiting list for all branches of the military. Like my son people are joining again in record numbers because of their respect Trump and Hegseth. What happened to you?

Hegseth….Weirdo DRAMA “somehow”follows this guy everywhere he goes. The word is another General “looked at him funny” so PETE (drunk on power-hopefully just power) Fired the guy. From “Fox and Friends” Birthday Parties to the SITUATION ROOM, it’s always A Problem with this guy. He Lied to the Trump Admin about his extensive Personal Issues, and now he’s blowing up Army Careers of Good Men—because of his personal INSECURITY. Paranoid Pete!

@KristinNap95 @gregkellyusa Saying you trust Trump is the quickest way to lose credibility. Blind allegiance to this conman shows how gullible and stupid you are.

Yeah, right. I trust Trump. And I will never believe he made a bad decision on his choice of Hegseth. Never in a million years. The Dept of War is much too important given that he knew he was FINALLY going to do something about Iran when everybody before him used "Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism" and then FAILED to do something about it. May, the cockroaches are coming out of the woodwork. Adios, Greg. Such a disappointment.

Moulton: This happened a day after the President got on TV and that they had completely eliminated Iranian anti-aircraft facilities. So a day later, they shoot down an advanced US fighter jet. This just shows how incredibly out of his league the President is. The commander-in-chief doesn't know what he's talking about. He's lying to the American public.

So, let me get this straight. Trump is now simultaneously claiming that he has won the war, is currently winning the war, needs help to win the war, and doesn't need help to win the war. All to destroy the nuclear program he claims he already destroyed last year.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Twenty-six generals and admirals in fourteen months. No misconduct cited for a single one. A former Fox News weekend host who never held a senior military command has removed the Joint Chiefs Chairman, the Army Chief of Staff, the commander of Army Transformation and Training, the Chief of Chaplains, and at least 22 other senior officers from the most powerful military on earth. He blocked four Army officers from promotion to brigadier general, two Black men and two women, by unilaterally striking their names from a list of 36. When Army Secretary Dan Driscoll refused to remove them, Hegseth did it himself. No hearing. No review board. No Senate consultation. The names were struck because the man who reads the list decided they should not be on it. The pattern is not random. It is architectural. Every removal serves the same function: shortening the distance between a presidential decision and its execution. The officers who remain are the ones who did not resist. The officers who resisted are gone. The replacement for the Army Chief of Staff is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve, who served as Hegseth’s personal military aide. The man who carried the briefcase now signs the orders. The chain of command has been rebuilt so that every link answers directly to the man who removed the previous link. General Randy George was the commander of the United States Army’s ground forces. That title matters now in a way it did not matter six weeks ago. Before February 28, ground forces in Iran were a theoretical exercise discussed in war colleges and think tanks. After five weeks of air strikes, with the IRGC publishing bridge target lists across four allied nations, with the President saying the military has “not even started” destroying what remains, with MEUs staged in the Gulf and the 82nd Airborne deploying and JSOC operators at forward bases in four countries, the ground option is no longer theoretical. It is a logistics package. And the man whose job was to assess whether that package should be opened was told to retire the same day the President posted “much more to follow.” Lieutenant General Hodne ran the command that trains every soldier who would execute a ground operation. Major General Green led the chaplain corps that would minister to every soldier who dies in one. George decided whether the operation should happen. Hodne prepared the soldiers to carry it out. Green prepared them to live with it. All three were removed on the same afternoon. Congress has not held a hearing. No subpoenas issued. The legal authority for a Defence Secretary to unilaterally override promotion lists and force immediate retirement of Senate-confirmed officers during wartime has not been tested because nobody with the authority to question it has chosen to. The IRGC has said attacks will “intensify from next week.” The Ford carrier is heading back. The CNN intelligence assessment confirms half of Iran’s launchers and thousands of drones remain. The President has named the next targets: power plants, desalination, oil wells, Kharg Island. And every general who might have said “this crosses a line” is already gone. Twenty-six officers. Zero misconduct findings. One question that every general still serving is asking behind closed doors: who is left to say no? And what happens when the answer is nobody? open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Morally I have a severe problem with this. I don’t think we are the “good guys” anymore. We’ve gone full rogue. The events I’m watching are things that I never thought I’d see us ever do to anyone. It’s really disturbing

@thomas_osburn @PaddyPhilly @MattNorlander @CBSSports @ZagMBB No, I just happen to think that Gonzaga’s story is 1 of 1. UNLV is a great story, too, just different.

@tryingitonce @PaddyPhilly @MattNorlander @CBSSports @ZagMBB Because you were downplaying his achievements.

BREAKING—Mark Few has been voted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, sources told @CBSSports. Few, 63, built a one-of-a-kind story at Gonzaga, turning a small Jesuit school into one of the biggest brands in CBB. Two NCAA title games, 773-156 record, 44 league titles + more

@DrPepperTexan @alifarhat79 Considering that we’re not planning to intervene, I doubt it.

@tryingitonce @alifarhat79 Well, hopefully it will be a government that is elected by the people, and for the people.

Day 1: We will liberate the people of Iran. Day 34:

@JesseBWatters While I guess we can see how the interim AG will handle things. Straight out of the Trump playbook…lie about everything and gullible people will believe it.

🚨 BREAKING: ACTING AG TODD BLANCH SAYS THERE’S “ZERO EVIDENCE” EPSTEIN WAS A SPY 🚨 “We don't have any evidence in the Epstein files that the FBI collected over 15 years that suggest that” 🤔 Says DOJ released EVERYTHING — “redacted, unredacted, all of it” 📂

BREAKING: Watch the exact moment that Fox News admits that Donald Trump's tariffs actually didn't bring back jobs and cost the average American over $1,000 more a year on goods. Wow.

Mockler: I'm so sick of the president of the United States spending valuable time attacking random celebrities. When Mueller died, he celebrated it. He's honestly morally inferior the way he celebrates these deaths. I'm a young dude who's always looking for moral clarity from our leadership Moynihan: Don't look to DC for moral clarity Mockler: I could have looked up to Obama and actually learned patience. I could have looked up to Obama and learned gratitude. If I look to Trump, I don't even know what I learn from that. Bully everyone around you. Isolate your allies, be an absolute asshole to anyone who interacts with you. What's the lesson that I'm supposed to take from this guy?

Since Day 1 I have contended that the military leadership did not agree with Hegseth and Trump and likely tried to brief him about all the complications he now faces only to be told they were stupid.

They are destroying our country in record time.