President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, June 24, 2025, on his way to The Hague, to join world leaders gathering in the Netherlands for a two-day NATO summit. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
NICE TRY, BIG GUY!
Donald Trump is showing once again that his foreign policy doctrine amounts to: “We’re America, Bitch.” But — surprise surprise! — this approach comes with some downsides.
- Did President Donald Trump’s dangerous, risky, warmongering, YOLO-style, hold-my-beer airstrikes on Iran actually achieve anything? That is to say: Sure, they risked sparking a broader regional conflict, or even a brand new American Forever War. But did they knock out, or even seriously damage, Iran’s nuclear program? The one that Trump keeps saying was “obliterated”? Even Trump’s own spies are doubtful. They’ve got good reason to be.
- The United Nations’s nuclear watchdog believes Iran could’ve simply moved its near-bomb-grade materials… somewhere else. After all, satellite images showed cargo trucks lining up outside one of Iran’s facilities before the strikes. A leaked classified U.S. intelligence report concludes that the strikes only pushed back Iran’s nuke program by a few months, CNN reports. (The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong.”)
- But even Vice President JD Vance is leaving room for skepticism. The location of Iran’s uranium “is not the question before us,” Vance insisted to Fox News host Bret Baier last night. (Really?! I would like to know where it is!) Instead, Vance claimed, the real question is: “Can Iran enrich the uranium to weapons-grade level, and can they convert that fuel into a nuclear weapon?” The answer to that one, the veep claimed, is no. Well, phew! Problem solved!
- The country’s nearly 900 pounds of uranium is “buried,” Vance said. (Okay, even if that one’s true, does Farsi have no word for “shovel”?) He shook off another question about whether Iran could eventually rebuild its program. Even Baier seemed skeptical — and he’s hardly alone: Plenty of experts openly worry that Trump’s fuck-all-you-guys attack might have primarily just pissed off Iran.
- “The worst case is that Iran already has a secret operational enrichment facility, a nearly mature design for a nuclear weapon and can manufacture one in a few months,” nuclear expert James Acton wrote in Politico. “The best case, which is far from the most likely, is that further military action destroys Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and centrifuge components. Even this outcome is hardly good, however. Because Iran retains knowledge and expertise, it could likely rebuild its entire nuclear program in a few years.”
Former President George W. Bush notoriously appeared under a “Mission Accomplished” banner as Iraq plunged into turmoil. Is this Trump’s turn?
- Trump fumed with anger this morning after Israel and Iran kept pounding each other with missiles overnight, despite his insistence that they had agreed to a ceasefire. He appeared genuinely stunned that the countries didn’t listen to him: “We basically — we have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” he groused to reporters, before boarding a plane to the NATO Summit in the Netherlands. You could almost see the smoke funneling out of his ears as he raged.
- He took that manic energy to Truth Social, thundering at Israel: “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” Half an hour later, Trump announced that Israel wasn’t going to attack: “All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!”
- In typical Trump fashion, he declared that “we have made PEACE abroad.” But this whole debacle could still unravel in a Tehran minute — along with Trump’s legacy. He may get credit for negotiating temporary peace between two longtime enemies. But the president’s critics want you to remember: We wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t pulled out of the Obama-era Iran deal, which limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, during his first term.
“A diplomatic deal is how you permanently solve the problem,” Crooked’s Tommy Vietor said in the latest episode of Pod Save America. “Bombing Iran is a temporary solution with all kinds of secondary and third-order impacts that we just can’t predict.”
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"Mission Accomplished all over again."
— Progressive PAC VoteVets, comparing Trump’s Iran strike response to George W. Bush’s famed speech after striking Iraq.
NEWS NEWS NEWS
Israeli troops killed at least 40 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip today, according to local medics and residents. It’s the latest in a string of deadly attacks against Palestinians, including hundreds who were seeking aid.
Emil Bove, one of Donald Trump’s top Department of Justice officials, told colleagues that the DOJ “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order” that attempts to stop the president’s deportation agenda, according to a whistleblower account. This is Trump’s former personal defense attorney, and the same dude Trump nominated to be a federal judge… and apparently he’s got the legal ethics of a Marvel villain.
Trump and his top officials are planning a nationwide victory tour to celebrate the passage of his “big, beautiful bill.” It’s slated to be sometime after July 4, which is when Trump wants the bill to be passed — but lawmakers are having a tough time staying on track. “To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK,” Trump wrote on social media. “NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT’S DONE.” Okay, mom!
Harvard officials are privately discussing whether to strike a deal with the Trump administration to end its assault on the school, the New York Times reports. But Harvard doesn’t want to appear to be appeasing Trump or compromising its values, like other institutions have.
The Wall Street Journal achieved peak Wall Street Journal with this headline today: “New York’s Housing Crisis Is So Bad That a Socialist Might Become Mayor.” Wow, that faint tinkling sound you hear is the paper’s editors clutching their ultra-capitalist pearls! I mean, could it be that maybe voters like Mamdani’s other policies to benefit the working class, or his undeniable charisma? Perhaps they just don’t want a sex pest in office? The endorsement from EmRata today certainly didn’t hurt.
House Democrats elected Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) to be the next top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, following Rep. Gerry Connolly’s (D-VA) death last month. One day, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) will get her time to shine…
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