Believe in Yesterday 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀

Yesterday:  Trump began Thursday by blaming Israel for bombing Iran’s largest offshore gas field saying that he didn’t know about it in advance. Israel responded by saying that the gas field attack was coordinated with the US, an assertion bolstered by US military experts.  That said, Trump might not have been totally lying because targeting the gas field might have come up while he was also reviewing the plans for his East Wing construction project or the new gold coin featuring an engraved picture of his face and torso and multitasking can be so distracting. Regardless of whether or not Trump knew in advance, he’s upset now mostly because the Qataris who gifted him his plane are really upset about Iran’s retaliatory strikes on their oil infrastructure and also because the oil markets aren’t happy either.  Also yesterday, appearing in front of Congress for her semi-annual threat assessment presentation Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard who looked very much like she wished she was back in Hawaii at a yoga retreat, hedged and hawed about whether or not Iran represented an imminent threat to the US, instead saying that imminent or not, it’s not her job to make that determination even though it is, she previously said that Iran wasn’t and also had earlier asserted that its nuclear program had been wiped out during last June’s attacks, even though it probably hadn’t been.  Instead, she said that decisions of that nature fall to Trump because “ultimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that’s available to him.” Under questioning from NY’s Elise Stefanik, still in Congress but not running for reelection, she kind of said that she disagreed with her now former counterterrorism director Joe Kent’s assessment that the war was all Israel’s fault.  Kent however stuck by his assertion during his post resignation interview with Tucker Carlson, where the two of them agreed that Israel had “manipulated” Trump into attacking Iran. To put that in context, the two also bonded over their shared view that it was likely that Israel was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s murder and maybe also for the guy who shot Trump in the ear during the run up to the 2024 election. Kent who is being investigated by the FBI related to some leaks that took place while he worked for Gabbard, an investigation that the government says was initiated before his resignation, is scheduled to appear with influencer/hater/conspiracist Candace Owens at the upcoming “Catholics for Catholics” gala.  The two have lots in common as Owens is all in on anti-Semitism and also believes that Charlie Kirk’s death was the result of a conspiracy that included the Mossad and maybe even Kirk’s wife Erika.  In response to the ramp up in anti-Semitism and maybe also because they aren’t happy about galas that use the church’s name to promote Owens and her chums, yesterday the US Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly condemned antisemitism, calling it a sin and a rejection of Catholic teaching. The Church urged Catholics to reject conspiracy theories and false claims that fuel violence against the Jewish community.  

More Troubles:  Also yesterday, the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee voted to advance the nomination of Senator Markwayne Mullin to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security to the Senate floor.  Mullin was advanced despite Committee Chair Rand Paul’s obvious animosity to him which appears to have originated when Mullin came out in support of the neighbor who beat Paul to a pulp back in 2017 and was more recently further ramped up when Mullin challenged him to a fist fight on the Senate floor. Mullin’s nomination was advanced despite Paul’s opposition only because Pennsylvania Democrat Fetterman, crossed party lines to vote for him. Fetterman justified his vote for Mullin on Twitter saying he advocated for Noem’s firing but believes that the Department of Homeland Security needs a Secretary.  Fetterman is odd and his vote isn’t winning him any progressive friends, but DHS does need a head and it’s not like anyone Trump nominates will be any better because Trump is who he is but it is weird that under questioning Mullin first denied ever going overseas but then admitted he had, on a secret undercover mission for the House that he refused to discuss and that no one in the House appears to know anything about. During his testimony, Mullin suggested that he would be better at adhering to the law than Noem, but he didn’t apologize for calling Alex Pretti or Renee Good, two of the people killed under the Noem regime terrorists. This morning, citing some unnamed sources one of whom was probably Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has told his inner circle that he believes his “mass deportation” policies have gone too far, not because he’s changed his mind about those policies but because voters don’t like the term “mass deportation.” At least until the midterms, he wants the narrative, not the policy, changed, after all it’s not like he’s booting Stephen Miller, his implementer in chief.  It’s probably not a coincidence that details are emerging about how Corey Lewandowski who served as de facto DHS Secretary under Ice Barbie Noem (allegedly) demanded and received payments from contractors seeking business with DHS.  Afterall, someone needs to be left holding the bag.  And by bag, we’re not talking about Tom Homan’s CAVA bag, because that one has already been swept under the rug.  

Easy Game to Play?  Yesterday Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed Graham Platner, the Maine oyster farmer who recently inked over his Nazi tattoo over the establishment candidate Maine Governor Janet Mills in the race to run against incumbent Maine Senator Susan Collins.  Warren joined Vermont’s Bernie Sanders who earlier endorsed Platner.  Centrist Maine isn’t a hot bed of liberalism.  Despite the pearl twisting that Democrats love to mock people there must like Susan Collins, they’ve elected her five times. They also like Governor Mills, they’ve elected her twice. Democratic primary polls currently show newcomer Platner leading Mills, but the polls have been tightening, and the primary doesn’t take place until June so it’s too early to know who will emerge as the Democrat’s candidate. It is worth noting that Bernie’s endorsements haven’t been working well and though it’s nearby Maine is not Vermont. In the Illinois primary that took place on Tuesday, progressive congressional candidates endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and the Justice Democrats largely faced defeats. Notably, Junaid Ahmed, a progressive backed by Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 8th District, who had been considered a top challenger, lost his race to a Governor Pritzker endorsed candidate.  In general, despite all the focus on whether or not having an AIPAC (America Israel PAC) endorsement would kill a candidate’s chances, the real story of the election was that most of the Democratic winning candidates were mainstream candidates and despite efforts to make their views on Israel an issue, support for Israel wasn’t a career killer.  It may be that the whole country isn’t all that swayed by Bernie and that not every city is ready for their version of Mayor Mamdani.  Maybe.