What woke me up to the need to write this column were the reports, as Trump held his good-bye press conference in the Netherlands after the NATO summit this morning, that the other European leaders had agreed last week to shorten the summit from three days to one and cut the meeting of NATO leaders down to two and half hours, to accommodate our president’s “short attention span,” according to two reports out of Europe. NPR this morning noted that Trump had not growled at the other leaders about NATO being irrelevant and useless, or gone on and on about the others “not paying their fair share” as he did during his first term every time the four letters N and A and T and O were strung together in his presence.

“It seems they’ve learned how to flatter him,” one analyst said on NPR. That made the summit a grand success, she observed.

I could make snarky jokes about Trump falling asleep at the summit meeting, two and a half hours apparently being too long for him, but I’ll settle for This Is Not Normal.

Nor is it normal for the President of the United States to call for a CNN correspondent, Natasha Bertrand, to be “fired” and “thrown out like a dog.” Trump continued his attack on Truth Social, apparently posted from Air Force One on his way back from Europe: “She lied on the Laptop from Hell Story, and now she lied on the Nuclear Sites Story, attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit 'pay dirt' — TOTAL OBLITERATION!"

Laptop from Hell Story? Destroy our Patriot Pilots?

“CNN is scum, MSDNC is scum, the New York Times is scum. They’re bad people, they’re sick,” Trump went on. “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY.”

Trump is trying to say that any questioning of the efficacy of the bombing of Fordo is an attack, not on his judgement in ordering the bombing, but on the Air Force pilots who flew the B-2 bombers. The intelligence report on the effectiveness of the bombing being quoted by CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times, was produced by his own Defense Intelligence Agency.

This is not normal.

Back in the good old U.S.A., Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against all 15 federal judges in the federal court district of Maryland over an order issued in Maryland that requires all deportations to be paused 48 hours so that immigrants picked up by ICE agents can file a petition for habeas corpus challenging their detention by ICE.

Previous to this lawsuit, which legal experts have called unprecedented, federal judges have enjoyed immunity from lawsuits challenging the execution of their duties as part of the judiciary. The Supreme Court has already ruled that immigrant detainees are entitled to protection of their right to due process under law.

This kind of lawsuit has never been filed against federal judges by the government. It’s not normal.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has canceled U.S. funding of GAVI, the international vaccine agency, accusing the agency of “ignoring the science” regarding child vaccinations around the world. Kennedy told the agency that the U.S. would not make good the Biden administration’s $1.2 billion pledge to assist in vaccinating children in poor foreign countries. The decision was made unilaterally by Kennedy and delivered to the international agency in a video sent to the meeting of international members of GAVI who had gathered to support the goals of vaccinating children against infectious diseases. Vaccinations have succeeded in nearly totally wiping out certain childhood diseases such as polio, measles and rubella that were once the cause of widespread illness and death among children.

Meanwhile, Kennedy’s new vaccine advisory panel held its first meeting in Chicago today. Kennedy had fired the previous vaccine panel and appointed eight new members. One of his new appointees withdrew from the panel, leaving only seven to meet in Chicago today. The chairman of the new panel, a vaccine skeptic who was critical of the COVID vaccine, announced that the panel will review the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella shot that has been used safely to vaccinate children for many years. During tomorrow’s meeting, the panel will be addressed by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense Fund, an anti-vaccine group, on the use of the preservative, thimerosal, which has been phased out of U.S. vaccines. In a slide presentation that has been prepared to be delivered to the vaccine panel tomorrow, Redwood quoted a study that does not exist. Redwood was forced to remove the reference to the non-existent study when the person she quoted as its author said he had not done the study.

The seven members of the vaccine panel have not undergone any form of vetting of their credentials or been cleared for conflicts of interest as required by law for service on the panel.

This is not normal. Kennedy himself is not normal.

In his press conference earlier today in the Netherlands, Trump compared his bombing attack on Iran to the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan at the end of World War II. “Actually, if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war too. This ended a war in a different way. But it was so devastating," Trump bragged.

This is the man who has the codes to order the use of our nuclear arsenal. None of this is normal. He is not normal. And yet, a majority of our fellow Americans elected him President.

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As Donald Trump wages a war of choice in the Middle East over alleged weapons of mass destruction, it feels like deja vu all over again. Except this time, the weapons are in fact at least close to existence — because Trump ripped up the Iran nuclear deal and was unable to broker a better one. Again, conservatives are cheering on this dangerous escalation. Again, sane people everywhere are holding their breath.

And Democrats, per usual, don’t really seem to know what to do.

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In New York City, Democratic primary voters just elected Zohran Mamdani to run for mayor, and in New York, the Democratic primary winner is effectively the future mayor of the city. Mamdani is a charismatic and clearly bright 33-year-old Democratic Socialist with a policy platform that includes a lot of splashy promises, including a rent freeze and free buses. He’s been a member of the New York State Assembly for five years, and has no experience running so much as a large organization — let alone anything close to America’s largest city. But he is, in this moment, what voters seem to want: Someone who promises to shake things up. Who might break some stuff to rebuild better.

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Leave it to Donald J. Trump to come up with a purely performative war, and folks, he’s done it. His big air assault on Iran Saturday night accomplished exactly nothing. The New York Times reported on its front page today that a secret report from the Defense Intelligence Agency has found that the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at three sites around the country set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months. Additionally, the vaunted bunker buster bombs, 30,000-pound projectiles designed to penetrate the surface of the earth before detonating far underground, failed to destroy the underground nuclear facilities at Fordo.

The report contained some new information as well. Israeli sources said that Iran has built smaller nuclear plants in secret locations “so the Iranian government could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities,” according to the Times. This information had not been made public previously. The report confirmed that Iran moved “almost all of its nuclear material” before the U.S. bombed its nuclear facilities on Saturday night, the Times reported this afternoon.

Hegseth’s breathless announcement on Sunday morning --125 combat aircraft! 14 bunker busters! 75 other bombs and cruise missiles launched from submarines! – was all for show. The administration is so far back on its heels that a Congressional briefing on the attack scheduled for today has been pushed back until Thursday.

Iran responded last night by firing 14 missiles at the U.S. base in Doha, Qatar…after warning the Pentagon the attack was coming so the missiles could be easily shot down. The number of missiles was said to be calculated to match the number of U.S. bunker busters so that Iran’s retaliatory strike would not be seen as an escalation. The U.S. dutifully hit 13 of the Iranian missiles with anti-missile fire. One Iranian missile was said to have hit an unoccupied small building on the American base. There were no American casualties.

Trump went on Truth Social last night to announce that he had engineered “a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE… when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!” He then mumbled something about 12 hours for this and 12 hours for that, until the “end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.”

This morning at 10:50 a.m., Representative Earl A. “Buddy” Carter, Republican of Georgia, formally nominated Donald J. Trump for the Nobel Prize “in recognition of his extraordinary and historic role in brokering an end to the armed conflict between Israel and Iran.” Buddy didn’t mention that Trump was himself a participant in the “war” he ended.

As he departed the White House this morning for the NATO summit, Trump bragged that he was able to get the two nations to stop fighting despite the fact that “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Every television network, broadcast and cable alike, shifted immediately into Full Tape Vault mode looking for another instance that an American president had dropped “the F-bomb” on camera live, and finding none, announced that Trump was first to achieve this momentous accomplishment.

From Air Force One on his way to Europe, Trump continued to brag, “It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR! Both Nations will see tremendous LOVE, PEACE, AND PROSPERITY in their futures. They have so much to gain, and yet, so much to lose if they stray from the road of RIGHTEOUSNESS & TRUTH.”

Trump ordered a major attack on Iran. The bombs dropped. The cruise missiles flew. The satellite photos were published. Trump’s own Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that, “Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.”

Trump’s fake war produced fake peace. Everything is the same as it was before. Israel still has its nukes. Iran is still a few months away from a developing its own nuclear weapon.

Relax. Trump is going for his Nobel. All is well.

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These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year.

🖕fUCK DONALD TRUMP!🖕

Let me know if this story rings a bell: Once upon a time, a Republican president abused his power to send America to war. He told fairy tales of weapons of mass destruction. Of a regime that was on the brink of murdering millions. That America HAD to intervene or else. That the war would be quick and easy. That we would topple the evil regime and make the world safer for democracy.

Yeah, Trump isn’t smart enough to be an original warmonger, so he just dusted off W. Bush’s playbook and we’re doing this again.

Bush’s war turned into the worst military blunder in American history. While the American death toll was in the thousands, the civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan was in the millions, topping the previous worst military blunder America was involved in (Vietnam, of course). Because of Bush, the GOP, and the collaborators in the legacy press, we were at war for twenty years. We accomplished nothing except shattering the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops and laying waste to entire regions of the Middle East.

Oh, and we stripped America of many of its civil liberties under the guise of “supporting the wartime president.”

Beware the Wartime President and his magic Constitution-canceling powers

When Bush invaded Afghanistan and fabricated the reasons to invade Iraq, two things happened:

1. The right quickly embraced toxic patriotism™ - You were either “with us or the terrorists.” There would be no questioning of the wartime president. That was tantamount to treason. Why do you hate America, you commie terrorist baby-killer?!?!?!
   

   Oh look, we’re already there. It’s been less than 24 hours.

   

2. The legacy press became the propaganda arm of the regime - This was the early days of Fox News. They didn’t have the influence they do now. The legacy press still had enormous sway on public opinion and they used that sway to bludgeon dissent. It was absolutely fucking disgraceful and they have yet to apologize. Why should they? It was ratings gold for them and that’s all that ever matters, right?
   
   We’ve been sprinting down that road for the last decade. The legacy press has been a whore for Trump since he waddled down that escalator in 2015. It’s only going to get worse going forward. He’s “presidential” now, you see. He’s “meeting the moment.” He’s “stepping up as a leader.” I promise you, you will see these phrases in the in the New York Fucking times soon enough. Try not to vomit.

It was a glorious time for the Republican Party. They had unlimited freedom to do terrible things to the country, all in the name of “the war on terror.” Spy on Americans? Great! Torture and murder suspects at CIA black sites? Fuck yeah! Cut taxes for the rich? Sure! Why not?! Gut EPA regulations? Ummmm…what does that have to do with the war on terror? Shut the fuck up, terrorist-sympathizer!

This went on for years. The Bush regime was lawless and ran rampant. Questions were shouted down as “unpatriotic.” Didn’t you know we were at war?! And the legacy press was fully complicit. They didn’t speak truth to power. They shielded it from accountability.

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

The Ogre holds them ALL accountable.

This, coincidentally, is when the liberal blogosphere was born. Since the press refused to do its job, regular people decided to do it themselves. I wasn’t a part of that wave. I came later in 2009-2010. But the press raged at all of those early writers for daring to ask the questions they wouldn’t. It was only when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went so badly that the regime couldn’t hide the disastrous results from the public anymore that the press suddenly rediscovered some form of journalistic integrity.

The rats fled the sinking ship. As if we wouldn’t notice the stench of wet fur and collaboration.

But here we are again. Another corrupt buffoon. Another illegal war based on lies. Did you know Iran is just weeks away from building a nuclear bomb? Iran has been THIS CLOSE to building a nuke since…1992. Tulsi Gabbard said Iran wasn’t building a nuke at all until Trump ordered a war to wash the taste of his limp dick military birthday parade out his mouth. Now?

Weird. Almost like she was lying then, lying now, or massively incompetent. So many choices!

Now that the regime has gone full neo-con, the party and base will follow because war is patriotic! Fox News is on full wartime footing already. The warhawks in the GOP are strutting around praising the Dear Leader. The legacy press will fall in line and slam anyone who dares to question the illegality of it all.

War is good for ratings. And ratings are the only things that matter. Praise be Trump, the goose that delivers the golden eggs.

So what comes next? Trump is a creature of television and everything his regime does is made for TV. If the color-coded terror alerts don’t make a return, I’ll be shocked. Either way, expect a constant stream of “possible terror threats” directed at big cities. I guess we’ll have to station troops in all of them. Damn shame. Maybe we’ll have to make protests illegal, just for now. It’s an “emergency,” don’t you know? America is at war! And during wartime under a wartime president, things are different.

So much for those massive anti-Trump rallies. Dissent is soooo fucking un-American. My god, our troops are under attack overseas and you’re protesting back at home?!

Only traitors protest the United States while the troops are under attack!!! Fucking dirty hippie scumbags! You’re probably a secret ISIS agent or something…

And god forbid there actually IS an attack on American soil? Every Muslim community will be torn to shreds the same way Latino communities are being invaded right now.

Thank god we stopped Holocaust Harris from getting into office, though, right? Bet that protest vote as Gaza burns and you’re rounded up here by Trump’s Gestapo is going to make American Muslims feel soooo much better. No one ever thinks the leopards are going to eat THEIR face!

But it won’t stop at Muslim communities. Why would it? Best to round up anyone who speaks out just in case they’re a terrorist, too. And grab some judges who rule against the regime just to be safe. They might be in on the plot against America. And throw a bunch of Democrats in the camps while you’re at it. Better safe than sorry.

Beware the Wartime President.

Funny how quick and easy regime change can turn into forever wars and emergencies never end. How easily the legacy press meant to defend democracy becomes a mouthpiece for fascism. How smoothly law and order become lawless chaos.

I promise you, Stephen Miller is jerking off into an American flag right now, waiting for the first explosion on American soil. And if one doesn’t happen soon enough, he’ll have one of his agents plant one. There is a zero percent chance the regime will not seize upon this war that isn’t a war but actually is to declare a far-reaching emergency. They didn’t stumble into a 9/11 but Netanyahu gave them the next best thing. The press will be the regime’s most reliable ally as they hunt for the excitement of war reporting. So what if dissent is criminalized again? How is that important? Cha-ching, baby! Circulation is up!

I’d love to be wrong. I want to wake up every day and be the wrongest person in the world. It vexes me deeply that this continues not to be the case. When I tell you that this war is going to drag on and Trump will use the November off-year elections as a dry run for seizing control of the midterms under the guise of “national security,” I really REALLY want to be wrong. I want to look back in January and say, “Wow, I fucked up that call! WHEW! Thank god! Happy day! I suck at predicting things!”

But since I keep not being wrong about how malignant and evil this regime is, we need to push even harder when they tell us that we are at war and it’s our patriotic duty to support the president.

The fuck it is.

First, he’s not the president. Trump is a rapist, a convicted felon, a traitor, and an insurrectionist who stole this election and he belongs in jail. The only support Trump will get from me is a hangman’s noose when he’s executed by the state.

Second, the people screaming the loudest about supporting a wartime president spent eight years spitting in Obama’s face. While we were still at war. What they mean is “Republican presidents get unconditional support during wartime because we’re fascists.” To which I say, “Eat shit and die.”

Third, we already did this once. A lot of people were cowed into submission and look where that got us. Do you honestly think we’re going to let you fucking do it again? BWAHAHAHAHAHAH! Bitch, you must be on some premium drugs. I know ketmaine is supposed to be some good shit, but you HAVE to lay off of it.

Trot out that toxic patriotism. I fucking dare you. Try to tell us we can’t protest the wartime president. See how that works out for you. Call us un-American. I REALLY want to have that conversation with you, you fascist fuck.

For the rest of you, those of you not quite as militant as I am or willing to punch a Nazi in the face, beware the wartime president. Trump was already grabbing power like it was an underage girl on Epstein Island. The regime is going to lose what little restraint it had left, and it will be up to us to protect this country from the mad king and his fellow rabid animals.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year. Thank you for everything!

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 133 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

If there is one thing we have learned about Donald Trump over the last 10 years – for New Yorkers, over the last 50 – it is that you cannot believe anything he says.

Anything.

If he said he was going to give Iran a chance to come back to the negotiating table and he would mull things over for two weeks, the Iran attack was going to happen in two days. If he called Saturday’s bombing Iran “a spectacular military success,” it was something less than that. If he said Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated,” they weren’t. If he said Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been ended, it hasn’t.

Trump toyed around with whether or not he was going to order the attack, telling reporters on the White House lawn on Wednesday, “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

That was a lie, but it wasn’t a lie lie. It was a strategic feint. Any leader who is planning an attack on an enemy is going to try to seem like it’s either not going to happen, or the planning is in an early stage, when actually it is almost complete. That was the case with Iran.

Planning for the attack had been going on for weeks, and Tehran knew it. They probably started moving the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium, and the uranium they had already enriched, away from their three nuclear weapons development sites when Trump was elected last November. By the time he started bellowing that he would “never” allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, their nuclear material was safe somewhere else.

Trump tells so many lies every day, we only half listen to him. We have gotten used to tucking his lies away in mental rabbit holes so we can get ready for his next bunch of whoppers. But you want to know who has been recording every syllable that comes out of his mouth? The Iranians. They have spent years slowly accumulating enough partially enriched uranium that they have been within a year, or even within months according to some intelligence estimates, of being able to produce a bomb. Do you think they were going to let all that work go to waste just because the Americans were stupid enough to put the international clown, Donald Trump, back in the White House? Not a chance in hell. They were ready. They’ve been ready for months.

With Donald Trump, nothing is ever as it seems. Why does he tell so many lies? Is it because he can’t help himself, that it’s pathological? Not even close. He tells lies to keep his opponents guessing, out of step, off their game.

Even the war he just started with Iran is a lie, in that it has another purpose. I read somewhere over the last few days that all wars are started as much for domestic reasons as for their stated foreign policy goals. Why did George Bush start his war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Did he really believe that Iran had its own secret nuclear weapons program, or that they had developed a stockpile of WMD, weapons of mass destruction? No. He needed a war, and Afghanistan was not enough, so he ginned one up against Saddam.

Domestically, Trump is not in trouble, but he’s not in great shape. He can’t get interest rates down. He hasn’t whipped inflation. His Big Beautiful Bill is in trouble. His attempt to use Elon Musk and his DOGE-niks to conquer the budget deficit and save trillions in spending was an abject failure, with recent stories saying the whole thing is going to end up costing more than it saved. And his big plan to get tariffs to solve everything has failed miserably. All the stories about tariffs now lead with how Chinese President Xi Jinping has played him like a violin. He can’t even get his big ICE roundup of undocumented immigrants up to speed. There were reports early this month about Trump’s immigration hatchet man, Stephen Miller, “yelling” at Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, ordering them to triple their arrests.

Trump’s war against Iran isn’t just about preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon. Like everything else, the war is about Donald Trump. He was going to drop that gigantic Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb from the moment he learned it existed. He needed that bombing campaign the way he needs golf courses and Diet Cokes and well-done steaks. He needed the White House appearance last night backed up by his war puppies, Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio. He needed his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon this morning giving out the numbers – 125 aircraft, 24 Tomahawks, seven B-2 bombers, 14 bunker busters – complete with map headlined with the mission moniker – this is so perfect, it’s all Trump – “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

You know what he’s doing, because he’s done it so many times before: Hey, look over here! Not only a big shiny object, a big shiny BOMB…which he puts in ALL CAPS every time he uses the word.

Because why? Because Donald Trump. The whole thing was Donald Trump all the time, all the way, from beginning to end. And it’s going to stay Donald Trump. You want to know why? Because now will come the analysis that the attack wasn’t as successful as he said, and he’ll be able to attack anyone who questions his genius. He’s already started, going after the lone Republican, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who strayed off the reservation today by claiming that the attack was unconstitutional. Trump started up a new SuperPAC to back anybody who wants to run against the poor guy. And woe be unto anyone who questions Trump’s assertion that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are done for. He’ll be able to throw around the T-word, “traitor,” if you dare point out inconvenient facts like reports that there was no measurable radiation produced from the bombing of the three nuclear sites. Not even a roentgen, according to the IAEA, was emitted from the destruction done to the Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Trump’s war puppy at the Pentagon was jubilant: "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated," Hegseth crowed at an 8 a.m. press conference at the Pentagon this morning. "The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant."

There could be good reasons for the peculiar lack of radiation from the damage done to three nuclear weapons sites. Maybe at Fordo, where satellite photos show six craters that look like someone stabbed the earth with an ice pick, the bombs went off so deep and caused such a collapse underground that they sealed off all the radiation. Maybe the same thing happened at Natanz, where another neat hole has appeared in the middle of an open field surrounded by a curving two-lane road.

We won’t know until the Pentagon does its BDA, battle damage assessment, and maybe not even after that, because which Iranian official is going to allow anyone onto any of the top-secret sites to check out the holes and maybe put a Geiger-counter on the gray dust?

Which is exactly the way Trump likes it. Who is going to question his chest-pounding assertions about his “brilliant” attack that has “obliterated” Iran’s dream of nuclear weapons?

Well, the Russkis, for one. Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, got on his Telegram account this morning and announced that other countries are "ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." He didn’t go into any details, but presumably that would mean Russia and its new war-buddy North Korea.

And then there is this possibility that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, so I’ll just put it out there right now: What if Iran has already succeeded in producing a nuclear weapon? They haven’t let the IAEA near their nuclear facilities for a while, so what if Iran cranked up its 60 percent uranium to “weapons grade” 90 percent, and they went ahead and made one? And having made it, then squirrelled it away far from where they knew the U.S. would come a-bombing-when-they-come.

While we’re at it, let’s throw in this hideous tidbit. What if the Ayatollah, at age 86, is sufficiently infirm and hidden away that some Republican Guard maniac up and decides, hey, let’s lob our nuke at Jerusalem and see what happens?

Every military expert who can get himself or herself on the TeeVee has been yapping about how easy wars are to start, but goodness me, how hard they are to end. Well, I’m not on the TeeVee, but I’ll agree with the experts on that one.

But I haven’t heard many of them talking about what wars have this extra added little tendency to produce every time you start one:

Unforeseen consequences.

Get ready, because we are in for a few, and they come from a place where Donald Trump, no student of history he, has ever spent much time.

Donald Trump will be learning that it’s a brand new thing to lie yourself out of inconvenient facts like dead American bodies.

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