Trump's Iran Briefings Are Mostly Videos Of Sh*t Blowing Up, So That Explains A Lot!
Strait of Hormuz remains closed, so there's that.
We’ve known since Donald Trump’s first term that he does not read, and that his briefers struggled to find ways to deliver vital information to him, giving up on written briefings and instead concentrating on trying to keep his interest with short presentations that included “killer graphics” like maps and charts. The CIA often just gave up and briefed Mike Pence instead.
And now that he’s gotten us into a war for no reason that anyone can explain, his briefings include a daily sizzle reel where he’s shown videos of the bestest, coolest, awesomest US strikes against Iranian targets, NBC News reported Wednesday citing “three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official” who know about the briefings.
The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”
We can totally see how Trump would love that shit. Just watching videos of bombs blasting buildings and planes and stuff to bits, over and over, eyes open wide, mouth agape, like a little baby staring at a ceiling fan.
The report does point out that the insiders said Trump gets more information than just the daily WarTok video of ‘splodey things. He also gets updates through “conversations with top military and intelligence advisers, foreign leaders and news reports,” so clearly he’s very well-informed, especially if the people he meets bring along cool videos.
Haha, we just remembered how Barack Obama would take a stack of briefing materials with him from the Oval Office to the residence at the end of each day. What a nerd.
Trump’s fondness for the video compilations is worrying at least a few adults who are banished to the far corners of the room. It seems there are concerns that the Great Man “may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war,” according to the anonymous insiders.
You don’t say! It probably doesn’t help that Trump has no idea what he’s doing anyway, and no ability to think more than five minutes into the future. You can imagine staffers muttering, Please show him the Stuff Exploding vids some more, maybe he’ll gain some insights. Or at least leave us alone while we plot some side hustles.
The leakers also said that maybe, just maybe, showing Trump a bunch of context-free but exciting videos just might be causing him some perception problems as far as how the war’s going. America is clearly winning the video clip war, but journalists keep talking about unhappy facts like how we’ve bombed schools and killed thousands of civilians and fucked up the world’s economy.
Two of the insiders said that Trump keeps “asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing,” which is clearly a problem, since reporters keep asking boring old non-sizzly questions like “Why are we doing this at all?” And “Didn’t anyone tell you that attacking Iran would have effects beyond the cool explosions?”
Fortunately, Propaganda Minister Karoline Leavitt knows how to handle the news: Deny it and lie about how the real Trump, the one she works for, is far smarter and more alert than the man on TV who looks just like him, is named Donald Trump, and keeps saying stupid shit and just making things up in public. Leavitt said Trump IS TOO getting accurate information, as long as you accept his version of what “accurate” means:
“That’s an absolutely false assertion coming from someone who has not been present in the room,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Anyone who has been present for conversations with President Trump knows he actively seeks and solicits the opinions of everyone in the room and expects full throated honesty from all of his top advisors.”
Mmm-hmm, sure he does. Except for how his staff often keep bad news from him, like the attack by Iran earlier this month on five US refueling tanker planes at a base in Saudi Arabia:
Trump wasn’t briefed about the strikes, and he learned what had happened from media reports, the official said. When Trump inquired, he was told the planes weren’t badly damaged, the official said.
The official said Trump reacted angrily behind the scenes to the news coverage. Publicly he posted on Truth Social calling coverage of the strike misleading and accusing media organizations of wanting the U.S. “to lose the War.”
Leavitt said Trump was right, that the US is winning and nothing bad is happening at all, and reporters who rely on anonymous sources are just plain doing fake news, which is why Americans hate the media and love the wonderful job Trump is doing. Just report positive things and we’ll win! We’re America, and we always win, after all.
In related news, the administration has reportedly sent Iran a 15-point ceasefire plan, through intermediaries in Pakistan, but Iran has not only rejected it out of hand, it’s also making fun of the US's claims that negotiations to end the war are ongoing.
Trump keeps saying that the US and Iran are totally holding negotiations, and yesterday he came up with a very compelling explanation for Tehran’s denials that talks are underway. Great Leader told a dinner of Republican members of Congress, “They are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly. But they're afraid to say it, because they figure they'll be killed by their own people.” Mm-hmm, that’s probably it.
That came after Trump said on Tuesday that Iranian leaders are so eager to end the war that they gave the US a nice big “present” that he appreciated very much!
“They gave us a present and the present arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money,” Trump said. He added that the present “wasn’t nuclear-related, it was oil and gas-related,” and he probably wanted to say that he saw the present and it looked at him, but he couldn’t say it in public because he’s afraid he’ll be killed by his own people.
Maybe Iran could try sending him a big golden crown and a medal.
Asked by a reporter whether the present had something to do with Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump seized the lifeline and said yes, yes, it was “related to the flow,” and he wouldn’t say more, but you’re all going to be amazed when you see what the present was.
Trump also claimed Tuesday that the war “has been won,” and that the US has already achieved its goal of regime change, telling CBS News White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe, “This war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.”
"We killed all their leadership,” Trump told O’Keefe, who asked Trump to clarify whom the US is supposedly negotiating with. “And then they met to choose new leaders and we killed all of them. And now we have a new group, and we can easily do that, but let's see how they turn out.”
You got that? We’ve actually killed everyone in Iranian leadership twice. It’s like the opening titles of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but with Tomahawk cruise missiles and dead schoolgirls.
Anyway, now that Iran has totally lost the war and given us a big present, Leavitt on Wednesday emphasized our total victory by warning that if Iran doesn’t admit that the war is over, we’ll keep the war that we’ve won going. In her daily press briefing, Leavitt insisted,
“If Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before. President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell.”
You see? Iran simply needs to admit that it’s dead and get on the cart. Maybe they’d come to their senses if Trump showed Iranian leaders some videos of how the US is winning every day.
[NBC News / The Hill / CBS News]
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Iran isn't going to give up. Really, the notion that they would capitulate after a couple of air raids and war crimes is laughable. Iranians had been itching to launch some missiles at the United States and Israel since 1953.
We're going to lose this war. In order to win a war, you have to prepare your civilian population for war, and you need to make military preparations, too. Trump did neither. Putin prepared the civilian Russian population prior to his invasion of Ukraine, but didn't do *all* of the required military preparations (he did some), so his initial invasion of Ukraine failed.
The situation might be salvageable, but the top of our chain of command is just so incredibly incompetent and arrogant that they aren't capable of learning from these failures. We got Pete Hegseth promising to commit war crimes, which is just going to convince Iranian fighters to never give up, no matter what, while he's neglecting the maintenance on a carrier (apparently maintaining equipment is woke now) so that the toilets don't flush and it catches on fire and has to withdraw from the battle. Meanwhile Trump is negotiating with some imaginary Iranians. I don't even know what's going on in his brain, but I do know it doesn't have any connection to reality.
OT: *gasp*
"According to documents filed this morning by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY, ICE has been lying for a year — not only to the public, but to the courts and to prosecutors — about being authorized to make arrests at 26 Federal Plaza and other immigration courts."
https://bsky.app/profile/bradlander.bsky.social/post/3mhvpk32vxc2e