+ Trump promoted himself as the great salesman, mainly of himself. But he couldn’t sell couldn’t sell the Iran war and now he can’t sell a plan to end it, especially to his principal political sponsor, the person most responsible for resurrecting his political career when it was on life support after J6, Miriam Adelson.
Adelson infused Trump’s Preserve America PAC with $100 million and raised, pledged and contributed another $150 million to other Trump-affiliated coffers, dwarfing the $75 million contributed by Elon Musk. What did Adelson expect for her money? Palestinians wiped out of Gaza, stripped of their land in the West Bank, Southern Lebanon seized into Israeli control and Iran blown off the map. So give Trump credit for double-crossing his investors, if he understood the consequences of his actions.
The internal conflicts are beginning to leak out of Trump’s consciousness, the weight of Adelson’s millions battling with the weight of Trump’s ego. Trump’s been burning a lot of bridges lately, including every bridge into New York City. But can he afford to burn this one? Not just the link to Miriam Adelson, but the entire symbiotic relationship of the Trump presidency, indeed the entire US government, with the state of Israel and its stateside lobby. What if, for example, the Ellisons, who, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, have injected $45 million into Trump-related accounts and gotten rewarded with a lightning-fast approval of the takeover of Warner Brothers by Paramount, turn on him and use their control of CBS and CNN with the ultra-Zionist Bari Weiss at the helm to rake him over the coals, as Adelson owned media outlets are already doing in Israel?
Does he actually trust the people he sent to negotiate for him?
Does he have the fortitude to stand up to the Israelis?
Would he really follow through on his threat to kill them in a drone strike? He didn’t hesitate to wipe out the previous Ayatollah and most of the leadership of his regime and their families on the first day of the war. He even laughed about killing the people he wanted to replace them with. What kind of a man does that? What kind of a man admits to doing that? to analyze Trump’s statements and try to predict his response to Iran’s proposals in the peace talks. Is any deal they sign with Trump worth the pixels it’s written with, especially when Israel isn’t on board, as it clearly isn’t.
+++
+ Iran shouldn’t agree to nuclear weapons inspections unless Israel also agrees…
+ Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Lebanon: “Lebanon, all of Lebanon, should become our playground. ALL OF LEBANON should be our TARGET. And they tell me, ‘Wait a second, there is Lebanon and there is Hezbollah.’ I do not accept this artificial approach…Let a thousand Lebanese mothers weep, and not one Israeli mother weep.”
+ John Fetterman: “If you have contempt for Israel, you are anti-American.”
+ Trump: “I think [Israel] could do better … I’m not saying they shouldn’t protect themselves. I’m saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better…”
+ Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire brokered by Trump and overseen by the Board of Peace (with zero budget), Israel has killed at least 1,005 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 3,157.
+ According to an UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry report this week on the targeting of children by Israeli forces in Gaza, “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The UN inquiry found that during the first two years of the Israeli assault, over 20,000 children were killed and more than 44,000 injured.
+ The Times of Israel reported that Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz told a conference in Tel Aviv that the Israeli army will not withdraw from its “security zone” in southern Lebanon, “even if there is an American demand.” Katz vowed that Israel would continue to control the land it has seized and that the “200,000 [Lebanese] residents will not return” to the homes they fled under Israeli bombardment.
+ Naim Qassem, head of Hezbollah: “A ceasefire means Hezbollah does not fire and Israel is free to occupy anywhere! We do not want such a ceasefire.”
+ 4,000+: Number of Lebanese, mostly civilians, killed by Israel since the start of the Iran War.
+ Evil in Action: Israel targeted the beachside home of one of Lebanon’s leading environmentalists, 75-year-old Mona Khalil, who spent much of her life trying to save sea turtles…
+ Tucker Carlson excoriated the Republican Party on his way out the door: “There’s no chance I would support the Republican Party. I won’t support the Democrats either. I don’t know what I’m going to do. How could any American voter support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States, that puts the interest of another country (Israel) above its own citizens?”
