Trump Panics as War Blows Up in His Face!!!

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2:30Ben Meiselas:Everything is spiraling out of control for Donald Trump. We learned yesterday that 5 ,000 more U.S. Marines and sailors will be deployed to the United States as part of a Marines Expeditionary Force, which is usually the precursor to a potential ground invasion. You have Bank of America, which usually tends to err on the side of giving conservative guidance saying things like this. The markets are starting to look like the run-up to the global financial crisis. While all of that's going on, Donald Trump was having a meltdown on social media, posting memes about former President Barack Obama with the Ayatollah and other military generals in Iran and doing cartoon memes of that, while Donald Trump says, Trump negotiating with Iran, and it's Trump in front of B2s dropping bombs on Iran.

3:29Ben Meiselas:Yeah, Donald, that's how you negotiate with Iran. You're doing a fantastic job there, Donald. All of the Middle East and all of our former allies just say, keep it up, Donald. I'm being sarcastic, of course. Donald Trump was making post after post on social media like this. Iran had plans of taking over the entire Middle East and completely obliterating Israel. Just like Iran itself, those plans are now dead. President Donald J. Trump, what do you mean those plans are now dead, just like Iran itself? Iran continues to launch ballistic missiles and Shahid drones at United States military assets and other United States interests in the Middle East.

4:14Ben Meiselas:Iran continues to control the Strait of Hormuz. Iran continues to taunt and mock the United States and call Donald Trump and his regime the Epstein class. So yeah, Donald, I mean, you can post away and you can say things like, the war will end when I feel it in my bones. But what the world's actually feeling is what another fraud and how utterly weak and pathetic you are. Donald Trump then posted this yesterday as well. He goes, moments ago at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, the Karg Island.

5:02Ben Meiselas:Our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known. But for reasons of decency, I've chosen not to wipe out the oil infrastructure on the island. However, should Iran or anybody else do anything to interfere with the free and safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision. During my first term, and currently I rebuilt our military into the most lethal, powerful, and effective force by far anywhere in the world. Iran has no ability to defend anything that we want to attack. There is nothing they can do about it. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East, or for that matter, the world.

5:42Ben Meiselas:Iran's military and all others involved with this terrorist regime would be wise to lay down their arms and save what's left of their country, which isn't much. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now, that's what a weak person sounds like. That is not even weakness masquerading as strength. That's weakness masquerading as very weak weirdness. Weird weakness is what that really is. Because as the cost of war here in the United States continues to rise over$20 billion, as the price of crude continues to surge, as America's allies are now former allies negotiating bilaterally with Iran.

6:25Ben Meiselas:Donald, maybe you want to see why it is that India is engaged in bilateral negotiations with Iran right now in order to get its cargo ships out of the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe you want to see why Italy and France are saying that they just want to negotiate bilaterally or together with Iran in order to have their safe passage in the Strait of Hormuz. Why do you think that all of the allies that you once had in the Middle East are furious at you and they want to make deals directly with Iran because they see that you are utterly weak and you can make all of these posts, but it is belied by what is actually happening on the ground.

7:05Ben Meiselas:I mean, take a look last night. Throughout the Middle East, Iran continued to strike targets that are adjacent to or have American interest in them. Look as Iran fired missiles at U.S. bases in Bahrain. You'll see the loud and you'll hear the loud explosions as the impact is seen on the footage right here. However, Iran has repeatedly targeted Bahrain with waves of missile and drone strikes targeting U.S. facilities, particularly the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, and they continue to launch ballistic missiles at Israel and neighboring countries. But just take a look at what went down in Bahrain so we can see it for yourself.

7:44Ben Meiselas:Play this clip.

8:12Ben Meiselas:And you have Ali Larajani, the National Security Council advisor, the head of the National Security Council for Iran. He was marching with President Peseshkian, the president of Iran, as well as the foreign minister argachi and other top military generals that they were all marching yesterday in a parade in tehran square together larajani one of the top iranian officials was mocking hegseth and saying mr hegseth our leaders have been and still are among the people but your leaders on epstein island you have ali larajani posting photos of what that parade looked like and you know this video footage has been independently verified by lots of other sources as well this is what went down yesterday just so you can see i mean here's what that parade looked like uh that was taking place in iran you can see for yourself yesterday let's play this clip

9:23Ben Meiselas:and and Donald Trump just continues to social media post away he calls Maggie Haberman maggot Hagerman and posts a photo of her this is what he's doing while America's at war Maggot Hagerman, just another sleazebag writer for the failing New York Times, insists on writing false stories about me, even though she fully knows and understands that the exact opposite of anything she says is usually the truth. In any event, I'm thinking of adding Maggot and some of her associates into my Florida-based lawsuit against the New York Times, which very happily seems to be proceeding well. I mean, what are you doing right there?

10:01Ben Meiselas:I mean, come on. And again, it does seem that Donald Trump and his regime bombed the Karg Island. The Karg Island is in the kind of northern Persian Gulf area and manages 90 percent of Iran's crude oil exports. You know, there have been some suggestions that those 5000 marine expeditionary forces are getting ready to try to seize it with a ground invasion, which would just be absolutely devastating because Iran's not going to give that up. They have all their Islamic revolutionary guard soldiers around them right there. And they would rather blow up the island than allow America to seize it. But Trump's claim that it's totally obliterated, again, is false.

10:43Ben Meiselas:We don't have control of the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Hormuz. We don't have it at all. China has safe passage. Iran continues to have safe passage. And, you know, and what Iran saying is, if you think that you can make it through, We wish you the best, and it's effectively shut down right now. And we're seeing the war expanding on many other fronts as well. I mean, one of the things that we're seeing is Israel's talking about launching a full ground invasion into Lebanon at this point. And right now, they've been bombing Beirut. They've been bombing the suburbs really badly. I mean, it's like just horrific, you know, seeing these suburbs reduced to, you know, absolute rubble like that.

11:32Ben Meiselas:In response, you have Hezbollah's leaders saying that they're ready for a prolonged war with Israel. So we see everything expanding there. Donald Trump continues to mock Ukraine at the same time. Zelensky has provided the United States with critical technology, anti-drone technology, Almost like the way you strike down these Shahid drones, the worst way to do it, I mean, it's because it's so expensive is with the Patriots or the FAD systems. It is not meant for that. The way you strike down these Shahids is actually with drones themselves. You use anti-drone drones, basically, that strike the Shahids.

12:10Ben Meiselas:And Ukraine has become an expert in how to deal with this. So Zelensky is working with our military to help our military get this technology and to get some of these anti-drone technology. But Donald Trump continues to mock Zelensky. We don't need Ukraine's help with drone defense. Donald Trump continued to say, why would we want their help at all? And then you have the Department of Labor posting things like this. When things are terrible right now, we see how awful things are happening in this country and throughout the world. We're having a global meltdown. The US Department of Labor posts that Friday feeling when wages are going up and prices are coming down for American workers.

12:54Ben Meiselas:The revised fourth quarter GDP numbers showed that GDP growth was what, like 0.6 % or 0.7 % for the fourth quarter. It was revised down even from the 1.4%, which everyone thought was going to be very low. That was for the fourth quarter GDP. Seeing the inflation numbers rise as well. I mean, before this war even started, inflation has been surging. And so when we see these inflation readouts now that the price of crude again is going to exceed$100 a barrel. It's going to be deeply problematic. You know that. I mean, you know what you're paying for gas right now. You know what you're paying at the pump.

13:35Ben Meiselas:But I'll tell you who's doing really well right now, Russia. Russia's making a killing quite literally as well and figuratively, but they're making a lot of money. $11 billion dollars as the United States has removed its sanctions against Russian oil and it's allowing, and the US is perfectly okay with any country buying Russian oil at this point, believing that that would, I mean, to help Vladimir Putin, it sure as hell ain't lowering the price of gas right now. It ain't lowering the price of crude. It ain't lowering the price of Brent or, you know, It is the price continues to go up, but Putin's making a killing right now, especially as the price of oil is going up.

14:19Ben Meiselas:And the foreign minister of Iran is just mocking Donald Trump as well. He's saying the U.S. spent months on bullying India into ending oil imports from Russia. This is from the foreign minister of Iran. After two weeks of war with Iran, the White House is now begging the entire world, including India, to buy Russian crude. Europe thought backing an illegal war on Iran would win U.S. support against Russia. Pathetic. And he attaches the Financial Times article, oil windfall gives Russia$150 million a day. I think the number is going to be significantly, significantly higher than that as well. A few other data points that I want to bring up.

15:05Ben Meiselas:lots of strikes yesterday in Baghdad as the United States was apparently targeting pro-Iranian-backed militias. So Baghdad was lit up as the U.S. was bombing Baghdad. So I guess the war in Iraq is back again, the war in Iran, the war in Iraq. And you see Donald Trump just spiraling out of control with this war right now. And you had J.D. Vance yesterday say the reason why gas prices are where they are today is because of Donald Trump's work. We should all thank Donald Trump for where we are today. Here, playing this clip.

15:38Donald Trump:Now, here's the interesting thing. All this conversation happens where Joe Biden left us in a terrible situation. And the reason why gas prices are where they are today is because of Donald Trump's work to get them lower because in the Biden administration, they were crazy high. The gas prices we're seeing today are nothing like what we saw at the peak of the Biden administration because the president has set us up for energy dominance. And one of the lessons we all have to take away, frankly, every time we get involved in anything overseas, whether it's in the Middle East or anywhere else, the thing we got to take away from it is energy dominance and energy independence.

16:20Donald Trump:Rely on our own people, rely on our own energy.

16:23Ben Meiselas:Then Donald Trump was attacking the president of Mexico, Claudia Scheinbaum. And Donald Trump was saying about Claudia Scheinbaum that maybe she's a, and they're saying that she's not a narco government. And he's like posting things to mock Claudia Scheinbaum. He's making posts to mock Zelensky. He's making posts to mock Obama. It's like, what the hell are you even doing? I mean, this is the it's not even leadership. I was gonna say it's the worst leadership imaginable. I don't even know what this what how to even describe this is also according to reports yesterday from The Wall Street Journal, citing two officials, five U.S.

17:04Ben Meiselas:tankers were struck and damaged while on the ground at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia during an Iranian missile strike. Per one official, the battle damage to the tanker was not enough to destroy them, but they were significantly harmed as well. And, you know, that was the same strato tanker, the same type of airplanes where the one strato tanker crashed, where there were six of the crew members were killed. And so a total of 13 members that we know of, the Trump regime lies about everything, but 13 members, 13 service members have died in this war so far. Hundreds have been injured.

17:44Ben Meiselas:I mean, serious injuries too, traumatic brain injuries, things that they'll never be able to recover again. And I'll just share with you also what Donald Trump's AI czar is saying, what David said. This guy's in Trump's administration. And so he was on a podcast and he said something that I thought was alarming and shocking, and especially for this guy to say because he's rah-rah, you know, podcast bro, Trump guy. Here's what he had to say. Play this clip. I think some of the risks of what an escalatory approach could entail.

18:23Donald Trump:So first of all, we're all seeing that the Straits of Ormuz are closed right now. We don't want that to persist longer than it has to. But there are actually worse outcomes than that. So, if the Iranians get hit, if their oil and gas infrastructure gets hit, they've already said they're going to engage in tit-for-tat retaliation against the Gulf states. And we saw there was recently the Iranians blew up this giant oil depot in Oman. You saw some of those images. They could continue to target the oil and gas infrastructure across the Gulf states. And if that happens, it won't really matter if the straits get reopened because you won't able to restart oil and gas production in the middle east so that would be i think a much worse outcome that could result from escalation furthermore there's an even worse i think scenario from there which is the region is very dependent on desalination plants i think something like 70 of riyadh gets their water from desalination i think it's something like 100 million people on the arabian peninsula that get their water from desal i mean it's basically a desert right And those desal plants are soft targets.

19:33Donald Trump:You already saw there was, I think there was one desal plant in Iran that got hit, and then it caused Iran again, tit for tat, to hit a desal plant. I think it was in Kuwait. I could be off about that. But in any event, if you see that type of destruction continue, you could literally render the Gulf almost uninhabitable. I mean, you're just not going to have enough water for 100 million people, and human beings just cannot survive very long without water. So that would be a truly catastrophic scenario. And we're talking about destroying the Gulf states economically, and then also from a humanitarian perspective.

20:08Donald Trump:So I think we have to take things like this into account when you hear people preaching for or advocating for escalation. You also have to, I think, consider the impacts on Israel. I mean, it's hard to know exactly how much damage Israel is taking right now. There's a social media blackout, But what you're starting to hear trickle out is that Israel is getting hit harder than they've ever been hit before in their history. And we're only two weeks into this. And finally, as a cleanser of everything I just showed you, I want to show you what leadership does look like.

20:41Ben Meiselas:Here is Democratic Senator John Ossoff of Georgia. Here's what he had to say. Let's play it.

20:47Donald Trump:And I don't know if you saw it, but last night the White House put a video on social media. that depicted this war as a video game. Did you all see that? Yes.

21:08Donald Trump:When American service members killed in action are returning to the United States in flag-draped coffins, and even more Americans have lost limbs or suffered terrible brain injuries,

21:24Ben Meiselas:or are fighting for their lives, this White House treats war like a game. And it's a disgrace. It's a disgrace.

21:38And it speaks to the moral rot

21:44Ben Meiselas:of this administration.

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