‘Never heard him so angry’: MAGA senator posts – then deletes – story of furious Trump
Alexander Willis
March 17, 2026 11:12AM ET (RAWSTORY)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published—and immediately deleted—a post on social media Tuesday sharing details of a conversation he had moments earlier with President Donald Trump, who, according to Graham, was absolutely furious over his pleas for other countries to aid his Iran war effort being largely ignored.
“Just spoke to President Trump about our European allies’ unwillingness to provide assets to keep the Strait of Hormuz functioning, which benefits Europe far more than America,” Graham wrote in a social media post on X Tuesday, a post that was deleted within minutes.
“I have never heard him so angry in my life. I share that anger given what’s at stake.”
Not long after Trump first authorized strikes on Iran, the Middle East nation vowed to attack any sea vessels aligned with the United States and its allies attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route through which 20% of the world’s oil trade flows. Oil prices have skyrocketed as a result, reportedly sparking panic within the Trump administration and prompting Trump to call on other nations to support its war effort.
Those calls have mostly landed on deaf ears, however, and were met with “little in the way of immediate commitments,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Trump’s apparent fury was shared by Graham, who wrote in his now-deleted social media post that the perceived snub from European nations made him “second guess the value” of U.S. alliances.
“The arrogance of our allies to suggest that Iran with a nuclear weapon is of little concern and that military action to stop the ayatollah from acquiring a nuclear bomb is our problem, not theirs, is beyond offensive,” Graham wrote.
“I consider myself very forward-leaning on supporting alliances; however, at a time of real testing like this, it makes me second-guess the value of these alliances. I am certain I am not the only senator who feels this way.”
Despite deleting the post, Graham republished a revised version about 40 minutes later, and with minimal and inconsequential changes.
Trump and his ‘goons’ sent a ‘desperate’ message to base as big MAGA names turn: analyst
Ewan Gleadow
March 17, 2026, 3:38 PM ET (RAWSTORY)
President Donald Trump is pressuring journalists to rile up the MAGA base, but that has its problems, according to a political analyst.
The president’s war with Iran has affected even the most ardent supporters of the Republican Party, and it appears Trump is now pulling out all the stops to try to convince the influential core of his voter base to take action. Amanda Marcotte believes the ploy from Trump will not work, as prominent figures in the MAGA sphere, such as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, turn their back on the president and the party.
Fuentes, a far-right white nationalist, called on his followers, predominantly Trump supporters, to vote Democrat at the next election. Carlson, too, says he personally met with the president a number of times to persuade him not to strike Iran.
Marcotte wrote, “Mostly, what we’re seeing right now is desperation. As Jamelle Bouie writes at the New York Times, Trump is surrounded by sycophants and ‘has filtered out information that might challenge’ him. Also, he’s almost certainly surprised that things are going so poorly and, in his childish fashion, is lashing out at the messengers.
“But if there is an actual strategy at work here, it’s mostly about base management. Right now, a number of major MAGA influencers are expressing skepticism—or even outright opposition—to the Iran war.
“By invoking a longstanding grievance on the right about the mainstream media, Trump and his goons are sending a message: Republican voters who believe facts are being disloyal. Might that work? Maybe! Trump convinced the base to reject scientific facts during the pandemic, even though that wound up killing many of them.
“The difference here is that many right-wing demagogues who’ve been fervent MAGA supporters, such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, aren’t on board with this war.”
But the fact that Carlson, Owens, and Fuentes are not on board with the war in Iran does not mean they cannot be swayed back into Trump’s favor, Marcotte warned.
“People like them have no loyalty to truth, of course, since they’re hardcore conspiracy theorists,” she wrote. “But that just makes things worse for Trump, because what folks like Carlson and Owens are telling the GOP base has nothing to do with facts.
“They’re saying this war will eventually be lost, which is depressing and emasculating. That’s about the only kind of message that can cut through to the base and cause them to question their loyalties.”
White House melts down with vulgar response after being called out on stunning reversal
Nicole Charky-Chami
March 17, 2026 3:51PM ET (RAWSTORY)
The Trump administration was raging on Tuesday, dropping a bizarre comeback after it was called out over previous claims involving the Iran war.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reversed her comments from last week, when she was critical of an ABC News report and blamed the outlet in a post on X for “providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people.”
“TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did,” Leavitt wrote.
But the White House was furious after people started noting the apparent change in tune from the Trump administration and clapped back with a surprising response on X.
“No such threat to our homeland of Iran launching a drone offensive on our West Coast, dumbass. The nuclear threat of the psychotic, murderous Iranian regime is very real, however. Thank God we finally have a president who’s doing something about it,” the White House Rapid Response account on X wrote.
Leavitt, earlier Tuesday, had responded on X with a lengthy post pointing to a public statement from U.S. intelligence official Joe Kent. Kent had resigned publicly via X and, in his letter to President Donald Trump, cited his reasons for leaving his position that Trump appointed him to, insisting that Iran had not posed an imminent threat.
“There are many false claims in this letter, but let me address one specifically: that ‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,'” Leavitt wrote in rebuttal to Kent’s resignation letter. “This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.”
‘Blindsided’ judge hurls Trump DOJ prosecutor out of court in mid-hearing blowup.
Daniel Hampton
March 17, 2026 2:20PM ET (RAWSTORY)
A dramatic courtroom confrontation erupted this week when Judge Zahid N. Quraishi threw top prosecutor Mark Coyne out of his New Jersey courtroom and demanded answers about who’s really running the U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to a new report.
The scene unfolded during a child pornography sentencing hearing Monday, adding to deepening tensions between the Trump administration’s Justice Department and federal judges. The judge grew increasingly frustrated with Coyne’s presence and fired pointed questions at junior prosecutor Daniel Rosenblum about whether former interim U.S. attorney Alina Habba maintained hidden control over office operations, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
When Coyne repeatedly interjected, the judge’s patience evaporated, and he ordered him to sit.
“You don’t get to blindside the court and do whatever it is you guys want to do,” Quraishi warned. “So if you continue to speak, you can leave.”
The confrontation escalated when Quraishi grilled Rosenblum over a botched plea deal executed without complete evidence.
“How did the screw-up happen?” Quraishi asked. “Was it your office, the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI, or both? How did you execute a plea agreement without knowing all the evidence?”
Habba, now a senior Justice Department adviser, denied any operational role.
“I’m not the U.S. attorney anymore,” she said. “I left my post.”
She praised Coyne as talented and deserving respect.
The three-person leadership team of Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox, and Ari Fontecchio faces mandatory testimony next month after a federal judge last week ruled their appointments unlawful. Another judge warned that illegal leadership could result in dangerous criminals having convictions reversed.
Quraishi added a parting shot at the prosecutors.
“You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.”
Trump knew Americans would die and went to war anyway; former presidents say Trump lying about phone call, CBS journalists walk off the job
Raw America
Mar 17
Three weeks into a war that nobody voted for, the stories breaking this morning are not about battlefield victories. They are about a president who knew exactly what was coming, lied to your face about it, invented a former president who never called him and whose own allies are now privately warning that ground troops in Iran may be inevitable. And through all of it, CBS News is bleeding journalists and replacing them with Bari Weiss, while the FCC chairman rattles sabers at any broadcaster who covers the war honestly.
Trump Knew. His Own Intelligence, Officials Say So.
Donald Trump stood before reporters and said nobody, not one expert, not one intelligence official, could have predicted that Iran would retaliate against U.S. allies across the Gulf. “We were shocked!” he said.
Sources with direct knowledge of the pre-war intelligence assessments told journalists Monday that is flatly untrue. Iranian retaliation against military assets and allied targets across the region was not guaranteed, but it was, in the words of one source, firmly “on the list of potential outcomes.” Two additional sources confirmed that Trump was also specifically warned Iran might attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. His own press secretary has since confirmed he received those briefings and chose to proceed anyway.
Iran was not exactly secretive about its intentions either. Less than ten days before the U.S. launched strikes on February 28th, Iranian officials sent a letter to the United Nations stating explicitly that all bases and assets of any hostile force in the region would constitute legitimate targets in the event of a military attack. That letter is a public document.
More than 1,400 Iranians have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes, including dozens of children killed when a U.S. missile struck a girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab on the first day of the war. Thirteen American service members are dead. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Gas is near four dollars a gallon with midterms approaching. And the president is telling the American public he had no idea any of this could happen. His own intelligence community is telling you otherwise.
When a president can lie about what he knew before sending Americans to die and face no immediate consequence for it, we’re not just talking about one bad actor. We’re watching what happens when the guardrails of democratic accountability have been quietly dismantled, one norm at a time. That’s the thing about lies in wartime. They don’t just mislead. They kill.
Every Living Former President Says Trump Lied About That Phone Call
On Monday, Donald Trump claimed not once but twice that he had spoken with a former U.S. president who told him he wished he had attacked Iran himself. He refused to say who it was, adding that revealing the name would be bad for the person’s “career, even though they have no career left.” Later in the day, he hinted strongly it was Bill Clinton, describing the mystery caller as a member of the opposing party who happens to like him.
Within hours, aides to all four living former presidents, Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, told multiple news organizations that their bosses had not spoken with Trump about Iran. Not one of them. The call did not happen.
This matters beyond the embarrassment of it. Trump used this fabricated endorsement to defend a war that has killed 13 Americans and more than 1,400 Iranians. He also repeated his long-debunked claim that Iran was two to three years away from a nuclear weapon it would have used against Israel and then the United States, a claim contradicted by his own intelligence agencies. The president is constructing a fictional justification for a real war, and when pressed on the details, every piece of it falls apart.
We’ve seen this before. Presidents who need a war to stay popular have always needed a story to go with it. From the Gulf of Tonkin to weapons of mass destruction, the pattern is the same. What’s different now is that the lie got fact-checked within hours by the offices of four former presidents, and it still didn’t matter to a significant chunk of the country. That’s not a Trump problem. That’s an information-ecosystem problem, and it’s one of the deepest threats to self-governance this country has ever faced.
Trump’s Own Allies Are Warning This Could Mean Boots on the Ground
The most alarming story of the morning comes from inside the White House itself. Sources close to the administration are now privately warning that Trump has lost control of this conflict’s trajectory and that the only remaining path to saving face may involve deploying American ground troops inside Iran.
The core problem is the Strait of Hormuz. Keeping oil shipments moving through the strait against sustained Iranian attacks almost certainly requires seizing Iranian territory on the ground. One White House insider put it plainly: “They decide how long we’re involved, and they decide if we put boots on the ground. And it doesn’t seem to me that there’s a way around that, if we want to save face.”
A second source said the situation has fundamentally changed. “The terms have changed. The off-ramps don’t work anymore because Iran is driving the asymmetric action.”
Some of this is a direct consequence of Trump’s own choices on the first day of the war. By assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei along with senior commanders and family members, the administration may have made Iranian capitulation politically impossible. The new Supreme Leader is Khamenei’s son. His father was killed in a U.S. strike. His mother was killed in a U.S. strike. One White House source asked the obvious question out loud: “Do you think he’s going to be more or less reasonable?”
The “America First” coalition that cheered this war three weeks ago is now quietly panicking. Republicans heading into midterms are watching gas prices climb and a war with no exit. This is what happens when you launch a military campaign without a plan.
This is the oldest and most tragic story in American foreign policy. Young men and women end up dying not because a strategy succeeded, but because a president can’t figure out how to stop without losing face. And the people who’ll pay the price for that pride are not sitting in the White House. They’re sitting in forward operating bases and in families across this country, waiting for a phone call they don’t want to get.
CBS News Is Walking Off the Job, and Bari Weiss Is the Reason
Dozens of CBS News 24/7 staffers are expected to walk out today in the first labor action of Bari Weiss’s tenure running CBS News. The streaming unit’s workers have been negotiating with management since February over wages, overtime protections, and severance. After letting their three-year contract expire without a deal, and after management proposed annual raises of just 1.75 percent in a period of significant inflation, the 60-person unit delivered a strike pledge.
This is the same CBS that has lost anchor John Dickerson, correspondent Scott MacFarlane, CBS Mornings boss Shawna Thomas, and others who quietly exited rather than work under Weiss’s direction. Weiss told staff at a January town hall that CBS has been too focused on its current audience and needs to shift toward, in her words, “the center, the center-right, and the center-left.” Staff say the real message was simpler: get on board or get out.
The striking workers are fighting for basics. Overtime pay for twelve-hour weekend shifts. Severance protections ahead of a pending $110 billion merger between CBS’s parent company and Warner Bros. Discovery could mean another wave of layoffs. Union representatives say editorial interference, political pressure, and layoff threats have all become existential concerns since the Paramount Skydance merger closed. The workers walking out Tuesday are not making a political statement. They are trying to protect their jobs and their profession. The fact that they have to fight Bari Weiss to do it tells you everything about what CBS News is becoming.
A free press isn’t just a nice thing to have in a democracy. It’s the mechanism by which citizens hold power accountable. When billionaires buy the newsrooms and install editors whose job is to sand off the edges, they aren’t just changing the product. They’re dismantling the early warning system. These CBS workers walking off the job today aren’t just fighting for a paycheck. They’re fighting for the idea that journalism is still supposed to serve the public, not the people who own it.
Recent reporting leaves little doubt: Trump’s vice president thinks that if the war goes badly, it will help him secure the 2028 Republican nomination for president.
By Alex Shephard (TNR)
The Opportunist
Is JD Vance rooting for the Iran War to fail?
Recent reporting leaves little doubt: Trump’s vice president thinks that if the war goes badly, it will help him secure the 2028 Republican nomination for president.
If you want to understand how Donald Trump is managing the Iran war, a glimpse at the president’s recent public statements tells you all you need to know. On Thursday alone, he boasted that the United States and Israel are “totally destroying” Iran, ominously warned the country’s soccer team to stay away from the U.S.-co-hosted 2026 World Cup “for their own life and safety,” and posted a 60-year-old photo of himself in military school uniform—the phony implication being that the president, who infamously avoided the Vietnam draft thanks to “bone spurs,” is deep down a troop.
This is Trump’s take on the “wartime president” trope: self-aggrandizing, a little scary, and utterly embarrassing. He’s the architect of this already disastrous conflict, but he isn’t alone in owning it. Justifying his fake new title as “secretary of war,” Pete Hegseth has tried to outdo his boss with bloodthirsty, sociopathic, and downright stupid public statements. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been more dignified—it would be hard to be less dignified than Hegseth—which has caused his profile to skyrocket: He is now the clear front-runner to succeed Trump with both MAGA powerbrokers and the Republican base.
One person, however, is conspicuously absent from this cheerleading squad: Vice President JD Vance. But he hasn’t been silent, exactly. Instead, as the war has dragged on, he has carefully seeded a message to the press that has steadily grown more aggressive: he’s not a fan of Trump’s war.
Publicly, of course, Vance is doing his best to tow the line. He has attempted to square his long-standing opposition to prolonged conflict in the Middle East by insisting this war is different from the ones waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight—there is no chance that will happen,” Vance told The Washington Post two days before an Israeli airstrike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the intervening days, he has repeated that claim, made a few tepid statements in support of the war, and attended the dignified transfer of the remains of a U.S. service member who died as a result of it.
The real story, however, is what’s playing out behind the scenes. A March 3 New York Times piece about the lead-up to the war captured the vice president trying to have it both ways. Vance, the Times reported, “appeared to personally lean against military attacks” but also “argued that a limited strike was a mistake. If the United States was going to hit Iran, he told the group, it should ‘go big and go fast.’”
It’s not a particularly coherent position—Vance appears to have simultaneously opposed the war and advocated on behalf of waging it aggressively—but it is a revealing one. There is a palpable sense that he wanted to come out against the war but couldn’t because doing so would risk his standing with the president and his base. Instead, Vance staked out a position that he wouldn’t have to shed if he were to come out more strongly against the war later: that it should be big and fast, which is a clever way of saying the U.S. should end it quickly by winning.
One could argue that the U.S. did go big and fast when it hit Iran—and that it didn’t work. After two weeks of devastating airstrikes and targeted assassination, there is no sign that the regime is crumbling, let alone that it is on the brink of granting the “unconditional surrender” Trump has demanded. Instead, there are strong signs that the war will go on for at least a month and perhaps much longer. It is already massively unpopular—though Republican voters back it almost unanimously—and if it continues, it will likely be economically ruinous, especially if the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping channel for much of the global oil supply, remains partially or completely closed.
The war is going badly, in other words—which is exactly what Vance planned for. And so, this week, he started to tweak his story. Citing two senior Trump officials, Politico reported on Friday that Vance wasn’t actually torn about striking Iran. He was “skeptical.” Two weeks in, he is not only worried about success but also opposes the war, according to one of those officials. The message couldn’t be clearer: None of this is JD’s fault.
Vance’s opposition may be sincere—ever since his belated conversion to the MAGA cause, he has been one of the loudest anti-intervention voices in the Republican Party—but this is a Machiavellian and astonishingly self-serving manoeuvre for a sitting vice president to take during wartime. An inveterate striver, Vance clearly thinks that coming out against the war early is a savvy long-term bet. So he is doing everything he can, short of saying it himself, to make it clear he opposes the war in Iran, while ostensibly standing behind the president who is overseeing it. And he is doing so in large part to damage the standing of that president’s secretary of state, his principal rival for the party’s 2028 nomination, who would be severely damaged if Iran turns into a Iraq-like quagmire.
The war may be popular among the Republican faithful now, but Vance is gambling that support for it will crumble. His stance, moreover, helps him stake out a position that could prove powerful come the 2028 primaries: that the war was ultimately a costly distraction that prevented the Trump administration from fulfilling its core promises, particularly on immigration and trade. Vance would essentially be arguing that real MAGA policy has never been tried and that his election was necessary to ultimately fulfill the promises that Trump thrice campaigned on.
This move is also completely in character for Vance, whose political ambition, opportunism, and outright contortionism have proved boundless since his emergence as a public figure a decade ago. He made a bad bet against Trump in 2016, assuming Trump would quickly crash and burn. But he rebounded quickly after Trump won. In less than four years, he had remade himself as not only a MAGA disciple but also a thought leader who would fill the considerable intellectual vacuum at the centre of the president’s movement. No longer the neo-Reaganite of his Hillbilly Elegy days, when he called for slashing welfare spending in the name of “personal responsibility,” Vance now is an anti-corporate, anti-intervention crusader—credentials that led to his selection as Trump’s running mate in 2024.
But Vance didn’t do all of that just to be vice president. So now he’s making another bet—a bolder, riskier one. He thinks he can not just evade responsibility for the war in Iran but stick it on his rivals without jeopardizing his standing with Trump or his base. The unfolding disaster in Iran—the horrific bombing of an elementary school, 13 dead U.S. service members, the disruption of global maritime trade, and so much more—is just another opportunity for JD Vance to climb further up the ladder of power in America.
Donald Trump over the weekend posted a graphic that alarmed numerous political observers.
Trump took to his own social media site, Truth Social, to post the graphic, which is called “President Trump is reshaping the media.” “The image celebrates that NPR, Stephen Colbert, Jim Acosta, and others in the media are “gone,” while noting that CNN and the FCC have both been “reformed” by the president.
That graphic sent shivers down the spines of some onlookers, who took to X to express their concern.
Republicans against Trump noted, “Trump posted an image claiming he is ‘reshaping the media,'” to which political science professor Michael McFaul replied, “Wow.” Scary. Reminds me of Putin’s early years of reshaping Russian media.”
WaPo media reporter Scott Nover chimed in, “latest Truth Social posts includes a series of boasts about how he’s ‘reshaping the media.'”
Garry Kasparov, founder of Renew Democracy, also added, “Fascism doesn’t sneak up on you. It boasts in your face about war, attacks ‘internal enemies’ and the free press, takes total power, and tells you that you must embrace it, not fight it. Consolidating and purging media into loyal hands is Putin’s playbook.”
One popular news curator, @SkylineReport, also noted that “Trump just posted a graphic bragging that he’s ‘reshaping the media.'”
They added, “It literally lists journalists pushed out, public broadcasters ‘defunded,’ layoffs at major outlets, and regulatory pressure as ‘wins.’ Read that again. A president openly celebrating the use of political power to punish critics and pressure the press. That’s not media criticism. That’s media capture—the playbook authoritarian leaders use to bend the information system toward themselves. And the most dangerous part? He’s not hiding it anymore.”
President Donald J. Trump spurred a variety of alarmed reactions on Saturday after he asked other countries to help the U.S. with the Iran war amid escalating tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States of America has beaten and completely decimated Iran, both Militarily, Economically, and in every other way,” Trump wrote, before shifting to call for international cooperation. He urged countries reliant on oil transit through the strait to “take care of that passage,” promising substantial U.S. assistance and coordination to ensure “everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well.” Trump framed the effort as a long-overdue “team” approach that would foster “Harmony, Security, and Everlasting Peace!”
The post drew immediate online backlash, with critics highlighting what they saw as a glaring contradiction: claiming total Iranian defeat while seeking help to secure the vital waterway through which roughly one-fifth of global oil flows.
Professor Phillips P. O’Brien, a noted historian and strategist, described the message as “a work of art” worthy of preservation. He pointed out the irony: if Iran’s military capability is “100% destroyed,” why plead with frequently insulted allies to intervene in the Gulf?
Online reactions spread rapidly. PatriotTakes, which monitors right-wing extremism, quipped that Trump was “sending out invitations to WWIII.”
MS NOW’s Chris Hayes called it an “instant classic.”
Detractors mocked the pivot as evidence of overreach in the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict, where recent airstrikes—including on Kharg Island’s military targets—have disrupted shipping but not fully neutralized threats like mines or asymmetric attacks. Supporters, however, viewed it as pragmatic leadership, emphasizing U.S. dominance and the need for shared burdens in global security.
The statement also underscores broader challenges in Trump’s foreign policy approach: bold claims of triumph paired with appeals for multilateral support in a region where unilateral action has proven costly. As oil prices surge and tanker traffic remains vulnerable, the post highlights the delicate balance between projecting strength and acknowledging real-world limitations in securing critical chokepoints.
This barbaric idea has got to be too depraved even for Trump — right?
Sabrina Haake
March 15, 2026 6:00AM ET (RAWSTORY)
Trump’s aggression in Iran keeps triggering feelings I’d rather not have. They’re complicated, overwhelming, and, at times, conflicting.
I don’t disagree with disarming a terrorist state on the cusp of nuclear arms; that seems like a common-sense, preserve-the-planet objective. I also don’t mind spending tax dollars to help desperate Iranians cast off religious rule; their brutal oppression has caught in my throat for years. When that 22-year-old was beaten to death for not covering her hair a while back, I thought, Wow, this is it. Finally. She will be the catalyst, the inflection point where Iranians rise up and smack down roving bands of morality police who enjoy punching girls. I mean, the centre can’t hold where a bunch of religious men get to kill women for their lack of religiosity or personal choices. Right?
Wrong. Iranians didn’t revolt. But neither did we. The Dobbs decision is over four years old, and now pregnant women in red states are dying at twice the rate as women in blue states. What’s a little femicide among friends, amirite?
Same as it ever was
Those not-entirely-false equivalencies aside, Trump’s rotating justifications on Iran and his obvious lack of concern for what comes next cause high blood pressure. His side-ape’s messaging on “death and destruction” doesn’t impress either; it just confirms that humans haven’t really evolved since Homo erectus. Stone clubs or tomahawks, what’s the difference when it comes to brute force meted out by morons?
Please, if there is a god, can I just sleep for the next 5,000 years and come back when people know how to live in peace and preserve their only home?
Anguish over Gaza feels much the same. Who benefits from reducing an already poor nation to rubble, other than munitions dealers and developers? When Gazans’ plight—starving, thirsty—is in the news, I can’t take a drink of water in the night without internalizing their depth of thirst. If I were dehydrated, sleeping under a tarp, and my children and mule were also parched, how would I split a cup of water between them? Would I give it all to one child in hopes one of us would survive? Or would I divide it among all of us, two tablespoons each, just to share the life-affirming, if fleeting, joy of wetness on our tongues?
Are we back to an eye for an eye?
Hamas terrorists are inhuman. Who or what made them that way is a question for another day, but what they did to innocent Israelis dancing under the stars in 2023 justifies their erasure from the planet—no further questions.
But who thinks a thousand eyes for an eye is morally just? Who, other than an unpopular criminal politician using war as a deflection, offers up 70,000 lives as sacrificial lambs just to keep himself in power? Don’t answer that. I’m aware that we have our own psychopath in charge. So it’s not moral superiority I feel; it’s grief for the human condition. Grief and more than a little disgust.
Bibi, with Trump’s help, reduced Gaza to a dystopian nightmare, an uninhabitable hellhole where 2 million people used to live. Now they have nowhere else to go and what, we just move over a thousand miles to Iran and do it again?
I feel guilty for looking away to write this self-indulgent essay, but when I opened today’s NYT video of parents sobbing outside the school we bombed, killing over 150 children, I broke down. I mean, I lost it. Those could be my parents crying for their dead children. That could be my little boy buried in mortar, crying for me as he takes his last breath. Mostly, I’m choked with shame. This is my country doing this horrible thing to Iranian people who have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to harm me.
Don’t blame Iranians for their leaders unless you want to be blamed for Trump
I keep reminding myself that Iranians are no more responsible for their leaders than I am responsible for Trump, but in truth, compared to Americans, Iranians are far less responsible for their leaders than we are.
Iranians have been ruled by armed religious freaks since the Islamic Revolution, which we caused by imposing the last shah, whom everyone hated. American hubris and oil greed led to Iran’s theocratic regime 47 years ago, and Iranians have been brutalized under Sharia law ever since. When I hear Christian Nationalists promote theocracy in the U.S. I want to slap them; they have no clue what the Establishment Clause has done for our country, or for them.
Thanks to theocracy, Iranians now live under roving patrols of armed thugs. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commands terrorist cells on every block of every city of every district in Iran. Expecting unarmed citizens to challenge them is worse than ignorant; it’s ghoulish.
We are no better
Compared to what Iranians have had shoved down their throats, Americans look like idiots for electing an imbecile criminal. Any American with a TV saw what happened on J6, confirming that Trump will do anything for power, and we still re-elected him. Now we, too, have roving bands of armed paramilitary creeps driving around with guns. What does that say about us??
I’ve read political essays and credible analysts who say Trump’s plan in Iran is to provoke another 9-11 so he can expand presidential powers in the name of national security to stay in power. That’s more than my head can take today, so I’ll conclude with one certainty: Iranians’ culpability for their horrid rulers is not equal to Americans’ culpability for Trump. It’s not fair to blame them, even though Death to America jihadists will blame all Americans for Trump’s barbarism. The world is unfair like that.
The drop in Canadian tourism to the United States in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions is hurting American businesses in several states, a new report by a congressional committee has found.
The report, prepared by the Democrat minority of the U.S. Congress’s joint economic committee, warns that states along the Canada-U.S. border are being hit hard.
“In 2024, Canadian tourism contributed $20.5 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 140,000 American jobs,” wrote the authors of the report. “The negative impacts of President Trump’s tariff policies have been particularly stark in states along the U.S.-Canada border, which have many businesses that rely on short-term visits by Canadians.”
The report also cites Trump’s comments about annexing Canada, rounds of tariffs on Canadian goods and his decision to repeatedly break off trade talks.
“This has disrupted diplomatic, economic and trade relations between the United States and Canada — which in turn has hurt U.S. businesses that depend on visitors from Canada,” it says.
The report says the number of passenger vehicles crossing the border between January and October dropped by nearly 20 per cent compared with 2024, with declines ranging from more than 10 per cent in Alaska to more than 28 per cent in Vermont.
“Businesses throughout the region are also reporting fewer tourists, more vacancies and lower sales,” says the report.
The joint economic committee, set up in 1946 to study economic policy, is composed of both senators and members of the House of Representatives. It includes both Republicans and Democrats, with each side regularly publishing reports that don’t include the other.
The committee’s reports inform members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives on economic questions.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the committee and a Democrat from New Hampshire, said the report documents the impact of Trump’s actions.
“Going back for generations, Canadians have visited New Hampshire and many other states along the U.S.-Canada border to see family or friends, stay in our hotels, share a meal at our restaurants and shop at our stores,” Hassan said in a statement.
“However, in the wake of President Trump’s reckless tariffs and needless provocations, fewer and fewer Canadians are making trips to the United States, putting many American businesses in jeopardy and straining the close ties that bind our two nations.”
U.S. senators Maggie Hassan, Lisa Murkowski, Ron Wyden and Catherine Cortez Masto are seen on Parliament Hill in July. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Hassan was also part of a four-senator delegation that travelled to Ottawa in July where they met with Prime Minister Mark Carney and several Canadian cabinet ministers to discuss ways to repair relations between the two countries.
The committee’s eight-page report, made public Wednesday, outlines the toll that the Canadian boycott of travel to the U.S. has taken on 11 U.S. border states, with state-by-state data and testimonials from a wide variety of business owners.
For example, in Hassan’s home state of New Hampshire, officials reported a 30 per cent decrease in Canadian visitors — and reservations for state-run campgrounds were down 71 per cent in the first five months of 2025. One hotel owner in North Conway reported 30 per cent of their rooms were empty during some summer weekends that usually sell out.
Cross Country Checkup is asking: Are you gathering with American friends or family over the holidays? How are the Canada-U.S. relationships in your life going? Leave your comment here and we may read it or call you back for our show this Sunday.
Kyle Daley, owner of Soloman’s Store in West Stewartstown, N.H., told the committee that the “usual parade of vacationers heading to Old Orchard Beach simply didn’t show up this year.”
“The friction at the border is no longer just a headline; it is an empty parking lot and a threat to our livelihood,” Daley said.
In Maine, border crossings by passenger vehicles from Canada were down around 25 per cent in the first 10 months and Maine’s CAT Ferry, which connects Bar Harbor and Nova Scotia, reported its business was down 20 per cent over the summer.
Among the business owners in Maine who took a hit was Old Orchard Beach’s Moshe Agam.
“It’s like a 50 per cent [drop off] because not too many Canadians.… The worst year we’ve had. We’ve never had a year like that, even worse than COVID.”
In Montana, Canadians accounted for nearly 80 per cent of international visitors in 2024 and contributed $170 million US to the state’s economy. In 2025, border crossings were down 19 per cent in the first 10 months of the year. A Montana hotel reported a $38,000 US loss after a Canadian sports team cancelled its reservation which included 70 rooms and a 200-person dinner.
In an interview Friday with CBC News, Diane Medler, executive director of Discover Kalispell in Montana, said in the spring businesses noticed a 25 per cent decrease in Canadian travel and a 44 per cent drop in Canadian credit card spending compared with 2024.
She said by September the situation had improved a bit, with the drop in Canadian credit card spending down to 39 percent.
Medler said Kalispell has launched a Canadian Welcome Pass with discounts for Canadian visitors.
‘Long-lasting damage’
In Washington state, the number of passenger vehicles crossing the border was down 24 per cent and cities like Spokane reported a 33 per cent drop in visitors. Ridership on the Clipper Navigation ferry service between Vancouver Island and Seattle was down 30 per cent, forcing the company to lay off a quarter of its workforce.
Businesses in New York also reported cutting employees. For example, the North Country Chamber of Commerce, which serves the northern part of the state, reported in June that 83 per cent of businesses in the area had noticed a drop in Canadian customers, leading 35 per cent to cut staffing.
“Seventy per cent of businesses blamed the political climate and tariff policies for this drastic decrease,” says the report.
Some business owners, like Christa Bowdish of the Old Stagecoach Inn in Vermont, who was forced to lay off employees and reduce hours, told the committee she feared the damage will be lasting as Canadians find other destinations.
“It’s not just the tariffs,” she said in the report. “This is long-lasting damage to a relationship and emotional damage takes time to heal.”
