Thank you, Ruy, for another great podcast. However, I am deeply disturbed that your guest spoke of electing Democrats so that they can expand the social safety net like FDR did in the New Deal. This is the Democrats' fundamental problem: they just want to give more stuff to more people and try to convince the taxpayers that the expanding government will spend their money better. We have heard this all before, and it won't work. What about expanding the economy and creating more and better paying jobs? I think that the last Democrat who made economic growth a priority was Bill Clinton, and the economy expanded greatly on his watch, although he does not deserve all of the credit. I want Democrats to speak about having a bigger and better economy and implementing policies that will do just that.
A Democratic talking point, including Adam’s, is that “trans” impacts only 1% of people so it’s not a big issue. Dems get this so wrong. I get why men brush it off. They are rarely impacted. As for me, I won’t enter a public women’s bathroom anymore because I don’t know what men I will encounter. Same with women’s travel groups. Who knows if only women will be there. Once the Dems decided men can be women, boys can be girls, then at least 51% of us are impacted. Our daughters and granddaughters have to contend with boys in their bathrooms, their locker rooms, their sports. The number of medals won by boys in girls sports numbers is in the thousands. Please Ruy, get a Dem woman on to talk about the takeover by men of women’s prisons, sports, bathrooms, locker rooms. This isn’t about “rights”, it’s about male privilege to push their way into women’s spaces where they are not welcomed and not wanted, it’s about forcing us to adopt language like “cis” and requiring opposite sex pronouns, it’s about public schools secretly proving breast binders to our daughters, it’s about requiring absolute fealty to an ideology that is false to its core. Support Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG) if you want to help be part of the solution. And push back every single time some guy presents this a “little” issue.
Any regrets that you voted for precisely what you got?
Think about the 45% of women who understood Dem insanity and actually knew better than to give Dems power, because they would invariably flood courts, academia, and the bureaucracy with leftists.
Have you ever apologized to any one of the sane women for what you did to them?
Take some responsibility, and instead of whining to Ruy about what you yourself did, think about how you will fix what you did (hint: continuing to vote Dem gets you more of what you don't like).
If there were an economic Democratic and a culturally Conservative candidate, they'd win everything. Immigration is a huge cultural issue. It is in no way economic and people would rather do without to have their high-trust society back. Just a fact.
I want to answer your question. I just don't understand what you mean here. I am always rooting for what I call a 90's Democrat which for now is Trump. Or he's closer than anyone else. Dems left me in the dust.
James is going to lose unless he moderates on trans stuff. Democrats need a Henry cuellar type in Texas. It’s Tim Walz all over again. A white guy progressives like, but doesn’t appeal to the people they think he does.
What year is it? Surely you know Trump is president. Things have changed. If he runs against Paxton, he has a chance. You can be a retard and win the presidency, or governorship of the 5th largest economy in the world.
I'm not sure I understand the point about eliminating the filibuster, which seems it would guarantee issues passing on a narrow majority, and at the same time arguing that the imperative is to pass enduring legislation. I don't foresee either party getting to 60 seats in the current divisive environment.
I love Ruy, but it seems like journalistic malpractice to have a discussion with Fetterman’s former chief of staff about widening the Democrats’ electoral appeal and not bring up the one Democrat who’s currently doing exactly that. I mean if the Democrats want their old voters back Fetterman is exactly who they need to start emulating; both in word and deed/vote.
On economic issues Democrats need to stop swinging for the fences and start playing small ball. Forget about needing 60 votes in the Senate to implement your economic ideas. Instead focus on implementing those ideas at the state level in places like NY and CA where you can pass whatever you want. If they work you will have no problem running on them and getting bipartisan support. Your biggest problem right now is that the public is clearly voting with their feet against the results Democratic governance and for the results of Republican governance.
Fetterman won because of the far left. Connor Lamb was the moderate in the primary. More than half the country is against the war, half have more empathy for Palestinians ….but John supports males in female sports.
Yeah I don't think Fetterman should be a model anymore. The Fetterman of 2023-25 was actually a good model. Immigration, talking about fixing high prices, and support for Israel in 2023-24 against Hamas and the left that supported it was something necessary. As was Fetterman's comments in 2025 about not opposing Trump on everything; for example Trump is partly right on trade, he is right that criminal aliens should be removed from the country, he is absolutely right in taking equity stakes in strategic industries, and the housing bill and especially Trump's willingness to curb private equity nonsense in the housing industry should be well received.
However, Fetterman has now staked his ground on two bad issues. One was refusing to join the government shutdowns. I'm generally not a fan of shutdowns, but making them around issues where the GOP was genuinely overreaching was not a bad idea. If for no other reason other than to continue to weaken the filibuster by forcing the GOP to get rid of it for budgets. But much more troublesome is his support of Trump's Iran war. This is a poorly thought out idea with no real plan or endgame. Supporting this unpopular idea is not just bad on its merits, but it also damages the credibility for centrists of all kinds in the Dem Party.
It was because of the Iraq War and the failed response (bailing out big banks while doing little for regular people) to the 2008 financial crisis was why you got the big left wing cultural push for 15-20 years. It was also after support for a Vietnam war failure that you got a big left wing cultural push for two decades. In both cases the mainstream center-left embraced bad ideas from the left because the left was right in opposition to a bad war that the party centrists embraced. The idea was "if the left is right on this, what else are they right on?"
My warning to cultural centrists (which I consider myself one) is that if you don't want the mainstream center-left to embrace bad ideas from the left, then don't support things that you know are bad and allow the left to become heroes in opposition. Trump's Iran war qualifies, and support for it in any way should be avoided. And thankfully almost no other Dems followed Fetterman here.
Fetterman is going down a path to be the next Joe Lieberman of the late 2000s, not the next Bill Clinton.
When it comes to shutdowns, whichever side refuses to sign a short term CR while debate continues is simply throwing a temper tantrum at the expense of Federal workers.
I take a wait and see attitude towards Trump’s Iran war. As long as we’re talking about weeks to a month or two of massive bombing campaigns and maybe a few commando operations then I’m supportive. Best case scenario the Iranian people take their country back. Worst case scenario it’s meet the new boss same as the old boss, but will minimal to no capacity to severely threaten their neighbors. We start talking about full invasionary forces and nation building and I’m out. Yes the President not addressing the nation within a few days of starting the war was political malpractice, but I doubt it would have changed the rhetoric coming from the Democrats. Fetterman sounds like a normal American who wants us to win. The rest of the Democratic Party sounds like they would rather see America lose than Trump win.
A Democratic Party full of Fetterman’s would provide a solid majority with candidates normie voters would actually vote for out of support and give the Democrats full control of Congress and the White House until they overreached.
FOr the benefit of those of us who are less clever about web navigation, would it be possible to arrange matters so that the link to the transcript is actually pointing at the transcript itself?
"A transcript of this podcast is available at the top of the post page on our website." would be more useful if it took you to the transcript, or it the "post" page appeared as 'post' rather than 'home' 'blog','archive'. or wherever it is hiding. I much look forward to reading the transcript.
I very much doubt we need to worry about the Dems' billion dollar idea. What we need to worry about is Trump and the GOP's multi-billion dollar idea, which is currently underway and totally insane. Specifically, we spent 11 billion dollars last week on a war the US president cannot coherently explain the aims, objectives, or success conditions of.
Maybe when Trump and the GOP is done courting WW3 and making George W. Bush and the neocons look like genius planners, we can worry about whether the Democrats' billion-dollar proposals are any good.
Is there a dictatorship or theocracy the left does not support? All these leftists who thought they’d be the freedom fighters in the Handmaid’s Tale cheering on a regime that is even worse.
"a war the US president cannot coherently explain the aims".
Stop a terrorist supporting regime from targeting others with nuclear weapons.
It is as if the TDS affects the neuron receptors in your brains. If you don't like the aim - then discuss. But claiming there isn't an aim is just leftist derangement.
The $11 billion is a shame. We could have spent twice that on Somali fraudsters if Dems were in charge, and then all gone to leftist virtue heaven.
It's not 'derangement', it's rationality. To your point--Trump said his prior attack on Iran was so overwhelming Iran would never develop nuclear weapons again. But now we're starting a full-fledged war with them to...stop them from developing nuclear weapons again? You'd have to be deranged to believe in such a nonsensical explanation.
You'd have to be deranged to not notice that he has made no formal address to the nation stating his reasons for the war. You'd have to be deranged not to notice he--and Hegseth--keep contradicting themselves practically every day.
March 2, Hegseth says "This is not a so-called regime-change war"
March 5, Trump says he gets to pick the regime, or the war doesn't end: "“I’m going to have a big impact, or they’re not going to have any settlement, because we’re not going to have to go do this again.”
March 11, Trump says the war is over: "You know, you never want to say too early you won. We won. The first hour, it was over."
Also Trump, March 11, saying it's not: "We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job."
March 13, Hegseth, contradicts him: "Today will be yet again, the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran. The number of sorties and number of bomber pulses, the highest yet ramping up and only up." (highest volume of strikes in a war that has already been won?)
And then there's Hegseth today, when asked if the Strait of Hormuz has been closed: "The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."
>>So to recap:<<
We are not in a regime change war, but we're not ending the war until we get the regime we want.
We won the war, and it's going to be short, but we can't leave before the war is won, and we don't know how long it will be.
We destroyed Iran's nuclear weapons, but we've got to fight this war to destroy its nuclear capabilities. (which don't exist because we destroyed them)
The Strait of Hormuz isn't closed, it's just that nothing can move through it because Iran (who we defeated) won't stop shooting. (so we have to defeat them)
...Again, you'd have to be truly deranged to credulously swallow such incoherence, especially coming from the Commander in Chief of the world's most powerful military.
I believe your argument comes down to nitpicking details and hyperventilating.
Lets just do one, because I have better things to do than spoon feed a hair-on-fire leftist.
Lets do this one.
"The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."
Seems entirely accurate to me.
He is clarifying what "closed" means. To stop precisely the nitpicking you leftists love. He says the USA have not "closed" it. And nature has not "closed it. And you should ask the Iranians if they intend to shoot at ships - not him.
As for Trump's statements, only a leftist lunatic listens to what Trump says and takes any of it literally. Every normal human on the street understands Trump and his mouth perfectly. But you "educated" leftists just can't stop having epileptic fits over what he says off the cuff. You are a joke to normal people.
>>As for Trump's statements, only a leftist lunatic listens to what Trump says and takes any of it literally.<<
So he can't explain the aims, logic or rationale of a war that he has started, but that's okay because he's Trump and nothing he says makes sense anyway--and that's fine, even though he's the POTUS.
And you wonder why it's called a cult of personality. "I don't really know what he's saying, but I trust him." (it's fun until you drink the 'special koolaid', eh?)
>>"He is clarifying what 'closed' means."<<
He is saying that it's not closed, and then admitting that it's closed. In the same sentence. And then expecting Trump supporters to sanewash his incoherence. And now, as could have easily been predicted ahead of time, you are dutifully obliging him.
What you are perceiving as 'epileptic fits' are simply normal human reactions to irrational and/or destructive behavior. You simply don't hold the leader of the country to any rational standards, so it *looks* like 'hair-on-fire' reactions. When you're stoned on the drug of a personality cult, sober people who aren't in the cult do seem to move a little quicker than you deem it necessary. But your insobriety is no one's fault but your own.
What you are calling ‘translation’ is more accurately called ‘rationalization.’ (Folks these days also call it ‘sane-washing’). Trump says something that doesn’t make sense or is so vague as to be completely meaningless, then you impute a rational “here’s what he *really* meant” on top of it. It’s what cult members do when their supposedly ‘all-knowing’ leaders make statements that unveil their incompetence and fallibility.
Riddle me this: what does “the Strait of Hormuz is not closed” mean, in the context of the question as it was put to Mr. Trump’s functionary, Mr. Hegseth?
Hello Ruy, My idea for all thinking liberals, like yourself, costs just $12 per year (only 3.3 cents a day) at EthicalGovtNow.org. We are about, continually, clustering thinking Americans in a single online home in order to build an aggregated membership large enough to bend the arc of future history toward greater justice and better societal and political outcomes, wide pluralism and inclusivity. May I ask whether you will join our arc?
The whole idea that climate change "can be fixed", is classic leftism.
How?
Are you going to fix the earth's temperature to be static? Why?
How is grifting billions to NGOs and politicians going to stop China producing more CO2 than all of the USA and all of Europe combined? Same with India.
How exactly are we ever going to survive 1 inch in sea level rise every 100 years without giving power to arrogant self-righteous liars - if it even happens. Using 1000 year old technology is so scary.
Climate alarmism does NOT pass the sanity test. Not even close to anything but a giant grift.
Read the description of this guy’s book and it reads like a progressive fever dream. Full of references to the “[evil] white man” and those “[evil] conservatives” conspiring with that “[fascist] Trump [to thwart democracy].”
Meanwhile the reality is both parties have maintained the filibuster, Trump has been pressuring to get rid of the filibuster, and currently the minority thwarting democracy is the progressives.
I’m not sure how much use this guy is going to be in convincing progressives that they keep shooting themselves (and the Democrats) in the foot. The book came out in 2021 when the progressives were running high on their own supply so maybe the author was just code switching…. Or he’s code switching now….
Anyway, I’ll listen to the episode but I have to listen to this guy’s position in light of his 2021 book. Hopefully there’s some recognition there that all that identitarian talk ended up being totally counterproductive (as many of us - who ended up being branded heretics - said it would be).
Thank you, Ruy, for another great podcast. However, I am deeply disturbed that your guest spoke of electing Democrats so that they can expand the social safety net like FDR did in the New Deal. This is the Democrats' fundamental problem: they just want to give more stuff to more people and try to convince the taxpayers that the expanding government will spend their money better. We have heard this all before, and it won't work. What about expanding the economy and creating more and better paying jobs? I think that the last Democrat who made economic growth a priority was Bill Clinton, and the economy expanded greatly on his watch, although he does not deserve all of the credit. I want Democrats to speak about having a bigger and better economy and implementing policies that will do just that.
A Democratic talking point, including Adam’s, is that “trans” impacts only 1% of people so it’s not a big issue. Dems get this so wrong. I get why men brush it off. They are rarely impacted. As for me, I won’t enter a public women’s bathroom anymore because I don’t know what men I will encounter. Same with women’s travel groups. Who knows if only women will be there. Once the Dems decided men can be women, boys can be girls, then at least 51% of us are impacted. Our daughters and granddaughters have to contend with boys in their bathrooms, their locker rooms, their sports. The number of medals won by boys in girls sports numbers is in the thousands. Please Ruy, get a Dem woman on to talk about the takeover by men of women’s prisons, sports, bathrooms, locker rooms. This isn’t about “rights”, it’s about male privilege to push their way into women’s spaces where they are not welcomed and not wanted, it’s about forcing us to adopt language like “cis” and requiring opposite sex pronouns, it’s about public schools secretly proving breast binders to our daughters, it’s about requiring absolute fealty to an ideology that is false to its core. Support Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG) if you want to help be part of the solution. And push back every single time some guy presents this a “little” issue.
Any regrets that you voted for precisely what you got?
Think about the 45% of women who understood Dem insanity and actually knew better than to give Dems power, because they would invariably flood courts, academia, and the bureaucracy with leftists.
Have you ever apologized to any one of the sane women for what you did to them?
Take some responsibility, and instead of whining to Ruy about what you yourself did, think about how you will fix what you did (hint: continuing to vote Dem gets you more of what you don't like).
If there were an economic Democratic and a culturally Conservative candidate, they'd win everything. Immigration is a huge cultural issue. It is in no way economic and people would rather do without to have their high-trust society back. Just a fact.
Hahahaha. How has Trump not morphed the GOP into what you just suggested will "win everything"? Why do the lower classes vote for him so much?
No tax on tips, etc, is pretty socialist econ.
The question you need to ask yourself is are you rooting for team Dem no matter what, or do you actually want what you just described above.
Can your ego take it?
I want to answer your question. I just don't understand what you mean here. I am always rooting for what I call a 90's Democrat which for now is Trump. Or he's closer than anyone else. Dems left me in the dust.
James is going to lose unless he moderates on trans stuff. Democrats need a Henry cuellar type in Texas. It’s Tim Walz all over again. A white guy progressives like, but doesn’t appeal to the people they think he does.
Does he need to moderate on the Anti-white racism?
Or are Democrats super OK with racism as long as it targets the baddies?
Huh?
He needs to come out against males in female spaces.
Cool. So we can keep the racism. Good to know.
?
Really?
You said he had to fix one thing and he would be good.
I suggested, with mildly veiled sarcasm, that he is flawed all over and one thing won't make a lick of difference.
What year is it? Surely you know Trump is president. Things have changed. If he runs against Paxton, he has a chance. You can be a retard and win the presidency, or governorship of the 5th largest economy in the world.
I'm not sure I understand the point about eliminating the filibuster, which seems it would guarantee issues passing on a narrow majority, and at the same time arguing that the imperative is to pass enduring legislation. I don't foresee either party getting to 60 seats in the current divisive environment.
Fetterman’s staff may be part of the problem unfortunately https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5316768-with-their-trans-stance-democrats-are-pushing-women-out-of-their-party/amp/
I love Ruy, but it seems like journalistic malpractice to have a discussion with Fetterman’s former chief of staff about widening the Democrats’ electoral appeal and not bring up the one Democrat who’s currently doing exactly that. I mean if the Democrats want their old voters back Fetterman is exactly who they need to start emulating; both in word and deed/vote.
On economic issues Democrats need to stop swinging for the fences and start playing small ball. Forget about needing 60 votes in the Senate to implement your economic ideas. Instead focus on implementing those ideas at the state level in places like NY and CA where you can pass whatever you want. If they work you will have no problem running on them and getting bipartisan support. Your biggest problem right now is that the public is clearly voting with their feet against the results Democratic governance and for the results of Republican governance.
Fetterman won because of the far left. Connor Lamb was the moderate in the primary. More than half the country is against the war, half have more empathy for Palestinians ….but John supports males in female sports.
Bombs and trannies are his priorities.
Yeah I don't think Fetterman should be a model anymore. The Fetterman of 2023-25 was actually a good model. Immigration, talking about fixing high prices, and support for Israel in 2023-24 against Hamas and the left that supported it was something necessary. As was Fetterman's comments in 2025 about not opposing Trump on everything; for example Trump is partly right on trade, he is right that criminal aliens should be removed from the country, he is absolutely right in taking equity stakes in strategic industries, and the housing bill and especially Trump's willingness to curb private equity nonsense in the housing industry should be well received.
However, Fetterman has now staked his ground on two bad issues. One was refusing to join the government shutdowns. I'm generally not a fan of shutdowns, but making them around issues where the GOP was genuinely overreaching was not a bad idea. If for no other reason other than to continue to weaken the filibuster by forcing the GOP to get rid of it for budgets. But much more troublesome is his support of Trump's Iran war. This is a poorly thought out idea with no real plan or endgame. Supporting this unpopular idea is not just bad on its merits, but it also damages the credibility for centrists of all kinds in the Dem Party.
It was because of the Iraq War and the failed response (bailing out big banks while doing little for regular people) to the 2008 financial crisis was why you got the big left wing cultural push for 15-20 years. It was also after support for a Vietnam war failure that you got a big left wing cultural push for two decades. In both cases the mainstream center-left embraced bad ideas from the left because the left was right in opposition to a bad war that the party centrists embraced. The idea was "if the left is right on this, what else are they right on?"
My warning to cultural centrists (which I consider myself one) is that if you don't want the mainstream center-left to embrace bad ideas from the left, then don't support things that you know are bad and allow the left to become heroes in opposition. Trump's Iran war qualifies, and support for it in any way should be avoided. And thankfully almost no other Dems followed Fetterman here.
Fetterman is going down a path to be the next Joe Lieberman of the late 2000s, not the next Bill Clinton.
When it comes to shutdowns, whichever side refuses to sign a short term CR while debate continues is simply throwing a temper tantrum at the expense of Federal workers.
I take a wait and see attitude towards Trump’s Iran war. As long as we’re talking about weeks to a month or two of massive bombing campaigns and maybe a few commando operations then I’m supportive. Best case scenario the Iranian people take their country back. Worst case scenario it’s meet the new boss same as the old boss, but will minimal to no capacity to severely threaten their neighbors. We start talking about full invasionary forces and nation building and I’m out. Yes the President not addressing the nation within a few days of starting the war was political malpractice, but I doubt it would have changed the rhetoric coming from the Democrats. Fetterman sounds like a normal American who wants us to win. The rest of the Democratic Party sounds like they would rather see America lose than Trump win.
A Democratic Party full of Fetterman’s would provide a solid majority with candidates normie voters would actually vote for out of support and give the Democrats full control of Congress and the White House until they overreached.
"The rest of the Democratic Party sounds like they would rather see America lose than Trump win."
They sound that way because they are that way.
FOr the benefit of those of us who are less clever about web navigation, would it be possible to arrange matters so that the link to the transcript is actually pointing at the transcript itself?
"A transcript of this podcast is available at the top of the post page on our website." would be more useful if it took you to the transcript, or it the "post" page appeared as 'post' rather than 'home' 'blog','archive'. or wherever it is hiding. I much look forward to reading the transcript.
It's a quirk of Substack. You can't directly link to it, just to the page where it lives. See if this works however. https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/democrats-have-a-billion-dollar-idea?showTranscript=true
It worked! Thanks! Very interesting discussion.
I very much doubt we need to worry about the Dems' billion dollar idea. What we need to worry about is Trump and the GOP's multi-billion dollar idea, which is currently underway and totally insane. Specifically, we spent 11 billion dollars last week on a war the US president cannot coherently explain the aims, objectives, or success conditions of.
Maybe when Trump and the GOP is done courting WW3 and making George W. Bush and the neocons look like genius planners, we can worry about whether the Democrats' billion-dollar proposals are any good.
Is there a dictatorship or theocracy the left does not support? All these leftists who thought they’d be the freedom fighters in the Handmaid’s Tale cheering on a regime that is even worse.
"Is there a dictatorship or theocracy the left does not support?"
Maybe Russia on the dictatorship? But that's the only one that I can think of.
Even then, that's a relatively new twist. Obama's Russia comment in 2012 remains one of the least well aged clapbacks of all time.
"a war the US president cannot coherently explain the aims".
Stop a terrorist supporting regime from targeting others with nuclear weapons.
It is as if the TDS affects the neuron receptors in your brains. If you don't like the aim - then discuss. But claiming there isn't an aim is just leftist derangement.
The $11 billion is a shame. We could have spent twice that on Somali fraudsters if Dems were in charge, and then all gone to leftist virtue heaven.
It's not 'derangement', it's rationality. To your point--Trump said his prior attack on Iran was so overwhelming Iran would never develop nuclear weapons again. But now we're starting a full-fledged war with them to...stop them from developing nuclear weapons again? You'd have to be deranged to believe in such a nonsensical explanation.
You'd have to be deranged to not notice that he has made no formal address to the nation stating his reasons for the war. You'd have to be deranged not to notice he--and Hegseth--keep contradicting themselves practically every day.
March 2, Hegseth says "This is not a so-called regime-change war"
March 5, Trump says he gets to pick the regime, or the war doesn't end: "“I’m going to have a big impact, or they’re not going to have any settlement, because we’re not going to have to go do this again.”
March 11, Trump says the war is over: "You know, you never want to say too early you won. We won. The first hour, it was over."
Also Trump, March 11, saying it's not: "We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job."
March 13, Hegseth, contradicts him: "Today will be yet again, the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran. The number of sorties and number of bomber pulses, the highest yet ramping up and only up." (highest volume of strikes in a war that has already been won?)
And then there's Hegseth today, when asked if the Strait of Hormuz has been closed: "The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."
>>So to recap:<<
We are not in a regime change war, but we're not ending the war until we get the regime we want.
We won the war, and it's going to be short, but we can't leave before the war is won, and we don't know how long it will be.
We destroyed Iran's nuclear weapons, but we've got to fight this war to destroy its nuclear capabilities. (which don't exist because we destroyed them)
The Strait of Hormuz isn't closed, it's just that nothing can move through it because Iran (who we defeated) won't stop shooting. (so we have to defeat them)
...Again, you'd have to be truly deranged to credulously swallow such incoherence, especially coming from the Commander in Chief of the world's most powerful military.
You don't really believe any of that do you?
I believe your argument comes down to nitpicking details and hyperventilating.
Lets just do one, because I have better things to do than spoon feed a hair-on-fire leftist.
Lets do this one.
"The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."
Seems entirely accurate to me.
He is clarifying what "closed" means. To stop precisely the nitpicking you leftists love. He says the USA have not "closed" it. And nature has not "closed it. And you should ask the Iranians if they intend to shoot at ships - not him.
As for Trump's statements, only a leftist lunatic listens to what Trump says and takes any of it literally. Every normal human on the street understands Trump and his mouth perfectly. But you "educated" leftists just can't stop having epileptic fits over what he says off the cuff. You are a joke to normal people.
>>As for Trump's statements, only a leftist lunatic listens to what Trump says and takes any of it literally.<<
So he can't explain the aims, logic or rationale of a war that he has started, but that's okay because he's Trump and nothing he says makes sense anyway--and that's fine, even though he's the POTUS.
And you wonder why it's called a cult of personality. "I don't really know what he's saying, but I trust him." (it's fun until you drink the 'special koolaid', eh?)
>>"He is clarifying what 'closed' means."<<
He is saying that it's not closed, and then admitting that it's closed. In the same sentence. And then expecting Trump supporters to sanewash his incoherence. And now, as could have easily been predicted ahead of time, you are dutifully obliging him.
What you are perceiving as 'epileptic fits' are simply normal human reactions to irrational and/or destructive behavior. You simply don't hold the leader of the country to any rational standards, so it *looks* like 'hair-on-fire' reactions. When you're stoned on the drug of a personality cult, sober people who aren't in the cult do seem to move a little quicker than you deem it necessary. But your insobriety is no one's fault but your own.
"I don't really know what he's saying, but I trust him."
Is absolute complete bullocks.
It seems amazing but you are even more clueless about normal people than you are about Trump.
Everybody knows exactly what Trump is saying, because he talks like a 3rd grader. His words are not remotely complicated. They are just not LITERAL.
"We won. The first hour, it was over." -Trump
Translation by any normal person = "It was a highly successful operation." Which in all honesty - it was.
Trump is right yet again. Cry more about it. Let the TDS consume your soul.
What you are calling ‘translation’ is more accurately called ‘rationalization.’ (Folks these days also call it ‘sane-washing’). Trump says something that doesn’t make sense or is so vague as to be completely meaningless, then you impute a rational “here’s what he *really* meant” on top of it. It’s what cult members do when their supposedly ‘all-knowing’ leaders make statements that unveil their incompetence and fallibility.
Riddle me this: what does “the Strait of Hormuz is not closed” mean, in the context of the question as it was put to Mr. Trump’s functionary, Mr. Hegseth?
Is this an "unpartisan" idea that either of you could get behind? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Hello Ruy, My idea for all thinking liberals, like yourself, costs just $12 per year (only 3.3 cents a day) at EthicalGovtNow.org. We are about, continually, clustering thinking Americans in a single online home in order to build an aggregated membership large enough to bend the arc of future history toward greater justice and better societal and political outcomes, wide pluralism and inclusivity. May I ask whether you will join our arc?
The whole idea that climate change "can be fixed", is classic leftism.
How?
Are you going to fix the earth's temperature to be static? Why?
How is grifting billions to NGOs and politicians going to stop China producing more CO2 than all of the USA and all of Europe combined? Same with India.
How exactly are we ever going to survive 1 inch in sea level rise every 100 years without giving power to arrogant self-righteous liars - if it even happens. Using 1000 year old technology is so scary.
Climate alarmism does NOT pass the sanity test. Not even close to anything but a giant grift.
The worst part of the climate change grift is how many gullible followers there are who vigorously support the idiotic concept and grift machine.
I think the worst part is the hypocrisy
Read the description of this guy’s book and it reads like a progressive fever dream. Full of references to the “[evil] white man” and those “[evil] conservatives” conspiring with that “[fascist] Trump [to thwart democracy].”
Meanwhile the reality is both parties have maintained the filibuster, Trump has been pressuring to get rid of the filibuster, and currently the minority thwarting democracy is the progressives.
I’m not sure how much use this guy is going to be in convincing progressives that they keep shooting themselves (and the Democrats) in the foot. The book came out in 2021 when the progressives were running high on their own supply so maybe the author was just code switching…. Or he’s code switching now….
Anyway, I’ll listen to the episode but I have to listen to this guy’s position in light of his 2021 book. Hopefully there’s some recognition there that all that identitarian talk ended up being totally counterproductive (as many of us - who ended up being branded heretics - said it would be).
Welcome to dark side, my friend, we have the cookies and the free speech.