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The Empathist-In Chief: "This says everything."
Further

Winning Blind Cruel Inept Nationalism, Also Cultism

Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."

Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.

Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran veers on: "Another day, another pivot. Trump flails." It's won, not, won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal, talks are going well, we don't wanna talk, Iran struck a school full of young girls, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.

Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Latest bonkers Jesus/doctor/imbecile post Latest bonkers Jesus/doctor post with an umbilical-cord-eating eagle. Nothing to see here.Image from Truth Social

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.

Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Banksy's new Blind Nationalism art work amidst London's colonial monuments Banksy's new Blind Nationalism art work amidst London's colonial monumentsImage from Banksy Instagram page

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."

Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."

"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."

"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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Colombian President Warns ‘Suicidal’ Fossil-Fueled Capitalism Is Leading World to ‘Barbarism’
News

Colombian President Warns ‘Suicidal’ Fossil-Fueled Capitalism Is Leading World to ‘Barbarism’

Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned on Tuesday that the current model of fossil fuel-driven capitalism was leading the world into "barbarism" and "fascism."

According to a Wednesday report from The Guardian, Petro told attendees of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels being held in Santa Marta, Colombia that capitalism's insistence on continued fossil fuel dependence was "suicidal" and driving the world toward more conflict.

"There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death," said Petro. "Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life... The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”

Petro also warned that the consequences of sticking with a model of capitalism that centers fossil fuel energy won't be merely economic but also political.

"We are heading towards barbarism," he said. "And barbarism is the prelude to, or the very essence of, fascism."

As reported by Common Dreams last week, the conference in Colombia, which wraps up Wednesday, has featured more than 50 nations discussing strategies to phase out energy based on coal, oil, and gas.

Ralph Regenvanu, minister for climate change of the island nation of Vanuatu, told NPR on Wednesday that his country has been seeing the impacts of the climate crisis up close in the form of rising sea levels and spiraling energy costs.

Because of this, Regenvanu said his government has accelerated plans to begin solar energy and electric vehicle projects, telling NPR that "the decision on EVs was directly stimulated by the crisis."

France was also a major presence at the conference, reported The Guardian, as French climate envoy Benoit Faraco outlined an ambitious plan to make his country a major renewable energy producer.

"This process has made us realize we want to be an electro-superpower," said Faraco. "We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries."

But Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told The Guardian that the ability to transition away from fossil fuels will be much harder for many developing nations, even though these nations are the ones most adversely impacted by the climate emergency.

"There are many fossil-fuel producing countries in the Global South that are being pushed into expanding fossil fuel production just to feed their debt," Berman explained. "There is an expanding debt crisis in the Global South. It is impossible for countries to even imagine a fossil fuel transition with such limited fiscal space."

Advocates warned that the conference did not appear set to produce new commitments to fund climate action in the Global South, but discussions were taking place about tackling massive subsidies that have been granted annually to fossil fuel giants.

"It is a space where conversations can take place about, for instance, subsidy reform," Leo Roberts of the think tank E3G told The Guardian, "to take the $1.5 trillion in [annual] fossil fuel subsidies and repurpose them to somewhere else.”

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Boycott the Bezos Met Gala sign
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‘Worst Conceivable Representative’: Inequality Opponents Condemn Bezos Sponsorship of Met Gala

As celebrities prepared to attend the 2026 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday, a coalition of nearly three dozen civil society groups warned that with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—currently the fourth-richest person on Earth—chairing the annual fundraiser, the gala risks "artwashing the harms of extreme wealth."

Groups including Greenpeace International, Patriotic Millionaires, and War on Want signed a letter organized by the Tax the Superrich Alliance, calling on the museum and Vogue magazine, which hosts the event, not to honor Bezos and warning that the billionaire is using the two cultural institutions as tools "to launder his public image."

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a celebrated collection of art spanning centuries, many of it made "in defiance of power—work that exposed injustice, gave voice to the silenced, and held the powerful to account," reads the letter.

But the tech mogul chosen to chair the gala "has made his loyalties clear" since President Donald Trump first took office in 2017 and during the Republican's second term, said the groups, pointing to Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post, the mass firing of hundreds of the newspaper's reporters this year, and his remaking of the publication's opinion section into one focusing on "free markets."

He "gutted" the Post "while reportedly pouring $75 million into a film promoting Melania Trump," reads the letter, referring to the Amazon-produced documentary film Melania.

"A 2% wealth tax on just three necklaces previously worn by celebrities to the Met Gala’s red carpet could fully fund New York City’s home energy assistance program, helping 1 million households heat and cool their homes."

"He is not just a bystander to Trump’s administration," wrote the organizations. "He is one of its enablers. This is not philanthropy. This effectively is influence bought and paid for by Bezos’ pocket change—and the Met Gala is his latest purchase."

The groups added that in addition to aligning himself with the White House through his ownership of the Post, Bezos and Amazon—a government contractor where he is still the largest individual shareholder—is working with Trump to "make possible a concentration of power that not only threatens lives in the US but across the world as well."

"While so many of these policies aren’t new, they have been exacerbated under Trump and with the help of people like Bezos—from families torn apart by ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids reportedly enabled by Amazon's own technology, to a White House emboldened to threaten and carry out military action against sovereign nations without consequence—including to ‘destroy a whole civilization’ in Iran—with no accountability," reads the letter.

The Tax Justice Network, one of the signatories, emphasized that just a fraction of the money that goes to the $100,000-per ticket Met Gala could alleviate the economic inequality that's grown worse under the Trump administration.

"A 2% wealth tax on just three necklaces previously worn by celebrities to the Met Gala’s red carpet could fully fund New York City’s home energy assistance program, helping 1 million households heat and cool their homes," said the Tax Justice Network, citing its analysis released Monday.

Bezos is among the billionaires who have contributed donations to Trump's pet projects—a luxury ballroom and a 250-foot-tall arch in Washington, DC—while the president has tried to cut the home energy assistance program, said the group.

“There’s a thin line between celebrating glamorous fashion and artwashing extreme wealth, and that line gets bulldozed when your poster boy is an ICE-profiteering billionaire bankrolling Trump’s vanity projects and a top spender on anti-worker lobbying,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network.

In the first two hours of the Met Gala, Cobham added, "Bezos’s wealth will grow by the equivalent of 130,000 hours of a teacher’s labor... This extreme distortion throws economies out of whack. Our economies are supposed to let people earn the wealth they need to lead secure and comfortable lives, but most countries’ tax rules make it easier for the superrich to collect wealth than for the rest of us to earn it."

It's a thin line between celebrating glamor & artwashing extreme wealth. That line gets bulldozed when your patron is an ICE-profiteering billionaire bankrolling Trump’s vanity projects & a top spender on antiworker lobbying. Don't let Bezos artwash his at the Met Gala taxjustice.net/press/2-tax-...

[image or embed]
— Tax Justice Network (@taxjustice.net) May 4, 2026 at 3:25 AM

"In Bezos’ case, it’s easy to see how that undertaxed collected wealth goes towards lobbying further against workers’ rights and pay, while his company Amazon remains one of the biggest recipients of US subsidies," said Cobham.

According to the Tax Justice Network's analysis, Bezos accumulated $3.8 million every house from 2023-25, when his total wealth grew by more than $100 billion.

"If Bezos were to continue to accumulate wealth at this rate," said the group, "he would accumulate $7.6 million in the first two hours of the Met Gala event, which is the equivalent of 110 NYC Public Schools teachers’ starting salaries"—$68,902.

Those organizing the gala can and must "stop celebrating those destroying our countries and humanity itself," reads the letter sent by the Tax the Superrich Alliance, by not honoring Bezos and backing the fair taxation of the wealthiest households and corporations.

"End the oligarchy," reads the letter. "Tax the super rich. Now."

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a proponent of taxing the rich to pay for crucial public programs and services, planned to skip the Met Gala in a break with tradition. Last month Mamdani announced plans for a tax on second homes valued at $5 million or more in New York City.

Celebrities who are reportedly planning to skip the event include Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid, who has spoken out against ICE and in favor of Palestinian rights, and actress Zendaya.

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'Promising Milestone': Missouri Campaign Submits Signatures to Protect Voter-Approved Laws
News

'Promising Milestone': Missouri Campaign Submits Signatures to Protect Voter-Approved Laws

Organizers in Missouri on Sunday said they reached an important milestone in a campaign to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this year that would stop Republican officials in the state from trying to sabotage ballot initiatives.

Respect Missouri Voters, a coalition aimed at protecting and strengthening the state's ballot initiative process, announced that it has delivered more than 367,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State's office in favor of a constitutional amendment that enact two key policies to protect voter-passed laws.

First, as the Fairness Project summarized on Monday, it would "require that all future ballot measures in the state be summarized for voters in fair, clear, and easily understandable terms"; and second, it would demand "that any attempt by the Legislature to refer a voter-approved measure back to the ballot clear an 80% threshold in each chamber, a high bar designed to prevent politicians from undoing what voters have already decided."

The first part of the amendment is aimed at addressing problems created by Republican Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who has repeatedly been taken to court for writing ballot initiative summaries that advocates say are misleading or provide incomplete information about what the initiatives would do.

As the Missouri Independent reported in February, a total of five summaries written by Hoskins have been thrown out by courts since October, as "judges at every level of Missouri’s court system have stepped in to block or rewrite ballot language" drafted by the secretary of state.

The second part of the amendment, meanwhile, was written in response to Republican legislators' efforts to overturn ballot initiatives passed in 2024 that legalized abortion in Missouri and established mandatory paid sick leave.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a key backer of Respect Missouri Voters, said the gathering of more than 367,000 signatures is "a promising milestone for Missouri voters and for direct democracy."

"Perhaps more than in any other state, voters in Missouri understand what is at stake,” Hall added. "It’s in Missouri that extremist politicians have worked overtime to undermine the will of their voters, whether it’s been fighting to reinstate a wildly unpopular ban on access to abortion care, gerrymandering congressional districts, or undermining the ballot measure process. What voters are saying now is that democracy is sacred."

However, it's not just Missouri where direct democracy is under attack. The Fairness Project reported last September that “extremist” legislators across the United States “escalated their efforts to dismantle the ballot measure process in 2025 by 95%.”

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Hundreds gather at the Stop the Steal Rally in Atlanta, GA.
News

Analysis Identifies 50+ Election Deniers Vying to Oversee Voting Across US

As President Donald Trump continues to push Republicans to aggressively gerrymander ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a new analysis has found more than 50 candidates running for key offices who have in the past engaged in efforts to nullify election results.

As reported by NPR on Monday, election watchdog States United Action has released a report showing that election-denying candidates are running for offices in 23 states where, if victorious, they would have a direct role in certifying future elections.

States United classifies election deniers as candidates who meet one of five criteria: Falsely claiming that Trump won the 2020 election, spreading conspiracy theories about the election results, refusing to certify the 2020 election, supporting litigation to overturn election results, and refusing to concede a race after being defeated.

In total, States United found at least 53 such candidates running for positions this year, including secretaries of state and governorships, that would put them in position to try to block or impede the certification of elections.

The threat is particularly acute in Arizona, where election deniers are running for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.

This prospective Arizona election denial ticket is headlined by MAGA hardliner Andy Biggs, who voted against certification of the 2020 election results as a US congressman and who is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

States United CEO Joanna Lydgate told NPR that her organization is tracking election deniers running for office to "provide voters with the most accurate information possible" and "understand exactly what these candidates stand for and whether they fundamentally believe in free and fair elections in this country."

As election deniers are trying to win key offices throughout the US, the Trump administration is working to get more directly involved in purging voter rolls ahead of the midterms.

According to a Monday report from CNN, "Republicans and the Trump administration are now testing the scope of the federal law that imposes that ban on 'systematic' removal programs within three months of an election, as President Donald Trump pushes for more aggressive reviews of voter rolls for non-citizens and other ineligible voters."

What this means is that states could in theory purge voter rolls just weeks ahead of elections, giving people removed from the rolls almost no time to file challenges.

Wren Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, told CNN that purging voter rolls less than three months before an election means there's a high risk that "voters won’t have adequate time or notice to be able to provide the documents that they’ll need ahead of the election."

"Maybe their birth certificate doesn’t meet the requirements," Orey explained. "Maybe they don’t have one handy, maybe they don’t have a passport. That could take months to get."

Brent Ferguson, the senior director of strategic litigation at Campaign Legal Center, told CNN that he was particularly disturbed by the Trump White House's involvement in this effort to manage voter rolls.

"It sets up a situation where the federal government itself is the actor trying to purge voters from the rolls in the days before the election," Ferguson said, "which is clearly illegal."

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Defense Secretary Hegseth And Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine Brief Media At Pentagon
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Hegseth Brags About Attacks on Iranian Ships in Strait of Hormuz While Claiming Ceasefire Holds

While assuring reporters that the ceasefire agreement reached last month between the Trump administration and Iran is holding, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said the American forces are acting "aggressively" in the Strait of Hormuz, where he said US Central Command has "established a powerful red, white, and blue dome" as a "direct gift from the US to the world."

The metaphorical "dome" the US has placed over the key shipping route for oil and other goods has taken the form of what the Trump administration is calling Project Freedom, which launched Monday and involves the US guiding ships out of the strait, according to President Donald Trump. Iran effectively shut the waterway more than two months ago in retaliation for the unprovoked US-Israeli war on the country, and the US Navy has blocked ships from going to or from Iran in response.

Hegseth emphasized Tuesday that Project Freedom is "separate and distinct" from the military assault on Iran that began on February 28 with the stated aim of eliminating the country's missile and nuclear capabilities.

"The ceasefire is not over," said the secretary. "We expected there would be some churn, which happened, and we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have."

He added that the US is "not looking for a fight."

Independent journalist Rachel Blevins responded sardonically: "'We are not looking for a fight'—we just murdered your leader, your schoolchildren, and your civilians, we bombed your infrastructure, and we've been trying to strangle your economy with sanctions for years."

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, told reporters that US warships shot down Iranian cruise missiles that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had fired at the vessels Navy ships were guiding out of the strait on Monday, and Army helicopter gunships sank six military speedboats from Iran.

As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander told Iran's state-affiliated media that US forces actually attacked "two small boats carrying people on their way from Khasab on the coast of Oman to the coast of Iran on Monday" and killed five civilians, but did not hit any IRGC ships.

At his press conference with Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hegseth insisted that Iran is the "aggressor" even as he threatened the country with restarting "major combat operations" if Trump deems them "necessary."

Project Freedom, said Hegseth, "is about free flow of commerce, all the things that happened before, and only Iran is contesting, so right now the ceasefire certainly holds, but we're going to be watching very, very closely."

One reporter with the Epoch Times asked whether the president plans to seek congressional approval if he decides it is necessary to restart "major combat operations."

Days before the fighting in the strait, Trump notified Congress last Friday that hostilities with Iran had been terminated. The announcement came on the deadline set by the 1973 War Powers Act, which requires US presidents to end conflicts that have not been authorized by Congress no more than 60 days after notifying lawmakers of the hostilities.

Trump told Congress that the fighting has been effectively terminated since the US and Iran agreed to the ceasefire on April 7, a view that Hegseth pushed on Tuesday in response to the question about congressional authorization.

"Our view is... that ultimately with the ceasefire, the clock stops," said Hegseth. "If it were to restart that would be the president's decision. That option is always there and Iran knows that."

NBC News senior national politics reporter Jonathan Allen responded that he had "never heard" of Hegseth and Trump's reasoning for not planning to seek congressional approval for more combat operations.

"Understand that what he is doing here is desperately trying to avoid the War Powers Act," said Fred Wellman, a Democratic congressional candidate in Missouri. "They made up a new interpretation that says the 60-day clock is 'paused' for a ceasefire. Now they are lying and saying this is an all-new, shiny war and not the same one."

He added, "This clown and [the administration's] Republican congressional doormats want you to think we haven’t been at war with Iran for over 65 days."

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