Vance Bombs Peace Talks – The Monday AM Quickie (6/22/26)
Congratulations to everyone mobilizing against ICE in Michigan, where the agency has abandoned its plan to open a new concentration camp 20 miles outside Detroit. There’s no telling what that means for Trump’s deportation terror campaign, but anything that screws up their plans is good news. -Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
Vance Bombs Peace Talks
Let’s take stock of how thoroughly the Trump administration is bombing a deal with Iran, literally and figuratively.
On Friday, leaders from Israel and Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, agreed to stop fighting in Lebanon, the AP reported. Then Israeli prime minister, war criminal and Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would keep Israeli forces in Lebanon anyway, a violation of that agreement. US spy agencies warned that Netanyahu was likely to sabotage lasting peace with Iran, according to the Washington Post, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir spewed his murderous ideology on social media, writing in Hebrew:
“For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers should cry. All of Lebanon should burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens is not in vain. All of Lebanon should burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this obligation takes precedence over any other consideration. I told the Prime Minister, even in our meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers should cry. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don't win with measured responses and containment – you have to go crazy. Erase. Defeat terrorism.”
I am including that whole thing because news outlets picked just parts of it and it’s important to know fully what that sadistic psycho is saying to people in his country.
Iranian leaders decided they didn’t have to put up with that and closed the Strait of Hormuz, illustrating yet again that they have globally significant leverage with which the Trump administration should not fuck. Next, the Guardian reported, Trump sent Vice Bootlicker JD Vance to Switzerland to negotiate with Iran. Then Trump did some sabotaging himself. “You close it and you won’t have a country,” he wrote on his website, undermining the negotiations further. “You won’t even make it back to your fucking country.”
Iranian leaders decided they didn’t have to put up with that, either, so they simply walked out of the meeting with Vance. It wasn’t clear Sunday if they were coming back.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to comport itself on the world stage like the spoiled frat boy brats they are. In Italy, politicians across political parties are uniting behind the fascist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, after Trump said she “begged” him for a picture, the Guardian reported. “She wanted a picture with me so badly,” he said. “I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.” The comment “provoked fury in Italy and words of solidarity for Meloni, including the foreign minister, who cancelled his trip to the US. The Trump regime talked trash on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, too, according to a separate story in the Guardian. “I’ve dealt with this little fucker,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said according to a new book. “He’s tricky. He’s like the special-needs child for the Europeans. And he’s acting like Mr. Bean on crack.” Class acts all around.
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
StarmerWatch: Starmer Out
Remember back in May, when Kier Starmer was insisting that he wouldn’t leave his job even though he oversaw a “disastrous” election for Labour that allowed bigoted Trump ally Nigel Farage to gain 1,450 council seats for Reform UK and take control of 14 councils? Remember how even though four Labour MPs resigned and 90 more signed a letter saying he should leave, Starmer still said, “I know I have my doubters and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will?” Well, he resigned today, the BBC and the Guardian reported, making him the seventh prime minister to leave in the last ten years. This concludes Starmer’s swift decline in popularity after leading Labour’s massive general election victory just two years earlier, though I suppose he could continue to fall if he fails at whatever he does next. His expected successor is socialist MP Andrew Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester who picked up the nickname “King of the North” at the height of the Covid pandemic because he demanded more resources for northern communities. According to the Associated Press, he is further to the left than Starmer; his priorities are to end trickle-down economics (hell yea), institute better vocational education and jobs for young people, and lower the cost of energy and rail travel (also hell yea).
Child of Crypto-Obsessed Sen. Gillibrand Launches $30 Million Crypto Venture
New York’s other* do-nothing Democratic senator, Kristin Gillibrand, is a good example of yet another political figure whose family is cashing in on their position of power to enrich themselves. She is a major supporter of the cryptocurrency industry and was among the senators who first introduced the GENIUS Act, legislation Trump signed into law last summer to legitimize digital assets and force them into our financial system. Now her 22-year-old child, Theodore Gillibrand, is launching American Perpetuals Exchange Corp., according to Fortune. The industry calls his new concern a “trading platform.” I call it “a casino” because its function is to allow people to gamble on the price of assets without having to own the asset. That type of financial maneuver exists because cryptocurrency traders made it popular; Theo’s new outfit is backed by $30 million from venture capital firm Lux Capital and valued at a whopping $300 million right out the gate. The business is going by its acronym, APEC, which is aurally similar to another acronym we can all think of. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has given Sen. Gillibrand a lot of money.
*Hi Chuck! It’s true we can win, just not with you.
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- Trump Regime Arrests Olympian for Touching the Non-Reflecting Swamp Former Olympic cyclist David Hearn visited the wrecked Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Friday, saw a chunk of paint floating in the muck, and “reached into the pool to see what it felt like.” Then US Park Police officers arrested him and put him in handcuffs for “destruction of government property,” a “crime” for which he will appear in DC Superior Court on July 9, and about which Nazi Stephen Miller lied, saying the 67-year-old vandalized the pool and “grabbed the hose that female National Park Service workers were using to clear the algae.” That should be easily disproven given the number of witnesses and surveillance cameras all over national monument sites. via the NYT and the Washington Post.
- California Gov. Declares State of Emergency Over Ongoing Warehouse Fire A blaze that began Wednesday at a 500,000-square-foot Los Angeles cold-food storage facility has continued to flare and smolder; it is putting 85 million pounds of meat, bread and other food at risk of decaying, which could send plumes of biohazard gas in addition to the smoke already choking the region. via the LA Times and NBC News.
- Russia-Occupied Crimea Stops Selling Gasoline to Civilians As the Ukrainian military increased its attacks on fuel supplies in the region, the Russian government said Sunday that it would only sell gasoline to government agencies; Crimea is now suffering under the worst energy crisis since Russia illegally annexed it twelve years ago. via the AP.
- Texas Advocates Raise Alarms Over Screwworm Threat to Crowded Animal Shelters The state’s “uncontrollable stray animal population” may worsen the parasitic outbreak, prompting “mass, mass, mass euthanasias if they aren’t allowed to move the animals out of the quarantine zones,” according to Austin Pets Alive assistant medical director Rebecca Giamona. “There could be thousands of animals dying in shelters because they don’t have the space to continue to cover those animals.” via the Texas Tribune.
SOME NUMBER
$400 million
That’s the value of Trump’s new Air Force One plane, a gift from the Qatari government. Trump crowed about it on social media Friday instead of saying a single thing about Juneteenth. It was the second year in a row that he ignored the federal holiday that marks the end of slavery.
ON THE SHOW TODAY
6/22: Sam and Emma are in the studio today. Their guests are Mouin Rabbani, Middle East analyst and non-resident fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Mouin will discuss his piece published on his Substack: What Does Trump's Defeat Mean for the Middle East?; and Astead Herndon, editorial director at Vox and host of the podcast America, Actually. Herndon will discuss Tuesday's primary elections in New York.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
Americans REALLY Hate Republicans Now
One reason Republican messaging on the economy is successful because Republicans tell lies about how managing a national economy is akin to managing a household budget, which it is not. But it simplifies things for people who don’t have time or aren’t inclined to think about it more accurately.
Fox Is Losing Its Mind Over Iran Deal
I would love to never hear from or about JD Vance ever again.
PARTING WORDS
“Press statement to put out for the State of the Union was so bad it was like Nancy Pelosi wrote it. It’s really bad. It’s just reeked of politician. It didn’t say anything. In the first place, nobody gives a shit what you think about his State of the Union speech, unless you’re going to say something of interest. Why are you sticking your nose in there? It’s just words. You don’t want to keep doing this. The more you do politician type of things, the more you’re seen as just another politician.”
– A memo about Tulsi Gabbard’s comments on President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech in 2015. That was back when she was the Democratic representative for Hawaii’s second Congressional District, the job she had before switching parties in 2024 and ascending to become the eighth director of national intelligence under Trump, who recently fired her. According to the Washington Post, the memo was one of hundreds between 2011 and 2017, sent from an email account associated with Chris Butler, the cult leader Gabbard said was her guru. Gabbard grew up in Butler’s Hare Krishna breakaway cult, which demands “total obedience and secrecy”; the reporter was investigating how much influence Butler has had on Gabbard’s political rise. Other memos called her “chickenshit,” “mealymouthed,” and “intellectually lazy.” You probably turn out pretty normal with a guy like that controlling your life since birth.
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