Trump says he can do ‘anything I want’ with Cuba

Posted on March 17, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

By Daniel Trotta/ Reuters/ March 16, 2026

  • When you talk about a country under siege, you have to consider Cuba. They’ve been under an American embargo for the last 66 years. They haven’t been antagonistic against this country, but some American leaders and Cuban exiles resent them after communist rebel Fidel Castro took power after overthrowing the U.S. backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Castro was popular with the people after he began to develop programs (like healthcare and full literacy) to help the poor in Cuba. But the island has struggled economically since then because of the long U.S. embargo, and other countries fear American blowback if they try to help Cuba (Venezuela learned the hard way, and they were Cuba’s last source of oil.) For more on the Cuban situation, see https://theconversation.com/cuba-has-survived-66-years-of-us-led-embargoes-will-trumps-blockade-break-it-now-276065–-TBPR Editor

HAVANA, March 16 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against Cuba on Monday, saying ‌he expected to have the “honor” of “taking Cuba in some form” and that “I can do anything I want” with the neighboring country.

The threatening statements come even as Cuba and the United States have opened talks aimed at improving their largely adverse relations, which have reached one of their most contentious moments in the ​67 years since Fidel Castro overthrew what had been a close U.S. ally.

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“I do believe I’ll be … having the honor ​of taking Cuba. That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form,” Trump told reporters as ⁠the island faces an unprecedented economic crisis, exacerbated by an oil blockade the U.S. imposed after capturing former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“I ​mean, whether I free it, take it. Think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth,” ​Trump told reporters at a signing event in the Oval Office.

After Trump spoke, the New York Times reported, opens new tab that removing Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel from office is a key U.S. objective in the bilateral talks. Citing four people familiar with the talks, the Times said the Americans have signaled to Cuban negotiators ​that Diaz-Canel must go but are leaving the next steps up to the Cubans.

Cuba has traditionally rejected any interference in its internal ​affairs and has considered any proposals on that front a deal-breaker for any agreement.

Cuba says power grid back online, blames US oil blockade for blackout

The National Capitol of Cuba rises amid the city skyline in Havana, Cuba, REUTERS/Norlys Perez

Diaz-Canel, 65, who succeeded the late Fidel Castro and his brother Raul ‌Castro as ⁠president in 2018, said on Friday he expected talks with the United States to take place “under the principles of equality and respect for the political systems of both countries, sovereignty and self-determination.”

But Trump, after removing Maduro from power and joining Israel in attacking Iran, has openly mused that Cuba would be “next.” He stepped up pressure by halting all Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba and threatening to slap ​tariffs on any country that ​sells oil to Cuba.

As a ⁠result, Cuba says it has not received an oil shipment in three months and the country has imposed severe energy rationing, resulting in extended power outages. Much of its economy has ground to a ​halt. On Monday Cuba’s electric grid collapsed, leaving the country of 10 million people without power.

On Sunday, ​Trump told reporters ⁠aboard Air Force One, ‘”We’re talking to Cuba, but we’re going to do Iran before Cuba.”

While more than a dozen U.S. presidents dating back decades have opposed Cuba’s Communist government and criticized its human rights record, Washington has honored its pledge not to invade Cuba or support an ⁠invasion as ​part of the agreement with the Soviet Union to resolve the Cuban missile ​crisis of 1962.

The White House has yet to detail the legal basis for any possible intervention in Cuba.

The Cuban government did not respond to a request for ​comment.

Posted in economy, foreign policy, politics, government, poverty, Economics, history, revolution, Donald Trump, America, Venezuela, Cuba | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Trump Family (In-Laws, Too) Are Well Aware That War Is Very Profitable

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

New York Times

It’s amazing how rich the Trump family gets during his presidency. Never mind The Foreign Emoluments Clause  which bars the president and other federal officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress.” Even his greedy in-laws are raking in billions. Trump knows that wars make money. For the American people it’s a different story. Millions struggle to fill up their gas tank and pay their bills. Do you think Trump and his billionaire buddies give a damn? You know the answer. —- TBPR Editor

Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region.

Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.

As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration.

PIF, which is already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity, invested $2 billion soon after the first Trump administration ended.

As part of that deal, the Saudis must be given the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds, the two people said. Other Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that invested earlier in Affinity, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also expected to be asked for more, the people said.

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Mr. Kushner’s fund-raising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year.

The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s “peace envoy,” Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Kushner, 45, also spearheaded the Trump administration’s successful efforts to extract hostages from Gaza and negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in an attempt to end their war.

In January, Mr. Kushner traveled to Davos, Switzerland, as part of the official U.S. delegation at the World Economic Forum, where he unveiled the Trump administration’s plan for a “New Gaza.”

While at Davos, Kushner also discussed his plans to raise billions in new investments for Affinity in private meetings with international business leaders, two people with knowledge of the conversations said.

As recently as December 2024, Mr. Kushner suggested that he would not seek more money for Affinity during Mr. Trump’s second term. That month, he told the podcaster Patrick O’Shaughnessy that he would “pre-emptively try to avoid any conflicts.”

“We don’t have to raise capital for the next four years,” Mr. Kushner added.

That appears to have changed. In materials provided to potential investors this year and reviewed by The New York Times, Affinity indicated that more than three-quarters of the roughly $5 billion it had raised since its founding had already been spent on investments in companies such as Phoenix Financial, an Israeli insurer, and Revolut, a financial technology start-up.

Affinity’s preliminary internal projections suggest that it has earned an estimated 25 percent rate of return since its 2021 founding, the documents show.

The scion of a prominent real estate family, Mr. Kushner is a relative newcomer to private equity, an industry where giant investors buy part or all of companies and try to improve the businesses before selling them.

When he began Affinity, based in Miami, he leaned heavily on his government contacts. During the first Trump administration, Mr. Kushner served as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, often accompanying him on trips to meet with foreign officials.

In addition to the roughly $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s fund, he amassed hundreds of millions of dollars from elsewhere in the region. That raised hackles from government watchdog groups — complaints that Mr. Kushner has frequently publicly dismissed by challenging critics to identify a specific conflict of interest.

This week, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning advocacy group, asked in a public letter to the White House that Mr. Kushner be subject to financial disclosure rules similar to other public servants. A White House spokesman did not return a request for comment on the group’s reque

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Aimed at America Isn’t a Missile

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

It’s the deliberate, systematic destruction of your ability to know what’s real...

By Thom Hartmann/ Hartmann Report.com/ March 10, 2026

We got more lies this morning from the Pentagon press briefing. They’re now up to 17 different rationalizations for the attack on Iran, none of which makes sense.

To paraphrase Rod Serling, consider what happened in Minab, Iran.

A Tomahawk cruise missile, an American weapon, a weapon that Iran doesn’t own and can’t fire, struck a girls’ elementary school. One hundred and seventy-five people are dead, most of them little girls who showed up that morning to learn to read.

And Donald Trump stood in front of cameras and said Iran did it. He lied. About dead children. Without blinking. And his crew backed him up, even knowing it was a lie.

And now the corporate media will spend two days on this and then move on to whatever shiny object the White House throws next. That isn’t an aberration: it’s the GOP’s entire strategy. This is who they are and have been since Reagan pioneered the scam: a PR machine front for an iron-fisted oligarchy.

I’ve been studying authoritarian movements for forty years, including in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. I’ve written about how Hitler rose to power, how Mussolini consolidated his grip on Italy, how the Confederates took over the American South, how strongmen from Budapest to Brasília have used the same playbook again and again. 

And the first page of that fascist and neofascist playbook is always the same: “Destroy the concept of shared truth.”

Not any particular truth. Not “this lie” or “that lie.” The concept of truth itself. Make people so exhausted, so confused, so beaten down by the constant barrage of contradictions, lies, and naked bullshit that they give up trying to figure out what’s real. Make cynicism feel like wisdom and encourage your “influencers” to make it cool. Make “nobody knows anything” feel like a reasonable way to understand what’s happening.

Because once you’ve done that, once you’ve convinced enough people that truth is just whatever you say no matter how outrageous or transparently false it is, you can do pretty much anything. 

— You can bomb a school full of little girls and blame the victims. 
— You can try to rig an election and, when you lose, call it stolen from you. 
— You can watch a million Americans die and say the virus is just going to disappear. 
— You can claim that tax cuts for billionaires will help average working-class people. 
— You can say that increasing poisons in the air and on our crops will Make America Healthy Again. 
—You can argue that destroying unions will increase working people’s standard of living. 
— You can claim that taking people’s healthcare away “encourages individual initiative” and “independence.” 

Trump didn’t invent this. But my G-d, has he ever perfected it.

Trump also didn’t build this lie machine all by himself. Most of it was built for him, over a period of fifty years, with billions of dollars, by morbidly rich people who never appear on television and never have to answer for any of it.

In 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell wrote a memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that became the blueprint for the takeover of America by the richest men in the country. Powell told the business community that they were losing America, that universities, the press, and the courts were all turning against “free enterprise,” and that if corporations didn’t fight back systematically and aggressively, capitalism itself was at risk.

What followed was one of the most consequential fifty-year projects in American political history, every bit as nation-changing and dangerous as the Confederate movement of the 1840s.

— Think tanks were funded to produce “alternative” academic research that would always reach the “right” conclusions. 
— Conservative media was built from the ground up, from 1,500 AM talk radio stations to Fox “News” to the rightwing takeover of social media, all to create an information ecosystem where Republican voters would never have to encounter an uncomfortable fact. 
— Public schools and Civics classes were defunded and attacked, because an educated citizenry asks too many questions. 
— Local newspapers, the institutions that actually hold local power accountable, were starved out of existence.

Charles and David Koch alone spent hundreds of millions of dollars seeding distrust in climate science, in government, in the very idea that collective action could solve collective problems. And they were just the tip of a massive iceberg.

This wasn’t an accident; it was a strategy.

And that strategy had one ultimate goal: to create a population of Americans so skeptical of institutions, so distrustful of expertise, so certain that everyone is lying all the time, that they’d be willing to believe anything.

Donald Trump didn’t create those people. They were created for him by these cynical billionaires.

And that means that removing Trump from power won’t dismantle the machine. Unless it’s defeated along with Trump, it’ll just produce another Trump, a smarter one, one who doesn’t make his lies and corruption quite so obvious.

The numbers around this project are staggering. Thirty thousand naked lies or misleading statements Donald Trump made during his first term alone. The Washington Post counted them: over thirty thousand.

That’s a man who woke up every single morning with the intention of deceiving the American people. That isn’t occasional dishonesty or spin: it’s a psychopathy — pathological lying — deployed as a governing strategy.

And it worked for Trump, just like it worked for Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, and Orbán before him.

— He told people that Barack Obama, a man who released his birth certificate, a man whose Hawaiian birth was verified by state officials, a man who graduated from Harvard Law, was secretly a Kenyan. Millions of people believed it then and millions still do to this day.

— He told people three million illegal ballots were cast against him in 2016 and that he won in 2020. While repeated investigations by reporters, federal agencies, and even courts (including the Supreme Court) found no evidence, he keeps saying it anyway. 

— He told people Covid would disappear. “One day, like a miracle, it’ll just go away.” Over a half-million Americans are in the ground because of the lies Trump told during those early critical months when action could’ve saved lives.

— And then he told us all the biggest lie of all, the lie that almost ended the American experiment with democracy. When he lost in 2020 — lost fairly, lost decisively, lost in a contest that his own Attorney General, his own Homeland Security officials, his own judges said was legitimate — Donald Trump told his followers the election had been stolen. 

Sixty-plus lawsuits, thrown out by every court that heard them. Even his own people told him the fraud claims weren’t true.

Nonetheless, he lied about it anyway. Louder. On repeat. For months.

And on January 6th, 2021, his mob stormed the United States Capitol, our Capitol, the symbol of 250 years of democratic governance, because this twisted man had spent months pouring gasoline on their rage and then lit the match at a rally a few blocks away.

People died. Police officers were beaten and four of them died. Members of Congress hid under their desks. And Donald Trump giddily watched it on television and did nothing for hours.

That’s who’s running the United States of America right now.

His supporters will tell you, as they always tell you, “that was then.” Move on. Stop living in the past. But here’s the thing: he never stopped.

— Back in power, he’s now claiming inflation was at record levels when he took office. It wasn’t. 
— He’s claiming gas prices have dropped below two dollars in some states. They haven’t. 
— He says climate change is a hoax; it’s not.
— He’s reviving the zombie lie that undocumented immigrants vote in American elections, a claim that multiple rigorous studies (including by the Heritage Foundation) have demolished but Republicans keep reciting, because it serves the GOP’s purpose of making Americans distrust their own elections.
— He’s pushing discredited claims linking vaccines to autism. He’s the President of the United States and he’s telling parents not to trust medicines that have saved millions of lives, based on a sham study that was retracted decades ago because the author fabricated the data.
— He’s claiming America pays for nearly the entire NATO alliance. We don’t. We pay a significant share, but twenty-nine other nations contribute. This isn’t a matter of interpretation; it’s arithmetic.

These aren’t gaffes or misstatements. They’re deliberate lies. Each one chips away at some aspect of American life and governance, at trust in elections, trust in science, trust in institutions, trust in the basic idea that we can all look at the same facts and reach the same conclusions.

That’s the goal of these billionaires who fund the GOP and put Trump into office. And their buddy, Vladimir Putin, whose bots so heavily populate our social media. It’s always been their goal. And it was their goal long before Donald Trump came down that escalator.

And then there are Trump’s toadies and lickspittles, the hangers-on. Let’s not let the enablers off the hook, because this machine doesn’t even remotely run on Trump alone.

Pete Hegseth, an alcoholic wife-beater whose own mother called him “an abuser of women” who, she wrote, “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego” was handed the most powerful military in human history despite having no meaningful qualifications for the job. He was confirmed by Republicans in the Senate in what future historians will call one of the greatest acts of institutional cowardice in American history. 

This is the man who stood in front of cameras after Minab and said Iran was the only side targeting civilians. One hundred and sixty dead children. Footage of an American Tomahawk missile. And Pete Hegseth looked America in the eye and lied.

Hegseth, Vance, Noem, Bondi, Miller, Vought, et al, aren’t confused or mistaken. They absolutely know what they’re doing and what lies they’re telling. And they’re counting on enough of us being too tired, too overwhelmed, too beaten down by 50 years of relentless Republican dishonesty to push back.

Don’t be.

Democracy isn’t a building. It’s not a flag or even a Constitution, as important as that document is. Democracy is a shared agreement, an agreement that we’ll resolve our differences through votes and not violence, that we’ll be governed by facts and not whoever yells the loudest, that when we disagree about what happened we can at least look at the evidence together.

That agreement didn’t just happen into existence; it took over three centuries to build. It was, as I write in The Hidden History of American Democracy, built on the Enlightenment and Native American idea that reason matters, that evidence is meaningful, that human beings are capable of governing themselves when they’re told the truth and well-informed.

This fifty-year project I’m describing has been a direct assault on that very idea of self-governance. Defund the schools. Kill the local press. Teach people that experts are “elitists,” science is opinion, and government is always the enemy. Then stand back and watch what happens to a democracy that’s been hollowed out from the inside.

Donald Trump is what happens. CBS is what happens. An unprovoked war against Iran is what happens.

Our nation’s Founders and the Framers of the Constitution understood this. They knew that a free press and an educated citizenry aren’t luxuries: they’re the load-bearing walls of the republic. Knock them out and the whole thing comes down.

We’ve been watching someone kick at them for fifty years. Trump is just the most recent, least sophisticated, and grossest wrecking ball they finally decided to throw at us.

And a hundred and sixty children in Minab are dead, and the men responsible are pointing their fingers at the country they bombed and saying, “Iran did it.” 

Trump is basically inviting Iranian partisans to attack America with the ferocity and style of 9/11, hoping it’ll provoke a “rally around the president” moment like Bush got and the Reichstag Fire did. 

As fascism expert Timothy Snyder writes: 

“A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or ‘federalize’ the coming Congressional elections.”

This is what it looks like when a democracy is in genuine danger.

The rightwing lie machine was built to make you feel like nothing you do matters. Like it’s all just too big. Like you’re way too small. Like the liars always win, so, “Why bother?”

That’s both the first and the last lie they need you to believe.

Don’t.

Posted in America, democracy, Donald Trump, ethics, government, politics, Republican Party, war | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The party of ‘family values’ just covered up unspeakable crimes

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

[I’ll say it once again: the Iran War was all about distracting from the fact that Trump was about to be identified as a child-sex offender. and perhaps lose his presidency. So, without any end game, he starts a war, even though he has no idea what to do with that war. Suddenly the Epstein Files are not the big news anymore. Of course the corporate media goes into “fighting a war” mode and the MAGA cultists go all out to praise their leader. Epstein news can wait.-–TBPR Editor]

By Tara Dublin/ rawstory.com/ March 8, 2026

If this week has proven anything, it’s that the entire Republican Party (minus Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky) is guilty of treason and manufacturing a war with Iran to deflect from being accessories to the sexual assault of women and children.

Several new bombshell releases from the Epstein Files brought even more allegations about President Donald Trump, including testimony from a woman who said that as a young victim, she fought back by biting him on the penis.

Another Epstein document details “underage sex parties” allegedly hosted at Trump’s golf course. Trump vehemently denies wrongdoing, of course, but it’s still weird that a lot of his clown cabinet talk about the “Sinaloa Cartel” when it comes to the immigration discussion, and how ICE is only going after “the most violent criminals” — when NO, they aren’t, said everyone who’s seen the footage of the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good — when they could just read the Epstein Files.

ALSO READ: A cruel irony sits at the heart of Trump’s holy war

THIS is what Republicans are refusing to address:

And all of this is apparently fine with Trump’s Republican enablers, who are ritualistically shredding our democracy because — checks notes — WE DO NOT KNOW WHY, actually.

The reason you missed this, Dear Reader, is that a manufactured Distracto-War is happening in Iran, and possibly another one is about to pop off in Ecuador. Also, Trump finally fired puppy killer Kristi Noem for lying about her $220 million cosplaying ad campaign and replaced her as Secretary of Homeland Security with someone even less qualified: Markwayne Mullin, the junior senator from Oklahoma.

I wonder if Mullin will be obligated to offer Corey Lewandowski free rides on that tricked-out DHS jet now Kristi’s been grounded as a “Special Envoy,” which also sounds like a gross thing to make her husband super-embarrassed.

If you’re not familiar with Mullin, he’s a former pro Mixed Martial Arts fighter who Democrats nonetheless allege wasn’t so brave on January 6th, and who needs to stand on a box to feel like a Big Boy whenever he finds himself next to an actual grown-up.

None of this has to be happening. But both Senate and House Republicans used their razor-thin majorities to VETO bipartisan war powers resolutions and the public release of sexual misconduct reports involving members of Congress.

So, to reiterate, the Republican Party, which calls itself the party of “Family Values,” which claims to be “Pro-Life” in the pursuit of “protecting children,” and which wants America to be a “Christian Nation,” is helping cover up unspeakable crimes against women and children by bombing children in Iran. Trump doesn’t care about those deaths, the deaths of our servicepeople, or the impending deaths of Americans ON AMERICAN SOIL if Iran retaliates here.

GOP: Works for us, Boss!

I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party behaved mostly like human beings who understood the assignment. They had informed and intelligent political discourse with their Democratic colleagues, without devolving into grade-school bullying, insults thrown in public.

I contend that without social media, Trump would still be pulling focus on the New York social scene by acting like the chauvinist and womanizer he’s always been, the highlights of his life beginning and ending with giant headlines in the New York Post.

Remember when Republicans spoke truthfully about Trump? I do! It’s on video and everything!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/P43wDpKQxaM?rel=0– YouTubewww.youtube.com

They KNEW what he was. And, Dear Reader, I posit that every one of them still knows what he is.

Remember when the Russians hacked the DNC and RNC servers but only released what they found about the Democrats and held onto kompromat on the GOP? Guess who got his tiny hands on all that blackmail? Why, Putin’s Puppet, that’s who! One by one, Republicans running for president in 2016 started dropping out of the race, even those still polling pretty well against Trump.

You know the timeline. Trump should’ve been held accountable by the media, but they let him bully them instead. The RNC should’ve yanked him from the campaign when he mocked a disabled reporter. He should’ve been stopped after the Access Hollywood tape, but James Comey agreed with Susan Sarandon that Trump would just be more interesting and released Hillary’s emails. Trump should’ve been stopped a million other times and he still hasn’t been stopped, and look where we are now.

His tariffs have tanked the American economy. The February jobs reportshowed a dramatic drop in new jobs created and boosted the unemployment rate to nearly 4.5 percent.

It’s fine, we don’t need a functioning society if you can “own the libs,” right?

Every decision Trump makes comes with a body count. All Americans should be asking why the Republicans refuse to stand up to him, because their fealty is glaringly obvious. Is the kompromat on them as bad as what’s been found about Trump in the Epstein Files?

There’s nothing you could do to make me turn against my country, no amount of blackmail or bribery. But then again, I didn’t participate in the world’s biggest and most abhorrent cover-up. I never met Jeffrey Epstein, and I don’t hang out with anyone who knew him.

However, I AM a taxpaying American citizen, as well as a member of the indie media, so please join me in demanding all Republicans be forced to say under Congressional oath whether they’re loyal to Trump or to America, because it’s painfully and abundantly clear that it’s impossible to be both.

Trump has never been a “take one for the team” guy. He’s a “make the team take one for ME” guy.

It’s time for that to STOP.

Posted in Donald Trump, foreign policy, government, Iran, law, media, Middle East, Republican Party, scandals, Uncategorized, war | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Epstein prison guard made ‘suspicious’ cash deposits before financier’s death

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Disclosure in US department of justice files raises further questions about whether paedophile died by suicide

Janet Eastham Senior News Reporter/ The Telegraph/ March 8, 2026

The last prison guard to see Jeffrey Epstein alive made suspicious cash deposits in the 12 months before his death, US Department of Justice (DoJ) files reveal.

Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on Aug 10, 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.

Tova Noel, 37, one of two officers accused of falsifying prisoner record checks that night, made a final cash deposit of $5,000 (£3,729) into her bank account less than a fortnight earlier on July 30.

A total of 12 ATM cash deposits, beginning in October 2018, were flagged by her bank to the FBI in a “suspicious activity report” in November 2019.

Ms Noel and her colleague Michael Thomas were fired after being accused of falsifying records to claim they checked on Epstein during the night before his suicide on Aug 10 that year.

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CCTV footage revealed the pair did not check on Epstein for eight hours, despite his cell being just 15 feet from the guards’ desk.

Criminal charges against them were later dropped.

Tova Noel worksheet
Tova Noel made a final cash deposit of $5,000 into her bank account less than a fortnight before Epstein’s death

The bank transactions are among several new disclosures in the Epstein filesthat raise questions about the paedophile’s death.

It can also be revealed that Ms Noel searched the internet for the sex offender just minutes before he was found dead. 

The officer Googled “latest on Epstein in jail” at 5:42am and then again at 5:52am. Less than 40 minutes later, at 6.30am, Mr Thomas found the disgraced financier dead in his cell.

The FBI highlighted the internet search in its 66-page forensic examination of Ms Noel and Mr Thomas’s bureau of prisons desktop computers. It was the only search highlighted.

Posted in America, crime, Donald Trump, government, law, law enforcement, politics, prisons, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Biggest Pro-Trump Mega-Media Monopoly Ever (it’s already distorting war coverage)

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Arlen Grossman



But this mega-media monopoly can be stopped. Here’s how.

[I’m coming back to Robert Reich because he understands what is important and what we should be focused on (and we mostly agree on everything). This particular article is important because a democracy requires a fair and free press (and I have a journalism degree so the subject is of special interest to me). If rich and/or MAGA groups control most of how Americans get their information, whatever we have left of a free press will be gone, and American democracy will completely disappear.–-The TBPR Editor]

By Robert Reich/ robertreich.substack.com/ March 6, 2026

On Sunday, CBS’s erstwhile flagship newsmagazine “60 Minutes” opened with an extended adulatory interview of Reza Pahlavi, son of the late exiled Shah of Iran, whom Trump presumably is auditioning to be Iran’s post-invasion leader.

Although Pahlavi is in Paris and hasn’t lived in Iran for nearly a half-century, CBS’s Scott Pelley fed the exiled prince softball questions and allowed him to avoid talking about his father’s record of brutal repression. Pelley even added, in a wishful voiceover, that “Pahlavi told us that there are units within the military and the police that would turn on the hard-line government. He says that many but not all troops could be given amnesty in a process of national reconciliation.”

This isn’t news. It’s pablum from the White House. “60 Minutes” was once a reliable source of tough reporting. Now it’s becoming a shill for the Trump regime. 

It soon could get far worse. CBS News is on the verge of becoming part of the largest pro-Trump media monopoly in America.

Two of the nation’s biggest news organizations — CBS News and CNN — along with CBS entertainment (home to Stephen Colbert) and Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart) and HBO (John Oliver) and TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) — are all about to become one giant mega-media monopoly under the control of Trump allies and suck-ups: multibillionaire Larry Ellison and Ellison’s son, David. 

It’s not too late to stop this, and I’ll tell you how in a moment, but I’d like you to pause and imagine how readily this new pro-Trump media giant can mislead America about what Trump is doing and silence criticism of Trump. 

It could make Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post look scrupulous by comparison. 

Trump cares more about TV news than he does about his presidency. In fact, TV news is his presidency. He chose his Cabinet members on the basis of their total loyalty to him and how they look and sound on TV. He spends all day watching coverage of himself on TV. And now he’s on the verge of having effective control over a gigantic media monopoly. 

I don’t believe Jon Stewart or John Oliver will be silenced, but their contracts may not be renewed. After all, look at what CBS did to Stephen Colbert, whose show will end in May.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the algorithm on TikTok is adjusted to reduce Trump criticism. 

And a small army of producers and correspondents at CNN are likely to be more careful about what they report. Stories critical of Trump may be axed, as is now occurring at the late, great CBS News. 

How did this happen? Think greed, money, power, and Trump. 

Trump and his media head, Larry Ellison

Trump and the Ellisons take over Warner Bros. Discovery 

When the dark history of this sordid era is written, among the most shameful culprits — who put making humongous amounts of money for themselves above the common good — will be Larry and David Ellison; Shari Redstone, former owner of Paramount; and David Zaslav, the current CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Zaslav is now being lauded by the business community as a genius for selling Warner Bros. Discovery (in turn the owner of CNN, CNN International, and HBO) to the Ellisons’ for $111 billion, more than double its valuation in September. But he’s couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the common good. (Zaslav filed to sell just over $114 million worth of Warner Bros. stock less than a week after Warner Bros. clinched the deal.)

Why would the Ellisons spend billions (and go deep into debt) to buy Warner Bros. Discovery? Wealth and power — along with additional wealth and power that Trump can deliver. 

Larry Ellison is the second-richest person in America. He owns Oracle, which runs much of the digital backbone of the nation’s commerce and government. 

But the Ellisons, per et fils, couldn’t have created their new right-wing media empire without Trump. They needed Trump just as Trump has needed Larry Ellison (who’s been one of Trump’s strongest backers, dating back to the early days of Trump’s presidency).

Even before the Ellisons sweetened their offer for Warner Bros. Discovery and pushed Netflix out of the running, they proclaimed their “confidence in the speed and certainty of regulatory approval” for the deal. Translated: Don’t worry that we’re creating a gigantic media monopoly. Antitrust laws won’t touch us. We’ve got Trump’s Justice Department in the bag. 

Trump and the Ellisons got several Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to join in the deal (making me wonder whether such funding will complicate, or compromise, CBS News’s and CNN’s coverage of Trump’s war in Iran and of the Middle East in general).

Trump takes over CNN

For years Trump has blasted CNN as “fake news” and publicly demanded it be bought by new owners. “It’s imperative that CNN be sold,” Trump said in December, signaling he favored the Ellisons’ takeover proposal.

In December, according to The Wall Street Journal, “David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner Bros. Discovery, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN.”

To be sure, CNN was moving rightward even before the Ellisons got their hands on it.

In 2022, David Zaslav put Chris Licht in charge, who told CNN’s staff he wanted less criticism of Trump and the Republican right — instructing them to stop referring to Trump’s “Big Lie” because he thought the phrase sounded like a Democratic talking point, telling producers to downplay coverage of the first hearing of the congressional committee investigating January 6, and arranging Trump’s infamous CNN town hall, which gave the twice-impeached felonious ex-president a platform to make his comeback. 

CNN’s rightward lurch caused CNN’s primetime show ratings to fall 25 percent and contributed to Licht’s firing after just 13 months. 

Since then, CNN has undergone rounds of cuts under a series of owners seeking to reduce debt. Paramount and the Ellisons (and Trump) will be its fourth corporate parent in under a decade.

Trump takes over CBS

Last summer, as Shari Redstone and other of Paramount’s previous owners sought federal approval to sell Paramount (owner of CBS) to the Ellisons, they sucked up to Trump by settling Trump’s baseless lawsuit against CBS News for $16 million. (He had sued over how “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with former vice president Kamala Harris.)

Late night host Stephen Colbert called the settlement a “big fat bribe,” which it was. 

To win further support from Trump for the sale, they announced the end of Colbert’s show (which, as I said, will finish its run in May). They cited economics, but Colbert’s has been the top-rated late night show on network television. The real reason for the cancellation was obvious: Colbert’s biting satirical criticism of Trump. 

To cinch the deal, David Ellison promised to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at CBS. He hired a right-wing “ombudsman,” Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of a conservative think tank. And he named as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News Bari Weiss, founder of the center-right opinion and news site The Free Press. 

Trump was delighted. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” he said, praising the acquisition and adding that CBS News had “great potential” with Weiss in charge and that he expected it to be “fairer.”

Fairer? Since Weiss took over, almost half of CBS News producers have walked, including legendary veteran Mary Walsh, who began her career under Walter Cronkite. As Walsh explained, “We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.”

Weiss named a bunch of new contributors — many of them retired military or ex-intelligence officials or conservative pundits, including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia (who has subsequently resigned over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein). 

Weiss declared “We love America” a guiding principle and changed the CBS style guide to replace “assigned sex at birth” with “biological sex at birth” when referring to trans people. 

She’s also defanged “60 Minutes.” In December, Weiss axed a “60 Minutes” report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison hours before it was set to air — a move that Sharyn Alfonsi, the long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, claimed was for “political” reasons. (The segment later aired on January 18, drawing over 5 million viewers.)

Weiss replaced “Evening News” anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong.

As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, had Kamala Harris won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.” Exactly. (Moments after that rambling interview, not incidentally, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.”)

How you can help stop this 

All this has happened so suddenly that most Americans still haven’t noticed the emergence of this new pro-Trump media empire — CBS, CNN, HBO, Comedy Central, and TikTok — all under the control of Trump cronies Larry and David Ellison.

Billionaires are flipping media companies like playing cards. They don’t give a fig for the common good, or about the producers, correspondents, journalists, and investigative reporters whose lives are being turned upside-down. To them, it’s all about accumulating more wealth and power. 

But it’s bad for the economy, bad for our democracy, and bad for America. 

The Ellisons’s new mega-media monopoly would never pass muster if America still had antitrust enforcers. Media mergers and acquisitions deserve even stricter scrutiny than normal deals. But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice is as likely to stop this deal as she is to enforce criminal laws against ICE agents. 

So who can stop this? 

State attorneys general. They can go to federal court to enforce federal antitrust laws. They have legal standing and necessary resources to challenge this monstrosity.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, has already made clear he will take it on. “The California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review,” he says. Good luck to him. 

I hope other state attorneys general join in. You can help by contacting your state AGs and suggest they join this lawsuit. Contact information for your state’s AG is here. 

Please do. The last thing America needs is a giant pro-Trump media monopoly. 

Posted in America, anti-trust, civil liberties, democracy, Donald Trump, economy, government, media, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Big Things Trump Doesn’t Want You to Know or Even Think About

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

(Nobody can cut to the chase better and help us understand the important factors in any political event than Robert Reich. What is Trump doing by suddenly attacking Iran? He saw he was in in trouble on several fronts and needed to distract the American people and the corporate media with a swift, unexpected attack on Iran. Nothing works better for changing the narrative than starting a war. Our uncertain economy and watching the Epstein evidence proliferate are not what Trump wants the country to be thinking about. But how long can he delay what is clearly inevitable? –-The TBPR Editor)

By Robert Reich/ robertreich@substack.com/ March 5, 2026

The purpose of Trump’s war in Iran is to deflect our attention, especially from two big things Trump wants banished from the headlines and erased from the our collective consciousness. Which means we need to focus on them like lasers. 

1. The affordability crisis. It’s worsening.

Prices were rising even before Trump and Netanyahu invaded Iran — which was one reason for him plunging America into war. He wanted to remove “affordability” from the news (he called it a “Democratic scam”) . 

But Trump’s war is causing prices to rise even faster. 

About 20 percent of world oil and gas production passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now essentially closed to shipping. This means higher prices at the pump. As of this morning, oil prices were approximately $15 to $16 a barrel higher than they were in mid-February, which will add roughly 40 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline. If the war continues for a month or more, oil (and gas) prices could go much higher. 

The war is also causing food prices — which were also high before the war — to rise even faster. That’s because roughly a quarter to a third of the global trade in ammonia and nitrogen — the critical raw materials for making fertilizer — must also pass through the strait. Without fertilizer, crop yields fall. 

Fertilizer prices are already rising, as they did in early 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Likewise, anticipated lower crop yields are already raising the prices of household staples such as bread, pasta and potatoes to rise, and making animal feed more costly.

Adding to these are larger risks to the nation’s financial stability created by a regional war whose aim continues to be vague. The private credit market poses one vulnerability; the AI bubble, another. The result is uncertainty that causes lenders to demand a higher premium to cover extra risks. 

Already, fears of more serious inflation are driving up interest rates on ten-year Treasury bonds. I expect rates on mortgages and car loans to rise in tandem. 

Oy. 

2. Epstein

The other thing Trump wanted to deflect our attention from is the Epstein files. But it won’t go away, either. 

After the Wall Street Journal earlier this week identified more than 40,000 files that appeared to be missing from documents posted to the Justice Department’s website, a Justice Department spokeswoman today admitted that “47,635 files were offline for further review” and “should be ready for re-production by the end of the week.”

Further review? Sure looks like a cover-up. The withheld files include F.B.I. notes on a series of interviews a woman gave to agents in 2019 in which she alleged sexual misconduct by both Trump and Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s.

By law, the Justice Department was required to release the Epstein files in full by December 19, 2025. (The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), which Trump signed into law in November, required that all the documents be made public within 30 days, with some limited exceptions.) So far, only about half the files have been released, and many are heavily redacted.

Even House Republicans are becoming upset about this, presumably because the Republican base wants it cleared up. “AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not,” House Republican Nancy Mace wrote on X. She continued: 

“The Epstein case is one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. His global sex trafficking network is larger than what is being revealed. Three million documents have been released, and we still don’t have the full truth. Videos are missing. Audio is missing. Logs are missing. There are millions more documents out there. We want to know why the DOJ is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice.”

Fighting words, and from a Republican. Yesterday, by a vote of 24 to 19, the House Oversight Committee agreed to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the release of the Epstein files. Five Republicans voted in favor, including Mace, who put the motion forward, along with Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. 

After the vote, Mace told reporters: 

“I know that Bondi has testified before the Judiciary Committee, but she’s not testified before me or the Oversight Committee. I need to get to the bottom of this for other survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. I have a lot more questions, and I don’t expect to be talking about the stock market [which she did when she testified before the Judiciary Committee] so she better not bring those notes when she comes to the Oversight Committee.”

Mace said the subpoena is for closed-door testimony with video that will be released to the public afterward. 

**

One more thing, which Trump probably doesn’t want us to pay much attention to, either. 

This afternoon, he finally fired Kristi Noem. What put him over the brink was not the murder of two Americans by Noem’s immigration agents, or ICE’s brutality, or the unconstitutionality of arresting and detaining people without due process. No, what really got him riled up (according to several sources) was Noem’s combative hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which she alleged that Trump had signed off on a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign featuring her appearing on horseback against the background of Mt. Rushmore. 

If there’s one thing Trump can’t stand, it’s someone else’s self-promotion. Besides, he wants his face on Mt. Rushmore. 

Posted in America, Donald Trump, economy, Energy, foreign policy, government, Iran, Middle East, politics, war | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Neither Do Much For Me

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Arlen Grossman
Posted in America, civil liberties, democracy, Donald Trump, extremism, government, Iran, philosophy, politics, religion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Operation Epstein Fury: Is This About National Security or Political Survival?

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Madison and the Founders of his generation had it right: what Trump is doing violates both the Constitution and the foundational norms of democracy…

(We can talk about the millions of reasons President Trump had to attack Iran, but it all really boils down to this: Trump realized he was about to be exposed as a predator/child sex criminal and on the verge of losing his job as president. The reason for this Iran invasion was what so many were speculating prior to the attack: Invading Iran would distract from his soon-to-be-exposed crimes on Epstein’s island. That strategy is working well for Trump and his people.

(Right now the politicians and political pundits are trying to figure out why the Trump administration attacked Iran at this time. Never mind that nobody in Washington, President Trump included, can come up with a coherent reason why this war was necessary now. So far Trump’s strategy is working brilliantly–the evidence tying him to the Epstein sex crimes has been forgotten. Politicians and the corporate media are doing what they do best–distracting the American people from the real crimes being done to them. Thom Hartmann understands well.–The TBPR Editor)

By Thom Hartmann/ HartmannReport.com/ March 2, 2026

Operation Epstein Fury — with a bonus to help Bibi get re-elected so he doesn’t have to face charges for his criminal behavior — is rolling on as Trump ignores the constitutional requirement that only Congress can declare war. 

He’s also violating the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that dictates the president, if he reacts to an actual attack on America like Pearl Harbor, must notify Congress within 48 hours and have authorization within 60 days. In this case there was no actual or even imminent attack against America.

To further confuse things, Trump is throwing the Iranian protestors under the bus by saying that he’s willing to talk with the Iranian regime now that Kahmenei is dead, much like he crapped on pro-democracy voters and protestors in Venezuela when he kept that repressive regime intact after illegally removing Maduro and promising democracy.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/operation-epstein-fury-is-this-about-2fb?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

This conflict is also now spreading. Kahmenei was to many Shia Muslims around the world something akin to what the Pope is to Catholics (there’s no equivalent among the Sunni Muslims). Imagine the Catholic world’s fury if a country had assassinated Pope Leo XIV: we’re now seeing Shia protests and outrage from Bangladesh to Pakistan to Lebanon. 

And here at home Trump is musing about using Iranian interference in our 2020 election as an excuse to issue an emergency executive order to seize control of the upcoming November midterm election. 

Which is particularly ironic, given that the well-documented Iranian intervention that year was designed to help get Trump reelected (after all, he’d just torn up the JCPOA nuclear deal) and avoid a Biden administration from coming into power.

Four Americans are dead and five in critical condition because of Iranian retaliatory strikes, as are civilians in several other US-aligned countries in the region. Along with around 200 young people in Iran after we bombed a girl’s school and a gymnasium. 

And it’s early days. As Winston Churchill famously said in 1936 about war: 

“Once the signal is given, no one can predict how far events will go.”

America’s Founders and the Framers of our Constitution not only would have agreed with Churchill, but saw a president seizing war powers from Congress as an existential threat to the republic. On April 20, 1795, James Madison, who had just helped shepherd through the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and would become President of the United States in the following decade, wrote:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

Reflecting on the ability of a president to use war as an excuse to become a virtual dictator, Madison continued his letter:

“In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive [President] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war…and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both.

“No nation,” our fourth President and the Father of the Constitution concluded, “could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Since Madison’s warning, “continual warfare” has been used both in fiction and in the real world. In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the way a seemingly democratic president kept his nation in a continual state of repression was by having a continuous war.

The lesson wasn’t lost on Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, who both extended the Vietnam war so it coincidentally ran over election cycles, knowing that a wartime President’s party is more likely to be reelected and has more power than a President in peacetime.

And, as George W. Bush told his biographer in 1999:

“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as commander in chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Every Republican president since Reagan has had his own “little war.” Now it’s Trump’s turn, after all the times over the years he warned that if Obama was ever in trouble he’d start a war with Iran to distract us:

“In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” (2011)
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective…” (2011)
“@BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election.” (2012)
“Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” (2012)
“I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!” (2013)
“Remember what I said about @BarackObama attacking Iran before the election…” (2012)

Given that Baron, Don Jr, and Eric Trump all apparently suffer from hereditary bonespurs and no Trump has ever served as a “loser” or “sucker” in our military (and his grandfather came to America as a German draft-dodger), it’s unlikely this war will mean anything other than profit-making opportunities for the Trump children.

But it compounds his constant ignoring of constitutional limits on presidential power ranging from gutting federal agencies without authorization to having ICE routinely ignore court orders, flagrantly violate the Fourth Amendment, and daily lie to the American people.

Nobody invested in peace or democracy is mourning the death of the Iranian dictator or the possible unraveling of its theocracy. But must we do it in a way that breaks both US and international law?

Trump apparently thinks so; not only will it distract from the news reports that he raped at least one and maybe more 13-year-olds and his naked corruption and bribe-taking but it also carves another “screwed Congress” notch in his belt.

There was no attack on America, as required by the War Powers Resolution. There wasn’t even a serious possibility of an attack on America. 

Madison and the Founders of his generation had it right: this is a naked crime by Trump and Hegseth against our Constitution and our laws and requires a strong congressional response such as impeachment.

Posted in America, Announcements, Donald Trump, foreign policy, Gaza, government, history, Iran, Israel, military, politics, Republican Party, revolution, U.S. Constitution, war | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Two Leaders–Trump and Netanyahu–With Too Much Undeserved Power

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Donald Trump, America’s President, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, have a lot in common. They both want unfettered power. and both remain in control and out of jail by consolidating executive power and making sure they are both statutorily immune from prosecution while in power. While each enjoys dictatorial rule, their main difference is that Bibi is a lot smarter than Trump and can convince the American president to willingly do his bidding. Meanwhile Tom Friedman tells us that American and Israeli citizens can only helplessly watch as the actions of these two leaders are mostly condemned by the rest of the world and give antisemites more reason and opportunity to spread their hate.—TBPR Editor

Let’s stop beating around the bush: Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is spitting in America’s face and telling us it’s raining. It’s not raining. Bibi is playing both President Trump and American Jews for fools. And if the U.S. lets him get away with it, we are fools.

While keeping Trump focused on the Iranian missile and nuclear threat — which, though reduced, is still very real and will have to be dealt with diplomatically or militarily — Bibi is fundamentally threatening broader U.S. interests in the Middle East, not to mention the security of Jews all over the world. In what way? I cannot put it any more succinctly than Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, did.

“A violent and criminal effort is underway to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank,” he wrote in an essay in Haaretz this month. “Gangs of armed settlers persecute, harm, wound and even kill Palestinians living there. The rampages include burning olive groves, houses and cars; breaking into homes; and physically assaulting people.” He continued: “The rioters, the Jewish terrorists, storm Palestinians with hate and violence with one objective: to force them to flee from their homes. All this is done in the hopes that the land will then be prepared for Jewish settlement, en route to realizing the dream of annexing all the territories.”

Israel’s accelerating attempts toward annexation of the West Bank and to permanently remain in Gaza — and deny Palestinians political rights in both areas — are as morally reckless and demographically insane as would be the U.S. annexing Mexico.

If it were just Israelis who were going to be hurt by the crazy fantasy that some seven million Israeli Jews can control about seven million Palestinian Arabs in perpetuity, I might be tempted to say that if Israel’s leaders want to commit national suicide, I can’t stop them.

But the effects will not be confined to Israel. I believe that this messianically driven endeavor will make today’s Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa and will have seriously detrimental implications for both American interests and the interests and security of Jews all over the world.

If Netanyahu’s government stays on this course, it will rip apart Jewish institutions everywhere as members of the Jewish diaspora are forced to decide whether to stand with or against an apartheidlike Israel. It will also accelerate the trend begun by Israel’s devastation of Gaza wherein growing numbers of young Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are turning against Israel and, at the fringes, against Jews in general.

Jewish parents around the globe will soon be in a position they never dreamed of: watching their children and grandchildren learn what it’s like to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state.

A poll by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, conducted by YouGov in November, found that 51 percent of Republican voters under age 45 said they preferred to support a candidate in the 2028 presidential primary who favored reducing taxpayer-funded weapon transfers to Israel. Only 27 percent favored a candidate who would increase or maintain weapon supplies. Democratic candidates today who do not describe Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide face real headwinds with young progressive voters.

At the Munich Security Conference last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked if she thought “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel.” She answered: “I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza.”

As I said when I began, Netanyahu has played Trump for a sucker, as well as the pro-Israel lobby led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and many other so-called American Jewish leaders. He has gotten them to focus on Iran and ignore the fact that everything he is doing in Gaza, in the West Bank and inside Israel will strain ties between the U.S. and its major Middle East allies, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar.

Yes, Iran remains a reduced but very real nuclear threat after Israeli and U.S. airstrikes hit its nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile facilities in June. It has already largely rebuilt its stock of ballistic missiles that could do real physical damage to Israel if war resumes. I take that very seriously.

But focusing exclusively on the external threat from Iran ignores the internal threat Netanyahu’s government poses to Israel and its standing as a rule-of-law democracy and unified society. Netanyahu has been engaged in a three-year effort, even during the war in Gaza, to carry out a judicial coup that would all but eliminate the separation of powers in Israel — one that enables its Supreme Court to check the excesses of the governing political party. Is Iran responsible for that? No.

Has Iran been engaged in a relentless effort to purge or disempower Israel’s courageous, independent attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara? No, but Bibi has. That attorney general, backed by the Supreme Court, is the only thing standing in the way of further assaults on a rules-based government: the dismissal of Netanyahu’s corruption trial, as well as Bibi’s efforts to politicize civil service appointments and a wholesale exemption from military service for the ultra-Orthodox Jews who keep him in power.

Has Iran blocked establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the incredible intelligence and leadership failure before Hamas’s murderous Oct. 7 invasion? No, but Bibi has. That invasion not only happened on Netanyahu’s watch but also was clearly caused in part by his efforts to prove to the world that Israel could have peace with the Arab states without making peace with the Palestinians.

Hamas grew in strength thanks to Netanyahu’s long efforts to prop up Hamas with Qatari money so the Palestinian leadership would always be divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That way Bibi could tell every U.S. president that he was so sorry that he had no unified Palestinian peace partner to negotiate with.

Did Iran nominate inexperienced Bibi cronies to run Israel’s most important security organizations — the Shin Bet and Mossad? No, Bibi did.

What prompted Trump to publicly demand that the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, pardon Netanyahu — even before a verdict — for the corruption charges he has been indicted on? It would be a terrible blow to the rule of law in Israel. It certainly was not Iran.

And here is what is truly crazy. Israel today has never been more militarily feared and technologically admired by its Arab neighbors, because of the blows that it dealt Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. If Netanyahu engaged in negotiations for a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority — on any reasonable terms — it would pave the way for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

The whole neighborhood, and the whole Muslim world beyond it, would open up to Israel; Iran would be totally isolated. Israeli technology and Arab energy would create an amazing synergy for the age of A.I.

That would be a huge boon to U.S. interests. While some complications would surely persist, the Middle East would essentially be making peace under an American umbrella. And the reduction in tensions between Israel and the Arab world would allow the Trump administration to do what the past several U.S. administrations have craved: reduce its military presence in the region and shift its focus to counterbalancing China in Asia. Unfortunately, Bibi has other priorities.

The annexationist ambitions of the Netanyahu cabinet directly clash with Trump’s 20-point plan, which imagines a two-state solution one day. The “Board of Peace,” Trump created to oversee that plan, is holding its inaugural meeting in Washington on Thursday, but Netanyahu is skipping it.

Bibi’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday that after elections this fall, he would in his next term be “encouraging the migration” of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, all of America’s key Arab allies and Turkey, which are central to Trump’s Gaza cease-fire deal, got together on a statement strongly condemning Israel’s decision to ⁠designate land in the occupied West Bank as Israeli state land.

When Israel is engaged in de facto annexation, with what human rights groups describe as ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, it is turning itself into a major contributor to permanent conflict in the region. None of that is in America’s interest, but it is greatly appreciated by Iran.

Tehran’s Islamo-fascist rulers pose a very real threat to Israel. They lead a terrible regime whose downfall would be a blessing to its people and the region. But please — please — spare me the nonsense that Iran is the only threat to Israel today.

Iran is not the greatest threat to Israel as a democracy governed by the rule of law. It is not the greatest threat to U.S.-Israeli relations. It is not the greatest threat to the unity and security of Jews around the world. It is not the reason so many talented Israeli technologists, engineers and doctors are moving away. And it is not the biggest reason Israel is becoming an apartheid state by not only refusing to try anymore to create a separate Palestinian state but also by working instead to make that impossible.

That title goes to the government of messianic zealots, Arab-hating nationalists and anti-modern ultra-Orthodox Israelis put together by Benjamin Netanyahu to keep himself in power.

Posted in America, Donald Trump, foreign policy, Gaza, government, Iran, Israel, Middle East, military, politics, war | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment