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#17 | Posted by madbomber at 2026-06-04 03:46 PM
Donny is out of his element. That's not a decision he is capable of making.
He is entirely in his element of a lifetime of making decisions he is incapable and unfit to make... and blaming everyone else for consequences.
www.latimes.com - Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people - Jonah Goldberg, LAT / Dispatch, 2026-06-02
|------- ... In the contest of wills, Trump blinked.
The Iranian regime's tolerance for punishment proved - so far - to be greater than Trump's and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn't have the political capital for that.
But that's only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn't want to pay - militarily, economically, politically - what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn't come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they're willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump's in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn't exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can't go on forever. But I'm sure it'll last until long after this column is forgotten.
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What will be the next distraction from the previous distraction? Cuba ? 250th aka "celebration of Don"? FIFA World Cup? Next rerun episode of Presidential Apprentice picking fights with Greenland, Canada, Mexico, India...?
Meanwhile, Trump continues his full retreat from the "Western front" : www.politico.com - Pentagon likely to cancel missile deal with Germany over fears of Russia - 2026-06-04
|------- The Pentagon is expected to cancel a plan to send Tomahawk missiles to Germany partly because officials are concerned Russia will view it as an escalation, a startling reversal of a long-planned agreement with one of America's biggest allies. ... -------|
"De-escalation / de-escalate" were the often-repeated words of Biden administration officials.
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FTA: Protest crowds have echoed that sentiment, chanting "Thieves!" and demanding Rama's arrest by SPAK - Albania's Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutors, who opened a formal investigation into the project this week.
Just recently the same kind of thing happened to Trump-Kushners in that corner of the world:
www.independent.co.uk - Jared Kushner ditches Serbia [Trump Tower Belgrade] hotel project hours after four government officials charged in bribery probe | Affinity Partners withdraws from controversial Belgrade luxury development after Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic and three others accused of corruption - 2025 Dec. 16
|------- ... Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, has withdrawn his private equity firm from a $500 million luxury hotel project in Serbia hours after four senior government officials were charged with bribery by prosecutors. ... Serbia's Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime charged Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic and three others with abuse of office and falsifying documents relating to the undertaking. ...
President Aleksandar Vucic, who has long championed the venture as a starting point for closer economic ties with the Trump administration, bemoaned the news in Trumpian terms...
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Kushner's development partner in Belgrade deal was going to be Mohammed Alabbar's UAE-based Eagle Hills Properties REIT. In 2025 his $12B "mini-Dubai" project in Budapest was cancelled because of "shady backdoor deal" to bribe several members of City Council and bypass site restrictions.
No end to the Trump mafia family corruption. Hopefully the Belgrade's 'history' repeats itself in Albania.
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