"totally again obliterated": American Politics March 2026

Only gives you this much w/o signing up for free sub, but it's prob the gist:

President Trump told Axios on Saturday that he has several "off ramps" from Operation Epic Fury, the extraordinary U.S. military campaign against Iran that he launched early Saturday morning.

What they're saying: "I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: 'See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs]," Trump said in a five-minute phone interview from Mar-a-Lago.

I think you mean Operation Epic Furry

The perfect thread title

Change it if you like, no prob.

no I think Raymond meant yours!

(I was just riffing/joking)

Well yours is good too, wouldn't mind a t-shirt of it.

and you'll do just what you choose to do

So because there's yet another 'bombshell' story about Graham Platner (he gave an interview to a former Green Beret who's now a podcaster who promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, though Platner himself apparently — I haven't listened — did not engage in such discussions during the interview), there's a new wave of "Don't vote for Graham Platner!" talk on Bluesky. But at the same time, he maintains something like a 20-point lead over Janet Mills, and all the other Democratic candidates (there are five others) are polling in single digits, I think.

The primary is on June 9. Shouldn't the anti-Platner folks (and the anti-Mills folks) be coalescing around an alternate candidate by now?

yes, but to tipsy's point recently on some other thread, someone also has to step up and announce they are running

Like I said, five other people have already announced: Natasha Alcala, David Costello, David Evans, Tucker Favreau and Andrea LaFlamme. I don't know anything about any of them.

https://mainemorningstar.com/race-details/2026-us-senate/

I don’t see anyone but Platner is going to be the nominee.

How

Me either. And given the general national mood of rage, I think he's got a good shot at winning. Most voters are anti-thug, but only because they don't have thugs of their own. Platner could go really far (has already gone really far) on a "but he's our bastard" vibe.

Since I don’t live in Maine and don’t have to worry about voting in the primary, I mostly just hope somebody who is not Susan Collins is the next Senator.

Tucker Favreau, the cursed Brundlefly of Tucker Carlson and Jon Favreau.

Director or podcaster, take your pick

ha, was just about to post about more awful Platner news.

Inside Politics showed Mills ads showing Collins being "concerned" about Trump, rather than courageous.

i will never ever ever vote for Platner

because i live in Virginia

The Mills ad was decent. But it's typical DC bullshit - "Ooh, look what a hypocrite my opponent is" - and it's utterly unsuited to the current moment. She seems to have been a good governor, certainly better than the piece of shit she replaced. But as a senator, she'd likely be a Chuck Schumer/Dick Durbin/Tim Kaine-style blob of jello.

She couldn’t possibly be more useless than Collins, neither of them could. In absolute terms neither she nor Platner are likely to be great, but the point is their Value Above Collins will be > 0.

yeah just removing a republican is good

She couldn’t possibly be more useless than Collins, neither of them could. In absolute terms neither she nor Platner are likely to be great, but the point is their Value Above Collins will be > 0.

Oh, absolutely. There is no circumstance in which Collins retaining her seat is a good thing. I'm just saying Mills is distinctly uninspiring — Dukakis-esque, if you will — while Platner is inspiring in ways that say very bad things about the political environment and the state of the country. A guy like him should not be doing well. That he is should frighten a lot of people, not just mainstream Democratic political consultants who see their gigs drying up if the party goes that way.

interesting his biggest boosters are the ultimate mainstream dem podcasters

wait im developing a theory everyones thinking hes going to pull a fetterman but what if hes really an undercover obama centrist

people on bluesky theorizing that hes maybe just very stupid

xxxp But she would vote reliably for the democrats and I'm not sure Platner would, based on his past. He has a sketchy history and a Fetterman vibe.

But I would be happy with either of them over Collins. I think Collins will win again, as she always does, however

The mainstream podcaster boosters of which you speak are the Pod Save America guys, who are just the worst imo

this is the guys show who he went on

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:y2llcscocbfrj3qnzvsjemdw/bafkreiezmxmv24pptkxi7p6fjkos3jt3ag6jqnb2qug7cl4tbxudg3eezm@jpeg

lmaoooooo

the new head of the Kennedy Center

Apparently, Trump had potential candidates to lead Iran in mind, but... they've been killed. Whoops!

people on bluesky theorizing that hes maybe just very stupid

he's been too consistently bad on one particular area for entirely too long, I don't think he's stupid other than that he appears to be too stupid to understand why this stuff is controversial.

feel like he might be stupid and into nazi stuff

why would he care if the war leads to stability or not? those are human welfare concerns, he doesn’t gaf, never has. what is the investment opportunity, for him and his friends? the same ones that looked the other way about epstein, people who are ethically neutral when it means opportunity for themselves. they will get rich off this war. they don’t care

ie, trump’s plans to turn gaza into a casino resort, etc

Oh good

"A gunman wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and the words “Property of Allah” killed two people and wounded 14 early Sunday at a Texas bar, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The FBI is investigating the shooting, which erupted a day after the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran, as a potential act of terrorism."

https://apnews.com/article/austin-texas-bar-shooting-7690f931ba00f950c1828cef25399bb6

he's been too consistently bad on one particular area for entirely too long, I don't think he's stupid other than that he appears to be too stupid to understand why this stuff is controversial.

Possible theory: He's got pissed-off-vet brainworms, exacerbated by the internet, and the question is, are there more people in Maine with pissed-off-vet brainworms exacerbated by the internet, or more people who find that to be a political dealbreaker?

While you watched Iran, Oracle took over Medicare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TlYoVsW5ko

feel like he might be stupid and into nazi stuff

Feel like he might be stupid, into nazi stuff, and an ex-Blackwater employee

Congo is fighting Rwanda to regain control over the Rubaya coltan mine (where a collapse killed 200 last month) because the US has been promised access to the stuff.

https://allafrica.com/stories/202602240552.html

we shot down 3 of our own jets

thats an oops

I thought Kuwait shot them down by accident? Either way.

or iran shot them down who knows really

The jets committed suicide.

the jets took a nap

I guess kuwait shot them down but kuwait is on 'our side'

Yeah does appear to be "friendly fire"

well at least the US sold Kuwait the equipment lmao

yeah, all the Fort Huachuca flight logs, etc.

lol yes I'm sure Candace Owens is all over this

Kirk's all over the bullet

speaking of saying the quiet part loud

"Trump: "We have a thing called a war, or as they would rather say, a military operation. It's for legal reasons. Because as a military operation, I don't need any approvals. As a war you're supposed to get approval from Congress. Something like that. So I call it a military operation."

march 27

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3mi37amfxlt2z🕸

He could be impeached just for this

hahahahahahahahahaha

sorry

right wingers have this belief that words are magic spells

I saw someone point out that that's a good example of what his supporters like about him. We see it as proof that he's lying, but it's the *acknowledgment* that he's lying -- the conspiratorial "we all know politics is bullshit, but sometimes you have to play by these silly rules to get stuff done" -- that makes people see him as authentic because nobody else will openly admit it like he does. (And optimistically, I don't know who else in the Republican Party can pull that off.)

it's true you could never call him sanctimonious

also for these people, all instances of "saying what you're not supposed to say" are flattened into the same plane as truth-telling things that the powers that be don't want you to know (or that the Politically Correct are supposedly trying to suppress). lies, confessions, legally actionable slander, etc , all collapse into "they wouldn't want me saying this, folks, oh no...". it's the playbook of unfunny but supposedly edgy (and in fact deeply conservative) standup comedians. "they say I'm a racist asshole, but I'm just saying what everyone's thinking!", etc.

Like that exchange he had with Dana Perino recently where he said, "If I tell you good you look that would end my political career. They don't like you to talk about how women look."

imo. I was just saying that there have been more Ds from the South in recent history than not

It’s the 30th anniversary of the last time a Southern Democrat won a Presidential election.

Are they going to put out a Deluxe edition?

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos

Millions of Americans voted for Choados.

i voted board with nail on it

am i allowed to think it's funny the Kristi Noem's husband is into being bimbo-fied?

I don't wanna kink-shame, so instead I'll note how she's horrified.

this is the sort of thing that husbands will get up to if their wives are too busy killing dogs

lol

Everyone already knew he was a cuck, but not that he was a Power Cuck.

otm

BREAKING: A judge orders the Trump administration to halt construction of $400 million White House ballroom unless Congress approves the plan.

BREAKING: Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to stop funding NPR and PBS is “unlawful and unenforceable,” a federal judge ruled.

A judge's ruling you say? Oh so surely this will halt the administration's plans.

you laugh, but every little bit helps

plus now he's REALLY MAD on social media abt the ballroom thing, so that's a win too

he's a big loser and more people should be saying it

it’s gonna take…how long to the end of his presidency, technically? a little under 3 years? i’m gonna say it’s gonna take…3 years for a judge to rule that they can look under the tarp at the shed ballroom and see that the bunker has continued to be built out, violating all orders (but he’ll be immune because the president can’t commit a crime)

this could be one of his signature post-presidency issues (how the person after him canceled his beautiful project etc)

they should brick him up in it Cask of Amontillado style if he loves it so much

Noem family up in here!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbvtnB3jUtk

still know every word of that by heart I'm proud to say

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-jews-penn-list-judge.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

horrific, but seems like something zionists should have thought of before today

Oh i’m sure they thought of suing universities for antisemitism before today

can he actually... do this?

Trump says he is ‘absolutely’ considering withdrawing US from Nato

Donald Trump has said he is “absolutely” considering withdrawing the US from Nato, warning that the matter was “beyond reconsideration” after the refusal of US allies to join the US-Israeli war against Iran.

He can sign some kind of EO saying he can, and if the the NATO Treaty has a clear procedure for withdrawing and he follows that process, then his EO could have a legal basis. A lot of Senate Republicans would be appalled, but I doubt they'd try to overrule him. He's already burned most of our bridges with NATO as an alliance in favor of bilateral relations with individual countries, because they are easier to manipulate and bully separately.

Small detail, though (from 2023):

https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-president-withdrawing-nato/

Yup. An EO is worthless in this case.

ha! it was coauthored by Rubio

Wikipedia (citing sources) says:

The formal process is stated in article 13 of the Treaty.[1] This says that any country that wants to leave must send the United States (as the depositary state) a "notice of denunciation", which the U.S. would then pass on to the other Allies. After a one-year waiting period, the country that wants to leave would be out.

It appears that the contingency of the U.S. being the leaver wasn't much thought about.

An EO is worthless in this case.

If the President enforces an illegal EO I am sure the DOJ will step right up and launch an investigation leading to proceedings against the Cabinet members who follow the EO (because their hands are tied by DOJ policy where the president is concerned). The Congress would subpoena the DOJ's investigative evidence and impeach Trump for it. I'd like to see him wriggle out of that!

i'm gonna go ahead and schedule that the resolution of all that for december 2028, gonna take a while to figure it out and get the right people in touch

back to bite him

A more than two-year-old social media post by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which he asserted that U.S. presidents should not be able to unilaterally pull out of NATO resurfaced Wednesday after President Trump said he would reconsider U.S. membership in the alliance once the conflict with Iran ends.

“No U.S. President should be able to withdraw from NATO without Senate approval,” Rubio, then a Florida senator, wrote in a December 2023 post on the social platform X.

nevertheless

President Donald Trump has privately mused about firing his Attorney General Pam Bondi and replacing her with EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/01/politics/pam-bondi-trump-discussed-ousting

Firing the women, who'da thunk.

Sounds like Mike Johnson and House Republicans are caving on the DHS bill that passed the Senate recently.

https://www.rawstory.com/mike-johnson-2676651207/

it's not a very meaty victory, but victories of any kind are scarce when you don't have the votes to control either chamber. we'll see if trump caves in, too, or sticks to his veto threat because they didn't pass his f**king SAVE America Act first.

Richard M. Nixon

When I was in the Congress there were members too old to go home every week, so they lived in the District. They got driven to the Monocle at two o'clock, where they drank soda with bitters. They were told it was something else. They expounded on world events, so to speak. His speech was like that.

lol well if that "speech" was in any way supposed to reassure anyone about anything, the markets ain't having it.

I have thought this many times already, but three more years of this feels totally unsustainable. Like the world is just going to collapse from exhaustion.

Oh yeah guess we need a new one: Ballroom blitz: American politics April 2026