Time passes so quickly. Possibly too quickly for our Convicted Felon Donald Chump. Two years is a longtime in his crime spree. Sidney Blumenthal (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:
Donald Trump has lost his war in reality and virtual reality, not only with Iran but also in the arena where he thought he was the eternal master, in image and myth. He has lost it on land, sea, and air—and in thin air. He has lost his war both physically and metaphorically. He has lost it in the Strait of Hormuz, but perhaps equally dangerous for his political survival, he has lost it in his manosphere.
Trump’s Iran war has shattered the once awestruck projection of him as the invulnerable alpha male. “There’s no one like that guy,” said Joe Rogan. “It’s the only reason why he survived all the s[**]t they tried to put him through.” Now, symptomatic of the breakdown of Trump’s once seemingly granitic support along generational and ideological lines, Rogan calls the war “crazy,” “insane,” “nuts”; says Trump has “betrayed” his followers, and that Trump is blithering along with “no clear way to resolve this at all.” Trump has gone haywire. He is the arsonist igniting the bonfire of the manosphere.
The manosphere emerged in the 2024 campaign as an innovative component at the center of Trump’s political machine, a network of podcasters, influencers, and shock jocks serving as a pipeline to young men, exploiting their social and economic anxieties, particularly by targeting them with crude misogynist messages serving as vicarious defiance against an oppressive, woke feminist culture.
The theory claiming a fundamental realignment of American politics in the 2024 election was based on the stunning statistic of 56 percent of young men in the 18 to 30-year-old demographic lurching rightward toward Trump—the exact percent that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and had supposedly given the Democrats a secure advantage. The manosphere was credited for engineering the reversal. It became instant conventional wisdom that the bros’ allegiance to Trump would be a permanent factor in American politics for a generation or more to come.
Barron Trump, the youngest son and least likely to play a significant political role, managed to insert himself as a go-between. Cloistered and cosseted, overseen by Melania supposedly hovering as a helicopter mom, he was an odd, extraordinarily privileged exemplar of the socially isolated and awkward young men who became addicted listeners of the transgressive talkers blasting outrageous riffs on how to escape the domination of overbearing women. He was the target audience. His foray was his attempt to take on an identity without breaking out of his cocoon. He was in an upside-down fairy tale where he became a prince in the shadow of his distant father, venturing forth to promote his father and gain his approval. Barron was proving himself to be one of his brothers, the most exclusive bro culture, and getting a backstage pass to be with his Rat Pack.
He has lost the manosphere. The Tate brothers have faded in terms of influence in the manosphere but they would back him if he would get them out of a US jail and promise not to return them to the U.K. which wants them on various charges. Even he realizes backing them right now is not an option -- not while he is already seen as soft on Jeffrey Epstein -- so that avenue is dead.
Reality arrived. And Mr. Blumenthal and others do not what arrived. They think it is the Iranian War and this and or that. As C.I. has documented at length, what turned the manosphere off from Mr. Chump was realizing how old he was, how out of it he was, that he wears a diaper, all of these things that harm him in their eyes and make him someone other than the alpha male that they thought he was, the alpha male that they thought they wanted to be like.
He has lost them and he is not getting them back.
This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for today:
Trump returned to office in 2025 pledging to curb wasteful government spending. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent vowed to curb the budget deficit to 3 per cent of GDP by the end of Trump’s term.
The US gross national debt reached $40tn for the first time on Wednesday, the highest in US history.
The government deficit doubled over the past decade, with government spending growing under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden – Trump approved $8.4tn worth of debt during his first term, with a large chunk going to Covid-19 relief spending, while Biden approved $4.3tn worth of debt.
In fiscal year 2026, which began in October 2025, $1.8tn has been added to the debt so far.
Both Democrats and Republicans responded to the milestone with outrage, with Democrats placing the blame on Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress for the uptick in spending.
“The President said he’d pay off the debt in his first term. Well we all knew that was a lie. Instead he ran it up to $40 trillion while he and his family made billions,” Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, posted on X.
“Republicans ran up the tab, handed billionaires another tax break, and now wanna lecture working families about ‘fiscal responsibility’. You can’t max out the card AND pretend you’re the accountant. Pick a struggle,” Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas, said.
“The Republican One Big Ugly Bill adds over $4 trillion alone—all to shamefully give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations,” Jason Crow, a Democratic congressman from Colorado, posted on X.
President Donald Trump’s war against ABC and Disney for platforming comedian Jimmy Kimmel has boomeranged on him, with the entertainment behemoth suing Trump’s FCC for violating their First Amendment rights. More recently, the FCC has challenged ABC’s broadcasting licenses.
Even a conservative newspaper is siding with ABC and Disney over the Trump administration.
“ABC sued the FCC on Tuesday for ‘coercing and retaliating’ because it ‘refuses to bow to the Administration’s demands,’” wrote The Wall Street Journal editorial board on Tuesday.
“The lawsuit says the government has violated its First Amendment
rights ‘by launching pretextual regulatory investigations and
threatening the Stations’ valuable broadcast licenses.’”
Describing FCC Chairman Brendan Carr as a “mob-boss” and agreeing with the premise of the lawsuit, the Journal opined that Trump’s FCC is indeed violating “the First Amendment by letting the FCC interfere in editorial judgments and suppress disfavored content and viewpoints. ABC’s lawsuit says the FCC’s pressure has resulted in it ‘passing on further consideration of booking several political candidates,’ and none have appeared on the program since February.”
The Journal added that Carr once criticized Democratic administrations for violating free speech rights, and concluded that “in 2020 he lambasted a progressive media group for petitioning the FCC to censor broadcasts of Mr. Trump’s Covid press conferences, calling it a ‘dangerous and sweeping attempt by the left to weaponize the FCC.’
"It’s a shame Mr. Carr won’t defend ABC’s free-speech rights today," the board added.
Yesterday on NPR's MORNING EDITION, Leila Fadel spoke with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez:
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: ABC agreed to a settlement with President Trump over a defamation lawsuit, and there were critics at the time that said, well, you're just conceding to an intimidation over your - over speech. That was the criticism at the time. Why do you think the network is now choosing to challenge the actions of the government versus settle?
ANNA GOMEZ: One of the things that we learned from this administration is if you capitulate, it doesn't buy you peace from the administration. Instead, it just buys you time. The administration will keep coming back and continuing the threats, continuing to use whatever leverage it can in order to retaliate against critics. And so Disney has found its courage and it is pushing back. And this is good. It's good for the First Amendment, it's good for the public and it's good for broadcasters in general.
FADEL: The FCC chief, Brendan Carr, says that he is upholding requirements that broadcasters operate in the public interest. What do you say to that?
GOMEZ: When we talk about the public interest traditionally, we say we want licensees to provide service to their communities and that means providing them content that matters to the communities. The problem with saying that you're using this public interest standard in a vague way is it's now being wielded about in order to say, any content we don't like is contrary to the public interest. That is not what our Constitution allows the FCC to do, it is not what our Communications Act allows the FCC to. And so I've called on the FCC to say, OK, if we're going to say - keep using this public-interest standard - a vague, nebulous standard that really has no definition - then the FCC needs to establish rules that specifically say what that means. And if those rules violate the First Amendment, then we will learn that lesson.
FADEL: Are other commissioners concerned? I know you're the only Democrat on the commission, and there might be people listening to you saying, well, that - she thinks that 'cause she's a Democrat and the president is not. Are other commissioners concerned?
GOMEZ: Well, I will say this. Protecting the First Amendment is not a partisan issue. And, in fact, this FCC has heard from former FCC chairs that were Republicans, former FCC commissioners that were Republicans. We have heard from Senator Cruz, Senator Kennedy and other Republicans who have been concerned about the FCC's actions and their effect on the First Amendment. There is bipartisan support for respecting the First Amendment.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “hid” how Iran had destroyed much of the main resupply base for the U.S. military in the Middle East, according to MS Now, as concerns grow about the conditions faced by sailors on board USS Abraham Lincoln.
The network’s senior national security reporter David Rohde made the claim about the aircraft carrier, which, according to The New York Times, has faced supply problems since Iranian strikes hit the logistics hub Naval Support Activity Bahrain at the start of the war.
During a segment in MS Now discussing President Donald Trump’s dismissal of reports of low morale
and the mental health concerns of those aboard the carrier during an
unusually long deployment, Rohde said the resupply issue was “because
Pete Hegseth hid the fact that Iran destroyed the main resupply base
that the United States has in the Gulf.”
“He did not make that public in press conference after press conference, and that is, again, the way that they have mishandled this war,” Rohde added.
The USS Abraham Lincoln wasn’t able to be resupplied because the U.S. Navy’s main resupply base in the Gulf of Oman was destroyed by Iranian strikes—a fact that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose not to make public, David Rhode, MS NOW’s senior national security reporter, said on Tuesday.
From late February until June, Iran launched extensive missile and drone strikes on Naval Support Activity Bahrain, causing devastating damage that was not acknowledged by the Pentagon.
The U.S. Navy was forced to evacuate most personnel, and move supply operations to a U.K. naval base on Diego Garcia, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) joined all of her fellow members on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) minority, as well as the Democratic leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Subcommittee on Defense, in demanding answers from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Senators’ letter follows reports that the aircraft carrier’s crew has endured food and water shortages, broken plumbing and mental health crises severe enough that multiple sailors reportedly attempted to go overboard during its record-setting deployment. The Lincoln has been at sea for more than 250 days, including over 200 consecutive days without a port call, the longest continuous deployment at sea for a U.S. aircraft carrier in the modern era.
In the letter, the Senators wrote: “Our sailors and Marines signed up to serve and to be treated with respect. They did not sign up to be kept at sea indefinitely with no announced return date and, by multiple accounts, without reliable food, hot water, or working plumbing. That is not how we treat the men and women we ask to carry out this mission.”
“This situation was preventable, and the conditions aboard the Lincoln are nearly identical to the issues faced by the USS Ford when it conducted an extended deployment that ended earlier this year,” the Senators continued. “The USS Lincoln was redirected to the Middle East as the war with Iran began and has remained there as that war has dragged on with no clear endpoint. This is a symptom of poor planning by both you and the President and exacerbated by the deeply unsound decision to start a war with Iran. Open-ended deployments driven by an open-ended war have real consequences for our servicemembers, and we are seeing those consequences now.”
The Senators pressed Secretary Hegseth on his Department’s failure to provide a clear timeline for the crew’s return and condemned his public dismissal of the reports as “completely misrepresented,” as well as President Trump’s remarks suggesting the Lincoln had not been deployed “nearly long enough.” The Senators demanded detailed answers on mental health and medical resources aboard the ship, the state of good order and discipline, hygiene and food conditions, the full extent of the reported man-overboard incident and support being provided to military families, along with a formal request for a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit the ship.
Along with Duckworth, the letter was co-signed by the following SASC members: Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Angus King (I-ME), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Coons (D-DE) of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense also joined.
The full text of the letter is available on Senator Duckworth’s website and below:
Dear Secretary Hegseth,
We write regarding the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln and mounting evidence that conditions aboard the carrier have deteriorated to the point that the safety and wellbeing of its crew could be compromised. These are deeply troubling reports, and the American people deserve honest answers.
The USS Lincoln departed San Diego on November 21, 2025. The ship has now been deployed for more than 250 days, including over 200 consecutive days without a port call, setting a modern-day record for continuous time at sea for a U.S. aircraft carrier. Family members of the sailors and Marines serving aboard have received urgent messages describing conditions that should alarm you, and everyone serving in a position of leadership at the Pentagon, to include concerns about exhaustion, food and water shortages, and mental health crises serious enough that multiple sailors reportedly attempted to go overboard.
In response to these reports, you publicly stated that the conditions aboard the carrier have been “completely misrepresented.” Even more galling, when asked by reporters about the conditions on the Lincoln, President Trump dismissed the concerns of the families and stated that the Lincoln had not been deployed “nearly long enough.”
Our sailors and Marines signed up to serve and to be treated with respect. They did not sign up to be kept at sea indefinitely with no announced return date and, by multiple accounts, without reliable food, hot water, or working plumbing. That is not how we treat the men and women we ask to carry out this mission.
This situation was preventable, and the conditions aboard the Lincoln are nearly identical to the issues faced by the USS Ford when it conducted an extended deployment that ended earlier this year. The USS Lincoln was redirected to the Middle East as the war with Iran began and has remained there as that war has dragged on with no clear endpoint. This is a symptom of poor planning by both you and the President and exacerbated by the deeply unsound decision to start a war with Iran. Open-ended deployments driven by an open-ended war have real consequences for our servicemembers, and we are seeing those consequences now.
Recent press reports indicate that the USS George Washington will be deployed to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln. While that is welcome news, the Department’s mismanagement of carrier deployments also means that the U.S. will not have an aircraft carrier in the Pacific for the foreseeable future. However, ensuring the USS Lincoln returns to port takes precedence, and it is incumbent on the Department to inform Congress, and the families, on the plan and timeline to get the crew home. Denial and defensiveness are not acceptable responses. Congress and these families need accountability.
Given the seriousness of these reports, we request written answers to the following:
- What is the current timeline for the USS Lincoln’s relief and return to homeport, and what specific operational requirements are driving continued extensions of this deployment?
- Was the crew informed that the deployment could be extended indefinitely? Have any members of the crew been changed out since the beginning of this deployment, and if so, how many?
- Has there been any degradation in the operational capability of the USS Lincoln or her airwing?
- What mental health resources are being provided to the crew?
- Have there been any suicides aboard the ship during this deployment? How many instances of detected suicidal ideation or attempted self-harm, including attempts to go overboard, has the Department recorded?
- What other medical resources are available aboard the ship, and are resources sufficient to meet the crew’s needs given the length of this deployment?
- What chaplain resources are available to the crew, and have they been adequate to the scale of need aboard the ship?
- What is the current state of good order and discipline aboard the USS Lincoln?
- What is the hygiene and healthy food situation on board, including the status of reported plumbing failures, water contamination, and food shortages?
- What is the extent of illness or injury aboard the ship, including full details of the reported man-overboard incident and any other similar incidents?
- What is the state of the families of the sailors and Marines aboard the USS Lincoln? What resources are being provided to them, and are they being kept informed on a regular basis about the status of the deployment and their loved ones’ wellbeing?
- Will the Department authorize a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit the Lincoln to conduct firsthand oversight of conditions aboard the ship?
As the Secretary of Defense, you are accountable to the men and women who serve our nation. It is time for you to demonstrate leadership, rather than peddle excuses. The servicemembers we send into harm’s way deserve nothing less.
Sincerely,
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