"No, not nearly long enough"

In a remotely rational universe, a declaration of delusional imperial ambition by the President of the United States would be a rather big story. But such is the measure of our derangement that you may have missed this: “Trump says he will declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory.”

"After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump said in an Aug. 14 speech in Garden City, New York.

In the interest of brevity and sanity, I should point out: (1) We haven’t defeated Iran. We’re losing. (2) It would be an insult to bats to describe his threat to annex the Strait merely as “batshit crazy.”

Happy Saturday.

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As you know, I have grudgingly conceded that Donald Trump once had a reptilian instinct for public opinion, that allowed him to become an effective demagogue and win two presidential elections.

But it’s hard not to recognize his increasing tone-deafness — about the economy, the war, the optics of his endless and costly vanity projects.

In the past, his supporters shrugged off reports that he referred to American war dead as “suckers and losers,”1 and many of them still believe that Trump is a reliable (sic) supporter of the military.

But his actual attitude toward the men and women who put their lives on the line has always been just below the surface. That callous disdain, however, is now on full and graphic display.

As reports of horrific conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln mount, the man who sent them on their endless and pointless mission brushed off the complaints. Even the Murdoch-owned NY Post took note of his crass indifference:

Multiple reports have emerged in recent days that poor living conditions and a lack of downtime has taken a severe mental toll on the roughly 5,000 service members on board the carrier, which has been stationed in the Arabian Sea since January, before the start of combat operations against Iran.

According to the Navy Times and Wall Street Journal, at least three sailors have either tried to jump overboard or managed to do so, forcing their colleagues to rescue them or physically restrain them from going over the side.

More than 200 family members met with acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao in San Diego last week to raise their issues

Trump’s reaction? When a reporter noted that the relatives “are concerned about conditions” on the ship, Trump flatly denied it: “No, they’re not,” he said.

The president also brushed off a question about whether the ship, originally deployed in the South China Sea in November, had been away from shore too long.

“No, not nearly long enough,” Trump responded.

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The NYT is linking the ship’s supply problems to Iran’s destruction of a key naval base in Bahrain early in Trump‘s war.

The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades.

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But let’s get back to the men and women on the Lincoln. Make sure you read Adam Kinzinger’s excellent piece explaining what this means to those service members: “They Signed Up to Serve. They Didn’t Sign up for This.”

Here’s the thing that makes me angriest, though. The suffering on that ship is not some unavoidable act of God. It is the direct result of choices. Namely, a war that Trump’s ego started and keeps extending with no clear objective and no end in sight.

The Navy is now reportedly moving another carrier in to take the Lincoln’s place. Good. But it is far too late. It should have happened a long time ago.

We ask an enormous amount of the people who wear the uniform. They accept that. They know the deal when they raise their right hand. But the deal runs both ways. When we send them out there, we owe them a plan to bring them home, the basic supplies to live with dignity while they serve, and leaders who treat their lives as something more precious than a talking point. Right now, on the Lincoln, we are failing that obligation.

So no, this is not what they signed up for. They signed up to serve their country. They did not sign up to be forgotten by it. The least the rest of us can do is refuse to look away and refuse to let anyone tell them their pain is weakness.

Bring them home. And until they’re home, at the very least, honor them enough to care.

BONUS: “The buck stops somewhere else: A look at Trump's tendency to avoid blame when things go awry.” —AP

(First of what will undoubtedly be a tedious — but necessary — series)

Once more with feeling for you folks who still think the DSA is led by pro-democracy social democrats: These. Are. Not. The. Socialists. You. Think. They. Are.

Analyst Stu Smith highlighted a recent podcast conversation in which the two co-chairs of the DSA were pressed on their attitudes toward the manifestly anti-democratic regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

This is a longer clip, but it captures the best parts of a broader discussion DSA national co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer had with The Moment hosts Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos.

Jorge repeatedly presses them on whether Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are dictatorships. They repeatedly avoid giving him a direct answer.

Romer eventually responds that “Cubans have access to their democracy in a way that we do not,” pointing to Cuba’s 2022 Family Code referendum as evidence. That referendum was only four years ago, making it an especially curious answer to Jorge Ramos repeatedly pressing her on decades without multiparty elections.

Ashik Siddique fares little better. Asked whether Cuba is a dictatorship, he pivots to the U.S. embargo and the state of American politics, responding that “it’s hard for us to judge other countries being dictatorships when we have Donald Trump as president.”…

When it comes to international politics, DSA is often at its most revealing. Siddique and Romer are not even among the organization’s most die-hard internationalists. This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how radical DSA’s international politics can get.

Stu Smith@thestustustudio

🚨 DSA Co-Chairs Squirm When Pressed on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua This is a longer clip, but it captures the best parts of a broader discussion DSA national co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer had with The Moment hosts Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. Jorge repeatedly

1:48 PM · Aug 14, 2026 · 583K Views

231 Replies · 414 Reposts · 2.39K Likes

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ICYMI: Make sure you read Claire Berlinski here: “The Most Dangerous Woman in the World.”

You will see her stupid, beaming, self-satisfied face on ad after ad. Romer, smiling brightly: “I do, yeah, yeah,” when asked whether she believes in collective ownership of the means of production.

Then: open borders, abolish prisons, abolish the Senate, defund the police.

Then Remnick asking whether she would have attended the exultant rally held the day after Hamas had slaughtered 1,200 people and taken more than 200 hostages. “That’s a good question, I probably would have, yeah, yeah.” Then Ukraine: “We shouldn’t send weapons to the Ukrainians.”

What should America send Ukraine instead of weapons? “Huge teams of diplomats.” Cut to a Russian missile striking an apartment building. The ad writes itself. And by the time it has aired ten thousand times, something extraordinary will have happened: Donald Trump’s own record on Ukraine will have disappeared. The GOP will use Romer to prosecute Democrats for the policy Trump himself has pursued.

On today’s “To the Contrary” podcast, I’m joined by the Financial Times’ Ed Luce to talk about today’s political climate, the undeniable reality of global warming and the existential threat of AI.

Luce, who is on vacation in the Alps, graphically describes what he is seeing as a heat-wave rolls through Europe, melting the snow and scorching the land. We also discuss the parallels between DSA attempts to push the Democrats to the left , and the experience of Britain’s Labor Party when it was led by its own far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

BONUS: make sure you listen to Luce’s warning about the dangers of moving to the left:

Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed

Note: If you enjoy conversations like this one, or just want to hang around with smart, sane people, please consider joining us. As you know, we depend on the kindness of strangers to keep doing this work. And the dogs and I are immensely grateful for your generous support.

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ICYMI: I also spoke with Princeton’s Julian Zelizer yesterday about Trump’s AF1 escape… and how Dems dodged a bullet in Wisconsin.

A sad farewell to Frank. From my wife’s Substack: “Some of you knew Frank from my posts here, particularly from the video—which, of course, I can’t find—of him hiding under a blanket while the dog walker tried desperately to get him to come out. Here is a little Frank retrospective. He was a naughty, silly, loveable dog….”