1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Is it just me? Or have other people noticed that Trump’s latest Iran threats and backtracks coincide with when the stock market is open? Rhetorical question. Anyone who knows anything has noticed. Words for the day…insider trading. You know it. We know it. But we’ve come to accept corruption. Lying. Manipulation. Lack of character. Incompetence. Basically everything we’re supposed to never accept. Mission accomplished. So now all we do is watch and ponder and tsk tsk and try and move on amongst the chaos. Which gets harder every day. Trump says talks with Iran are mostly a done-deal. He said the US and Iranian negotiators would talk by phone this week. He said “We’ll at some point very soon meet. We’re doing a five-day period. We’ll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we’re gonna end up with settling this, otherwise we just keep bombing our little hearts out.” CNN asked Trump, “You’ve said there’s many points of agreement with Iran right now. Can you give us a few of them?” He answered, “Many. Like fifteen points. Fifteen points.” CNN: “That Iran has said yes to?” Trump: “Well, they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon. That’s number one. That’s number one, two, and three. They will never have a nuclear weapon.” CNN: “They’ve said yes to that?” Trump: “They’ve agreed to that.” When another reporter asked if Iran has agreed “to no enrichment whatsoever, even for medical purposes, civilian purposes,” Trump answered: “They have.” Then CNN asked, “What about the Strait of Hormuz? Who’s going to be in control of that?” Trump answered: “That’ll be opened very soon if this works.” To questions of how soon, he responded, “Immediately.” Asked who would control the strait, he answered: “Uhhhhh, [it’ll] be jointly controlled.” “By who?” CNN asked. “Maybe me. Maybe me,” Trump said. Not the United States, or an international coalition, but “[m]e and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is…. And there’ll also be… a very serious form of regime change.” Yesterday at the Palm Beach airport, a reporter asked Trump: “If the war is ending, do you still need $200 billion?” Trump answered: “We, ah, it’s always nice to have. It’s always nice to have. It’s a very inflamed world.” Lastly, as observed by someone who knows what he’s talking about: “Think about how much America’s position in the world has been weakened, not just by apparent failure to subdue a fourth-rate power, but by the fact that everybody now knows that you cannot trust anything, cannot trust any promises the United States makes, you cannot count on the United States carrying through with promises, with threats, not just promises, but threats are also incredible in the sense of not being all credible, and that the default assumption should be that anything that this administration says is a lie.” We are not ruled by serious people. Have a great day.