Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann, and this is Raw America’s morning brief.
America is now fighting wars on multiple fronts, with no plan, no exit strategy, and a president who spent yesterday on the phone not with world leaders but with a self-described Islamophobe influencer who has never held office or worn a uniform. The body count is rising. The justifications keep shifting. And the MAGA coalition that swept Donald Trump back into power is starting to crack under the weight of what he’s actually doing.
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Trump Opens a Second War, This Time in Ecuador
Three days after launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran, the Trump administration quietly opened another military front, this time in Ecuador. U.S. Southern Command announced late Tuesday that American and Ecuadorian forces had launched joint operations against what it called “designated terrorist organizations” engaged in narco-trafficking. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorian commandos on raids against suspected drug shipment facilities, with sources saying U.S. troops are not conducting the raids themselves but providing planning, intelligence, and logistics.
The announcement landed with barely a ripple, which appears to be exactly what the administration intended.
But context matters here. This is not the first time Trump has sent American military power into Latin America under the banner of the drug war. Since September, U.S. forces have conducted 44 strikes on 45 vessels across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 151 people. Legal experts have called those strikes illegal and extrajudicial, and sources say the administration has never produced evidence that all the boats it targeted were actually carrying drugs. In January, sources reported that the U.S. used an aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane to conduct one of those strikes, a tactic a retired military judge advocate said constitutes perfidy under the laws of war.
Add to that the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from their home in Caracas in early January, now facing narco-terrorism charges in a New York courtroom where Maduro called himself a “prisoner of war.”
The man who ran on “no new wars” has now conducted military operations in Iran, Ecuador, Venezuela, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, and across the Caribbean. But sure. Peace President.
When a president promises peace but quietly spreads American firepower across half the globe, that’s not strategy, it’s the slow normalization of permanent war.
No Plan, No Exit, No Clue
The classified briefings on Capitol Hill this week have not reassured anyone. They have done the opposite.
Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, an Iraq War veteran, walked out of Monday’s briefing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and told reporters what he found inside: nothing resembling a strategy. “We don’t have a plan on how to get out of this,” he said. “We don’t actually have a concept of victory.” He invoked 2005 and the cascade of catastrophic decisions that turned Iraq into a generation-long catastrophe. “If we don’t know how we can get out of this war, if we don’t know what the actual victory is, we’re seeing potentially a long-term war.”
Senator Brian Schatz was equally blunt. “There are times when you go into a classified session and you walk out with a better understanding about the gravity of the situation. This is not one of those times.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren posted a video after her briefing that has been widely shared. “It is so much worse than you thought,” she said. “The Trump administration has no plan in Iran.”
Trump’s own War Powers Act letter to Congress, obtained by sources, acknowledged he cannot predict “the full scope and duration” of the military operations. His timeline projections for the campaign have ranged from a few days to well over a month. Defense officials are privately warning that a prolonged campaign would stretch air defense systems and munitions reserves to a dangerous degree. Six American service members are already dead. The president has casually acknowledged more will likely follow.
Every disastrous war in American history began the same way, with leaders who knew how to start the fighting but had absolutely no idea how to end it.
Trump Called Laura Loomer. Not World Leaders. Loomer
Hours after launching the Iran strikes, sources say Trump did not reach out to allies. He called Laura Loomer.
The 32-year-old far-right influencer, who identifies proudly as an Islamophobe and has no foreign policy credentials of any kind, told the Financial Times she reassured the president that he was “making us proud to be American.” She also used the call to warn Trump about Tucker Carlson, whom she described as a threat to the administration.
Sources close to the White House describe Loomer as an “uncontrollable and toxic force” inside Trump’s orbit. Trump has called her “a very nice person” and “a patriot,” and announced her engagement at a White House Christmas party before she had told anyone herself.
On the pro-war side, the MAGA establishment fell into line with its usual enthusiasm. Lindsey Graham called the Iran strikes “the most significant thing that’s happened in the Mid-East in a thousand years.” Ted Cruz told sources he had spent all of the Friday before the strikes personally lobbying Trump to act, arguing that Iran “was teetering.” A Reuters poll conducted over the weekend found 27 percent of American adults support the strikes.
When a president turns to conspiracy influencers for validation instead of allies and experts, the country is no longer being governed, it’s being steered by the loudest voices in the right-wing echo chamber.
Trump Denies Israel Forced His Hand. Rubio Had Already Suggested it Did
By Tuesday, Trump was doing damage control on a story his own Secretary of State had effectively confirmed. Rubio had told senators that the U.S. struck Iran preemptively because Israel was going to act regardless, and Washington needed to get ahead of the Iranian retaliation that would inevitably follow. Democrats erupted.
Trump pushed back at reporters. “I might have forced their hand,” he said, flipping the narrative entirely. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.” This is his fifth or sixth explanation, depending on when you started counting.
He has also sent mixed signals about whether American ground troops could be deployed, which would transform an already dangerous situation into something considerably worse. When the justification for war changes by the day, it usually means the truth was never strong enough to stand on its own.
Talarico Wins Texas
A quick note from the Democratic side of the ledger: James Talarico, the 36-year-old state representative from Austin who went viral as a former teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, won the Texas Democratic Senate primary Tuesday night, defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett outright with more than 50 percent of the vote. He’ll face the winner of the Republican runoff between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton in November in a race no Democrat has won in Texas since 1988. More than 1.5 million Democrats voted early, double the 2022 turnout. Watch this one. If Democrats are going to rebuild American democracy, it needs to include places everyone once wrote off as unwinnable.
One more thing before you go.
Yesterday morning, our on-the-ground Capitol reporter was inside the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room as Kristi Noem testified about DHS shootings, a monthlong agency shutdown, and TSA workers going without pay. We had that story for you before most outlets had filed their first dispatch. We have already sat down with General Paul Eaton for an exclusive that our paid subscribers read first. And we are just getting started with our original reporting. Every exclusive, every hearing, every source we cultivate exists because our readers fund this work. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you are missing what Raw America is becoming. Join us now. The button is right there.
Stay with us. This is going to be a long week.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
DOJ Takes Epstein Files Offline. The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it had taken more than 47,000 Jeffrey Epstein-related documents offline for “review.” The withheld documents include the FBI’s notes on an interview conducted with one of Epstein’s victims in 2019 who accused Donald Trump of assaulting her in the 1980s, when she was a minor. Trump claims he has been “exonerated” by the files.
Hegseth Says Media ‘Trying to Make Donald Trump Look Bad’ by Reporting Troop Deaths. During a Wednesday press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked journalists reporting on the deaths of six U.S. service members as “fake news,” and insisted they were doing so for political purposes. Hegseth said: “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news. I get it - the press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality.”
House GOP Leaders Prepared to Approve $50 Billion for Iran War. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Wednesday he was prepared for a supplemental war funding request from the White House for approximately $50 billion to be used for the Iran war. Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg is reportedly preparing the official request to Congress, which Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) has indicated he would support.
GOP Congressman Ousted in Primary by More Extreme Opponent. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) lost his bid to stay in office after Republican Steve Toth defeated him in the primary for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District. Toth won handily, with the Associated Press putting him ahead of Crenshaw by more than 10,000 votes, giving him a 15-point lead over Crenshaw by the time the race was called. Toth aligned himself with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and attacked Crenshaw for being insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.
Joe Biden Warns Trump Trying to ‘Steal’ Midterms. Former President Joe Biden warned during a recent speech in South Carolina that President Donald Trump was already making plans to impose draconian voting restrictions before voters head to the polls in November. Biden told the audience Trump was “trying to steal the election, because he knows he can’t win your vote, so he’s going to do everything he can to prevent you from wanting to vote.”
