A weary President Donald Trump slurred his way through a disjointed national TV address Wednesday night in which he repeated the same justifications for his war with Iran that he’s been posting on social media throughout the month-long conflict.

The primetime speech, which pre-empted scheduled television programming on all broadcast networks at the request of the White House, had been billed as a major address in which Trump would finally lay out the justifications for the military action he started against Iran — one that would finally provide details on how and when the conflict would end to an American populace that has grown weary of it.

Instead, the president spent nearly 20 minutes speaking from a lectern in the White House’s main foyer, in prepared marks that often repeated, word for word, his Truth Social posts, and offered contradictory statements about the war, Iran and the now bogged down Strait of Hormuz, while repeatedly having trouble pronouncing words like “enemies,” “Venezuela” and “battlefield.”

  • Etterra@discuss.online
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    44 minutes ago

    He needs to be stuffed in a lead-lined barrel and stored in an underground toxic waste disposal all site.

  • Folstar@lemmus.org
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    6 hours ago

    If I were a conservative strategist, I would be desperately trying to figure out ways to get rid of that guy before the midterms. The only question would be is it better to have several months of damage control, or go for an October martyr situation.

    • 8oow3291d@feddit.dk
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      27 minutes ago

      A significant part of the GOP base are in a Trump cult. I think the Republican party will implode, if the Republicans are seen as in any way helping depose Trump.

      They can hope Trump dies, but I don’t think they have any other way out.

  • Ghostie@lemmy.zip
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    13 hours ago

    I wouldn’t call it jaw-dropping. It was exactly what I expected it to be, rambling that sounded like a 9 year old wrote the speech, just like all the other addresses he’s made. It was a lies stuffed nothing burger.

    • 8oow3291d@feddit.dk
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      25 minutes ago

      I am too lazy to make a list, but I am pretty sure Trump has done this exact stunt of announcing a “major policy speech coming” before. And then announcing nothing new in the speech.

  • homes@piefed.world
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    17 hours ago

    After decades of the most terrifying sci-films preparing me for this, I’m so very disappointed by how incredibly stupidly and predictably this all is transpiring.

    By no measure are any “incredible means” (VR, cyber attacks, time travel, clones, mind control, etc) being employed here other than an incredibly stipid man with an incredible amount of power going incredibly unchecked by an administration incredibly obedient to the whims of a single man so incredibly corrupt and incompetent.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 hours ago

      It’s pretty sad that we didn’t even got a straightforward Dystopia like, say, Mad Max.

      Instead we got a 1984-wrapped Stupidocracy.

    • Hegar@fedia.io
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      16 hours ago

      I feel that disappointment. But i think you’re way over-estimating trump’s role. There’s an entire corrupt elite class that are the real constituents of this regime.

      Trump’s just the idiot who agreed to be hated by history so a bunch of far right oligarchs could live out their dream of looting the nation, ethnic cleansing, etc.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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        10 hours ago

        Correct. Trump is a symptom of the larger rot within. He’s only there because the problem was already in place.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        10 hours ago

        Well he actually just hoped to be loved before he died since his parents never did.

        The oligarchs just told him what would make THEM love him more and they are his whole world. Listen how desperately he sounds hoping to go to heaven sometime. Its just hard to be so detached from reality and think you are I’m charge of it.

    • deskperp@awful.systems
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      16 hours ago

      That’s how I feel too. Like it’s been super obvious for 25 years or more that America was going to devolve and collapse on itself and I’ve consumed so much media preparing for this but it’s still just staggering how fucking stupid it all is. There’s even a movie. The Lives of Others, about the Stasi in East Germany in the 80s before the wall comes down and the main guy at the end says to an ex-stasi guy something like “one day we’ll all look back on this and wonder how an idiot like you ever got in charge of anything” and even though I always think about that scene. Everything seems just so much more dumb than I could have possibly imagined.

  • MrSulu@lemmy.ml
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    17 hours ago

    Any one line of this article would be sufficient material to cause chaos for any other world leader.

    Just one copied here ““We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have, but we’re there to help our allies,” he said.” To confirm, his Allies didn’t know his plans, didn’t want or ask for his invasion. His allies are not subject to his threats for not supporting his stupidity.

    • Embargo@lemmy.zip
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      16 hours ago

      American allies are going to suffer just as terribly though. They’ll be forced into oil trade deals with the US, giving them a a firmer grip on the world around them. They’re violently and recklessly attacking their enemies while treating their allies as assets.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        16 hours ago

        Worst.

        Drilling in the North Sea is ramping up. Seriously. This means every country with suspected oil reserves is throwing money into a defunct technology instead of doubling down on renewables.

        My country had a plan in motion to set up a green hydrogen plant, which was planned to act as an energy reserve for Europe. I fear we will see it completely forgotten and instead the plans of surveying our coast for alledged oil reserves to come back. In the 2000’s, early surveys pointed towards reserves just 30km off our shores possibly larger than the entire stock of Venezuela and Mid-East, combined, and easily harvestable.

        Nobody needs this.

        • Fluke@feddit.uk
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          11 hours ago

          It could be argued though, that for the time and money taken to explore, map, develop, then extract that dinosaur juice, you could have built an entire country’s worth of renewable energy sources.

          Especially when you factor in that all that oil will be sold at “global market price”, so none of it will result in cheaper energy for anyone.

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            11 hours ago

            Sincerely speaking, I hope your obviously correct argument wins when the usual suspects start talking about “alternatives”.

            Investing into renewables, paired with batteries and green hydrogen production makes sense.

            The news where it is constantly pointed that renewables are unreliable because the sun and wind are not constant while at the same time we are getting news that solar energy production alone is reaching new output record, above fossil fuels, are nothing if not loathsome.

            • Fluke@feddit.uk
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              8 hours ago

              Pumped Hydro or simple hot sand (I shit you not) are good ways of storing excess energy without resorting to direct electrical storage solutions (which are improving year on year at a swift pace too).

              There are a lot of other ways being explored too. To name but a couple; pumped geothermal storage using everything from old mines to aquifers (a few degrees C in a lot of water is a lot of energy and deep mines will add it for free), and underwater pressure energy storage (I like this one for it’s simplicity and sustainability).

              But you’re totally correct. The oil industry has almost infinite money and power, and thus an almost unassailable influence on politics and policy.

              The hope lies in the almost. With a bit of luck, things will get bad enough that the populous at large start to question whether being so dependent on other countries for the ability to move shit around is such a cracking idea when the alternative is right there, today, not in a decade when any local oil begins to flow, if there is any to be had.

              A smart politician would spin a wholehearted policy shift to renewables as “ensuring the sovereignty of our nation’s energy supply, the backbone of our economy, which should never be beholden to foreign governments or corporations”. Done right, it could be used to rally the “rabid far right” and the “loony left” of any country to the same greater good for all of humanity.

              • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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                4 hours ago

                Your argument was spot on with what was said to defend the conversion of a deactivated refinery into a hydrogen plant.

                This is a relatively small country, with a small population, so achieving energy independence makes complete sense. We have a very strong solar, wind and hydroelectric instalation already in place, enough that we have already several registered days where no fossil energy nor foreign bought was necessary to supply our demand. But it is common for 90% of our produced energy to be sold (cheaply) and the energy we use to be bought.

                We are an example to all and yet the distrust towards renewables is generalized, to the point many even think the wind turbines cause heat trapping where the machines are installed, leading to fires and droughts.

                It is disheartening. I remember reading that 10% of all the money invested annually into the oil industry could cause renewables to leap ten years forward in research.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    11 hours ago

    If this is his public address I’m going to have to start charging him for my time. I’ve heard all that crap in the weeks before from various, off the cuff, sound bites.