From the pinned item at 5:45 am ET of the New York Times' liveblog of developments in the Iran War: “American and Iranian delegations arrived at a lakeside resort in Switzerland on Sunday for a new round of talks, even as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon threatened efforts to reach a broader peace deal and keep shipping flowing in the Strait of Hormuz. Vice President JD Vance is leading a negotiating team that includes President Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Iran’s team includes Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, its lead negotiator in earlier talks and the speaker of its Parliament.... Hours after the Iranian military said it had shuttered the [Strait of Hormuz Saturday], the Israeli military said late on Saturday that it had received 'updated directives' from the country’s political leaders to cease its fire in Lebanon.... The [Israeli] military said it reserved the right to respond if Hezbollah did not abide by the cease-fire and targeted Israeli troops or civilians.”
Maegan Vazquez & Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: “Iran’s military command said Saturday it is closing the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, according to state media, testing a fragile ceasefire agreement intended to lead to a broader peace with the United States. After the announcement of the closure, Iranian and U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, set off for Switzerland for more high-level talks, which are scheduled to resume on Sunday. Stranded vessels had cautiously begun to transit the Strait of Hormuz after a preliminary agreement between the U.S. and Iran in which the countries agreed to lift all restrictions on movement through the strategic maritime corridor. U.S. Central Command said movement continued through Saturday, stating that 55 merchant ships and 17 million barrels of oil passed through and denying that the strait is closed....
“Around the same time as Iran’s announcement, Vance told 'Fox & Friends' on Saturday morning that 'the straits are now open.' A U.S. Central Command spokesman also later denied that the strait was closed. 'Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz,' Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins said. 'Traffic continues to flow, and U.S. forces are monitoring the situation to ensure this remains the case. The commodity tracking firm Kpler said 20 ships had crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday.” (Also linked yesterday.) An AP story is here.
~~~ Marie: As a child, I had no idea such jejune individuals were deciding the fate of the world. My ignorance was a good thing, because JayDee & Trump & the lot of them are scarier than the bogeymen the most imaginative of children could conjure up. ~~~
~~~ Kareem Chehayeb, et al., of the AP: “... Donald Trump, in response [to Iran's announcement], unleashed a new threat to impose American tolls in the crucial waterway if a final deal with Iran isn’t reached in 60 days, saying the money would be for 'services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East.' The agreement calls for toll-free travel for 60 days.” MB: I know it isn't funny, but the guy is such a comical, childish, stereotypical bully, it's hard not to laugh.
Pond Scum Chronicles, Ctd.
Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell. -- Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), reflecting on the Reflecting Pool fiasco ~~~
~~~ Donald Trump Is Still Seeing Bogeymen. Minho Kim of the New York Times: Donald “Trump said on Saturday that 'multiple individuals' had been arrested for vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and that problems with a more than $14 million renovation project had become so severe that the pool would likely have to be at least partly drained for 'necessary repairs.' The president’s announcement late Saturday, made on social media, was his starkest acknowledgment of the pool’s rapid deterioration in recent days.... In a later post, he said without evidence that vandals had 'poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.'... Among those accused of vandalism was David Carter Hearn, 67, a cyclist and three-time Olympian as a canoeist who says he stopped at the site on Friday just to have a look, then reached down to touch a strip of peeling blue paint mixed with the algae. The U.S. Park Police arrested Mr. Hearn shortly after, accusing him of destroying government property, a crime that can carry up to a 10-year prison sentence. Mr. Hearn denies the charge.” The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Yes, it seems perfectly plausible that a 67-year-old Olympic athlete out for a very long bicycle ride is among a ring of hardened criminals (including ABC News' Jon Karl -- see yesterday's page) who are determined to ruin Trump's planned Independence Day Return of the Reich Rally -- “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all” -- next to the Reflecting Pool. ~~~
~~~ David Lynch & Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post have more on the nefarious David Hearn. The link is a gift link. Like all radical-left, anti-American Trump haters, Hearn is lying and pretending he is not a master saboteur of all things good and beautiful. Surely D.C.'s U.S. attorney Jeanine Boxwine Pirro will make short shrift of him. (Remember the Sandwich Guy!) And how come no one has arrested Trump for destroying the Rose Garden, the South Lawn and, oh yeah, the entire East Wing of the White House?
“Creature from the Green Lagoon.” Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “A historian once told me that the presidency would distill Donald Trump to his essence. That essence, it turns out, is trillions of microscopic organisms that suck up all the oxygen and endanger life around them. That essence is slimy, stinky and unrelenting, as reflected in the mass of algae that infests the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.... The algae is a perfect metaphor to reflect on our unreflective president and his impulsive and solipsistic style of governing.... Even when Trump starts with a glimmer of truth — that many iconic spots in D.C. had been allowed to shamefully deteriorate — he goes overboard in such a Trumpian way that he often ends up making things worse.... A lot of Americans miss the days when we built grand things. So it’s appealing on its face that this crazy president can squash the bureaucracy and get it done. But as usual with Trump, you eventually have to accept that he’s incompetent and corrupt and tacky, and just an all-around mess.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Something I especially like to see is women and people of color standing up to Trump & the White Boys Club. So good for this woman for reminding Mr. Only-I-Can-Fix-It that he is such a screw-up that even tiny, brainless, single-celled slime can get the better of him. Thanks to RAS for the link ~~~
~~~ Heather Cox Richardson writes a good abstract of the pond scum chronicles. ~~~
~~~ Past Is Prologue. Marie: Here's a 2020 reprise of a piece of an old story -- a profile of Donald Trump by Mark Bowden originally published in Playboy in 1996. I read the Bowden article in 2016 and certainly linked it on Reality Chex at the time. It is the preface to the Pond Scum Chronicles. Enjoy.
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: “Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, advised Donald Trump not to host Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, having called the Ukrainian president a 'little fucker', a 'special-needs child' and 'Mr Bean on crack', according to a new book. The suggestion that a US cabinet official described a world leader in such terms is included in Regime Change, a blockbusting account of the second Trump administration by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, set to be published worldwide on Tuesday. News of Bessent’s alleged remarks may embarrass the Trump administration, although the meeting that did take place on 28 February 2025 proved outright disastrous....”
Marie: I am happy to learn that Plato shared my crackpot ideas. In fact, he was more radical than I: ~~~
~~~ David Williams in a New York Times op-ed: Elon “Musk’s net worth is five million times as large as that of the average American family. In his 'Laws,' through the character of the Athenian Stranger, Plato contended that in a thriving republic, if anyone acquired more than four times the wealth of the poorest citizens, he should donate the surplus to the city. Not five million times the wealth of the typical family — four times the wealth of the poorest.... For Plato, the source of inequality was a disease of the soul that the Greeks called pleonexia — a kind of insatiable greed.... Mr. Musk ... has confirmed Plato’s concerns about the moral failures of the superrich by characterizing empathy as 'the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.' With his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, he put the U.S. Agency for International Development program “into the wood chipper,” as he gleefully put it, contributing to the deaths of an estimated 600,000 people. Such carnage is a predictable outcome of a society that has chosen to place no upper limits on wealth.”
(Q) Where does the king keep his armies? (And A) In his sleevies! ~~~
~~~ In recognition of Father's Day, Lindsey Bever of the Washington Post publishes a bunch of dad jokes.
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⭐U.K. Rachel Sylvester of the Observer: Prime Minister “Keir Starmer is preparing to set out a timetable for his departure from No 10 this week after Andy Burnham’s triumphant return to Westminster in the Makerfield byelection. The prime minister is understood to have reached the conclusion that his position is no longer tenable after conversations in recent days with cabinet ministers, Downing Street advisers, trade union leaders, and party donors. Starmer is spending the weekend talking his future over with his wife, Victoria, at Chequers before making a final decision, senior Labour figures believe a “clear statement” could come as early as Monday.”
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