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Tim O’Brien

@timobrien

Senior Executive Editor, @Opinion.bloomberg.com. Political Analyst, MSNOW. Author: “TrumpNation.” Priors: New York Times, Wall Street Journal. www.timothylobrien.com

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Latest posts by Tim O’Brien @timobrien

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Iran Hits Key US Radar, Deepening Gulf Missile Defense Woes Iran has destroyed a key $300 million radar system crucial to directing US missile defense batteries in the Gulf that risks further straining the region’s ability to counter future attacks, according ...

Iran destroyed a key $300 million radar system crucial to directing US missile defense batteries in the Gulf that risks further straining the region’s ability to counter future attacks.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

07.03.2026 02:20 👍 253 🔁 124 💬 30 📌 4
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The U.S. economy has lost jobs since "Liberation Day."

06.03.2026 13:37 👍 585 🔁 178 💬 37 📌 20
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Corey Lewandowski looks to have been comfortably in the middle of the money flowing through Noem’s controversial $240 million ad campaign. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

06.03.2026 10:52 👍 466 🔁 259 💬 29 📌 14
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Noem will now be “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas” because we’re in the Marvel Universe.

05.03.2026 18:51 👍 308 🔁 61 💬 42 📌 12
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Inside the White House pressure campaign to fire Kristi Noem Conversations over Noem’s future have included people at the highest levels of the Trump administration.

Trump pushes Noem out of DHS — after a streak of disasters and the predations, and deaths, in Minneapolis.
www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

05.03.2026 18:48 👍 67 🔁 12 💬 6 📌 1
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House committee votes to subpoena Attorney General Bondi to answer questions over the Epstein files The House Oversight Committee has voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking invest...

The House Oversight Committee will subpoena Pam Bondi to answer questions about how the Justice Department handled the Epstein files.
apnews.com/article/bond...

05.03.2026 00:03 👍 424 🔁 120 💬 41 📌 7
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U.S. Opens Military Action in Ecuador Against ‘Terrorist Organizations’

Sure. Why not launch another war? After all, once you get started…
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...

04.03.2026 13:40 👍 141 🔁 38 💬 14 📌 6

I don't think it's a coincidence Talarico and Mamdani cobbled together basically the same demographic coalition in two very disparate areas of the country, and both present coherent worldviews not defined solely by Orange Man Bad

04.03.2026 13:25 👍 465 🔁 55 💬 5 📌 2
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Looks like Sam Altman regrets making ChatGPT available to the Pentagon.

And he should, @davelee.me says 🎥

03.03.2026 22:40 👍 49 🔁 12 💬 6 📌 0
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X Will Stop Paying People for Sharing Unlabeled AI-Generated War Footage Fake war footage is a problem as old as social media. AI has just supercharged it.

AI-generated war footage is becoming a problem, X is taking a stand against it by *checks notes* demonetizing bluechecks for 90 days when they share it without a label?

03.03.2026 19:43 👍 163 🔁 44 💬 6 📌 8
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Tillis: You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training it, and then you have the audacity to say it’s a leadership lesson. You killed a goat and said it was behaving badly. You’re a farmer — you don’t castrate a goat, they behave badly.

03.03.2026 17:58 👍 12107 🔁 2959 💬 588 📌 423
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Polymarket and Kalshi’s Iran War Wagers Are Ghoulish — and Troubling As bad behavior in finance goes, the idea of insiders betting on the US and Israel attacking Iran is about as appalling as it gets. Cashing in on death and destruction across the Middle East — or anyw...

Polymarket and Kalshi gamifying war and death seems pretty sociopathic to me and the idea of insiders betting on Iran strikes is appalling. But there’s real security risk is sending these price signals too. Seriously, just stop.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

04.03.2026 07:28 👍 72 🔁 33 💬 3 📌 2
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This is quite the comparison.

04.03.2026 07:56 👍 14 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
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Bessent Says Trump’s Tariff Hike to 15% Likely Coming This Week Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that President Donald Trump’s plan to increase a 10% universal tariff up to 15% will likely be done this week.

Words cannot express the insanity of slapping across-the-board inflationary tariffs in the middle of waging an inflationary war. It’s like they’re trying to crash the market or someth— ah, I see now

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

04.03.2026 13:06 👍 322 🔁 131 💬 8 📌 3
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The Iran War’s Most Precious Commodity Isn’t Oil The CIA calls it the “strategic commodity” of the Middle East. But it’s not referring to oil or natural gas. What the American spy agency has in mind is far more prosaic: drinking water. Don’t underes...

“But the risk is real — whether by targeting desalination plants deliberately, or by accident due to a stray missile or drone. Oil is essential; but water is irreplaceable.”

Water, not oil, is Iran’s most precious commodity.
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

04.03.2026 13:24 👍 109 🔁 54 💬 6 📌 8
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The US Has Enough Missiles for This War But Not the Next One The decline of missile stockpiles, which spurred the Department of Defense’s arm-twisting in January for Lockheed Martin Corp. and RTX Corp. to boost production, is worsening by the day.

Trump is burning through missile stockpiles as if the inventories were endless. And they aren’t. And China and Russia are watching.
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

04.03.2026 12:35 👍 229 🔁 102 💬 23 📌 7
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Trump is running out of time to sell his rationale for Iran war Senior officials keep offering justifications for the conflict with Tehran that the president upends.

“I don’t put a timeline, I put a bodycount,” said a former Trump official, who like others in this report, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “That’s a narrative in the media that erodes how people feel about this war.” www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

04.03.2026 11:49 👍 97 🔁 35 💬 17 📌 0
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OpenAI Steps Over a Red Line Anthropic Refused to Cross After announcing a sudden and surprising deal with the Pentagon, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman moved quickly this weekend to show he had won meaningful concessions from military leaders.

For a while, Anthropic was the Lyft to OpenAI's Uber -- a company with a better reputation but ultimately doing the same thing.

Now the line dividing the two leading AI firms glows bright red.

My @opinion.bloomberg.com column this morning (🎁) : www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

02.03.2026 15:18 👍 83 🔁 31 💬 4 📌 3

🎶 We didn’t start the fire…

02.03.2026 22:21 👍 49 🔁 15 💬 13 📌 2
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Exclusive | Trump Administration to Drop Defense of Law Firm Sanctions The Justice Dept. plans to abandon its defense of the president’s executive orders that targeted Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey.

Those big law firms never needed to cave but they caved. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

02.03.2026 22:54 👍 1329 🔁 270 💬 60 📌 9

The things you say when you have absolutely no foreign policy experience and simply carry water for your boss every chance you get.

02.03.2026 22:49 👍 834 🔁 138 💬 50 📌 6
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Live updates: Trump say Iran’s supreme leader is dead The U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Saturday. President Donald Trump said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, telling Iranians to take back their country.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the United States, Israeli officials told The Associated Press:
apnews.com/live/live-up...

28.02.2026 21:58 👍 52 🔁 16 💬 14 📌 1
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Iran Strikes Feel Like 2003 All Over Again Less than a year ago, US President Donald Trump gave a speech in the Middle East in which he excoriated his predecessors for their habit of launching “forever wars” in that region. Alluding to the Ame...

“If ever history demanded that Congress reclaim its constitutional monopoly in declaring war, that moment is now.”
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

28.02.2026 17:45 👍 300 🔁 76 💬 24 📌 6

The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to decide when the nation goes to war. President Trump’s strikes on Iran are flatly unconstitutional. There’s been no deliberation, no vote, no clear justification. This is a flagrant abuse of executive power.

28.02.2026 15:32 👍 722 🔁 264 💬 30 📌 22
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The judges in WV have seen enough.

They say that if the ICE continues detaining people in ways they have unanimously deemed illegal they will start issuing civil fines and contempt findings — including against state officials who help them carry it out.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

28.02.2026 13:58 👍 9701 🔁 2790 💬 304 📌 218
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Trump’s Ambitions for Iran Are Now Clear: He Wants Everything US President Donald Trump never did explain to Congress or anyone else what his justifications and goals would be for attacking Iran. Now, with “Operation Epic Fury” underway, we know. The answer was ...

“There is nobody in Washington who can be sure of where this war of choice leads.”
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

28.02.2026 15:20 👍 90 🔁 32 💬 14 📌 5
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Trump Says US Began Major Combat Operation Against Iran

The US and Israel have launched strikes against Iran: www.bloomberg.com/news/live-bl...

28.02.2026 08:40 👍 79 🔁 27 💬 15 📌 5
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Has Trump Delivered on His Promises? What These 12 Metrics Tell Us The president is struggling to sell his “economic miracle” to voters. What do the numbers say? These data points cut through the political noise.

State of the Union report card: Trump promised voters lower prices, higher wages, a massive deportation campaign and many other things in 2024. A look at all of that — along with health care, jobs, energy and more — by the numbers:
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

24.02.2026 11:55 👍 74 🔁 20 💬 9 📌 2
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Live: Supreme Court Rules on Trump Tariffs

Boom.

SCOTUS strikes down Trump’s tariffs.
www.bloomberg.com/news/live-bl...

20.02.2026 15:16 👍 266 🔁 41 💬 22 📌 4
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Leaving the police station and life comes at you fast.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/w...

20.02.2026 12:17 👍 131 🔁 9 💬 14 📌 0