While there were (unsubstantiated) rumors that Donald Trump was having some kind of health event at Walter Reed over past weekend, he was apparently “well” enough to tweet out this gem of an Easter homily Sunday morning:
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
On Tuesday morning, he doubled down with an even more ominous Truth Social post:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. …We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end.”
Ladies and gentlemen: the president of the United States. Not a lot to add. Except perhaps a reminder that, just last Wednesday, he said opening Hormuz was Europe’s affair; the US was fine with it closed.
There was a time when Trump’s followers found his ability to shrug off glaring inconsistency kind of charming, a sign of the man’s perpetual boyishness. The weave, the spew, the taunts — just tellin’ it like it is!
Now, it seems, more and more people are tired of his routine. Especially after the April 1 press conference on Iran, where, after his standard buildup — that he would be breaking some all-important news — he issued a familiar litany of unmoored ramblings that left the audience scratching their heads as to the point of it all. (It was, in the president’s defense, April Fools’ Day.)
On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron, already tangling with Trump, addressed the dark side of such verbal flailing, telling reporters on a trip to South Korea:
There is too much talk … and it’s all over the place. …You have to be serious. When you want to be serious, you don’t go around saying the opposite of what you just said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn’t talk every day.
Perhaps even worse, aside from having nothing new to report, Trump was deadly dull and seemed very tired.
As far as the war goes, the Pentagon is acting strangely, with almost a total information blackout.
Defense Department press briefings were always a thing in pre-Trump Washington, especially in wartime, to inform the people who were paying for the war. No more.
The administration’s restrictions on the military press corps remain in place even as it fights lawsuits on the matter. And there’s no sense the public has a need — or right — to know anything..
The “fog of war” cliche has evolved into a black mirror, amplifying Trump’s delusional detachment from reality.
As the Obama administration’s spokesman Matthew Miller posted on X a week ago, “We learn more of what the U.S. military has been doing from bystander videos than DoD.”
He called it a “historic lack of transparency and accountability.”
Even Trump doesn’t seem to know what’s actually happening in this war he started. He isn’t one to ask questions and attend briefings, so mainly he learns how his war is going by watching TV.
Of course, the TV presenters on Fox don’t know much — and may not care about facts anyway — so their “reporting” mostly fits agenda-driven narratives. Trump then relies in large part on watching Fox in deciding what to do.
It’s a feedback loop that would be funny if it weren’t so consequential — in a life-or-death way.
And now, there’s a second loop, as Republican officeholders go on TV so Trump will see their pitches to him — with some urging against committing ground troops, and others pushing an ever more aggressive approach.
I searched my memory for all the Iran-related issues that Trump has at one time or another said he cared about — before saying that, no, he doesn’t actually care about that — and I came up with this list:
- Human rights
- Uranium stockpile
- Strait of Hormuz
- Democracy
- Regime change
- Oil prices
- Actually winning
Which leaves the crucial question: What does he care about — besides distracting public attention from Jeffrey Epstein and just, you know, blowing things up? Answer: stroking his ego, of course.
Hiding the Inflatable Trump
While Trump’s image and name are visibly spewed all over the country, the man himself has taken precautions to hide, along with some of his favored minions, from any consequences of his actions, with Trump officials retreating into military quarters at Fort McNair.
At the same time US troops are evacuating their own bases in the Levant, Trump says the military is building a massive emergency complex, bomb proof, drone proof, bullet proof, complete with a major medical facility — in other words, a bunker — below his planned White House ballroom. And he noted that the ballroom itself will provide added protection for those huddled below, with its high-grade bullet proof glass and windows.
Although a judge has sided with enraged preservationists in temporarily halting construction of the giant ballroom, military contractors are proceeding with the bunker.
And while we’re on the subject of protecting our leaders and, indirectly, the whole country, let’s have a look at one of the people Trump has chosen to keep us safe.
You Can’t Make This Up
In case you missed it: The man Trump appointed to a leadership position in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Gregg Phillips, believes in teleportation. He insists he was mysteriously “teleported” against his will to a Waffle House in Georgia. And another time, he was “lifted up” and dropped in a ditch outside a church in Albany, GA. When asked how this was possible, he replied, “The Bible has many examples of the power of God.”
Among his other apparent qualifications for disaster management: He has described himself as a “very vocal opponent of FEMA”; he has promoted all of Trump’s claims of voter fraud; he was accused of directing millions of dollars in government contracts to his personal businesses; and he has urged people to learn how to shoot firearms, warning them that migrants are “coming here to kill you.”
Contrast the above with what the now thoroughly Trumpified FEMA itself said about him:
Mr. Phillips brings experience in emergency and humanitarian response, state government operations and large-scale program reform. He has led organizational, process and technology redesign efforts, working closely with state, local, private, and faith-based partners. His disaster work includes implementing technology to rapidly onboard survivors and leveraging algorithms for real-time deployment decisions that supported restoration of communications and the delivery of critical medical capabilities. Mr. Phillips believes in disciplined execution and restoring public trust through measurable performance.
Iranians Take Clever Aim
The United States and Israel have plenty of tricks, but perhaps the most striking thing about the war against Iran is just how plucky the Iranians are, despite the odds against them. They have clearly been preparing for years to run a guerrilla operation.
Just one example is a new spy radio signal — which appeared on the first day the US and Israel attacked Iran. In Farsi, the language of Iran, it broadcasts mysterious groups of numbers, just like the classic one-time-pad format used by intelligence agencies to transmit unbreakable coded messages to operatives embedded out of the country. To put it bluntly, are these messages to sleeper cells?
Also, in plain English, Iran has issued some withering criticism of the Western countries. The title of this story from Common Dreams says it all:
Iran Accuses Trump Allies of ‘Fascist Mindset’ Akin to Hitler for Invoking Ancient Empires to Justify Aggression.
In another example of pin-point targeting, Iran hit tech infrastructure in Gulf states early on, and recently has threatened to attack US tech companies in the Middle East for their role in aiding the US war effort.
Turning Up the Heat: MAGA Meltdown
Will truth become the hottest new thing? Are MAGA lies dying out? There are many signs of this amazing phenomenon. There’s even an online community of former Trump supporters — Leaving MAGA — who have recoiled after embracing Christian nationalism and far-outconspiracy theories, losing friends, and even committing crimes in Trump’s name.
Former MAGAs are troubled by many things: the Epstein files, the Iran war, rising gas prices, tariffs, loss of health insurance, and the stunning cruelty of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, their fatal attacks on nonviolent protesters, and other unconscionable tactics.
Many former Trump supporters are veterans, like Steven Francisci, a disabled US Navy veteran and mental health influencer. His transformation was a gradual process that followed a nearly fatal accident and psychotherapy. He shares this insight: “I was so attracted to Trump. … I previously thought that being that alpha male, masculine guy is what we needed for the country.”
Other veterans, including Joe Buccino, a retired US Army colonel, had already been questioning the Iran war’s strategy and objectives, but were especially appalled by the White House posting pop music-backed clips of missile strikes mixed in with segments from Call of Duty and SpongeBob SquarePants.
“They’re completely diminishing what they’re asking the nation to do in Iran,” Buccino told The Washington Post “It seems almost obscene relative to the actual violence and suffering that’s involved with this.”
Trump’s best bro (and Iran’s great pal), Vlad Putin, is also suffering from too much truth getting out.
A Russian lawyer, Ilya Remeslo — previously a big supporter of Putin — published dangerous words about Putin to his 90,000 followers. Days later was thrown into a psychiatric ward.
He had dared to write that Putin’s “dead-end war” against Ukraine had caused up to 2 million casualties, destroyed Russia’s economy, crushed all domestic opposition and dismantled the infrastructure through which ordinary Russians shared their views with each other. He added that Putin is no longer “a legitimate president” and must “resign and be brought to trial as a war criminal and a thief.”
Higher Powers
Putin has few friends or sponsors to lean on. Which can’t be said for Team Trump — it has authorization from on high, apparently. But you know the MAGAs are desperate when they drag Jesus into it.
The extent to which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is inappropriately invoking religion as a motivating factor has been getting some coverage. What has not been covered enough is a lawsuit over (mostly Christian) prayer services for government personnel organized by the Departments of Labor and Defense — a direct challenge to the separation of church and state called for in the Constitution.
Speaking of higher powers… Jeff Bezos has thrashed The Washington Post nearly to death, so it’s no wonder that at some point the people there would turn on their owner.
I always look carefully at Post articles that clearly reflect a choice of advancing Bezos’s business interests or being factually accurate and impeccably “journalistic.” Because of this, I was struck with the frankness of an article that viewed the Kindle e-reader — made by Bezos’s Amazon — with real skepticism. The crux of the article is that, yes, Kindle is handy, but people should start understanding its deliberate limitations (like being unable to download and back up your own e-books) while paying attention to and getting familiar with competing products, and their very real benefits.
Without free and fair competition, companies, not customers, choose what you can buy.. “Competition is going to have to discipline Amazon,” said Mitch Stoltz, who leads the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s antitrust and competition work. “Right now, it’s not.”
Get That Post-Apocalypse Planning On
Last week I wrote that Dems need to discuss the “After Trump” scenario now. My point seems to have been confirmed by pollster G. Elliott Morris:
Trump is 20+ points underwater. So why aren’t Democrats up 20 for the midterms?
Part of the answer is that people are comparing different electorates. But many softer Trump disapprovers still aren’t ready to vote Democratic.
Democrats cannot just talk about gas, groceries, safety, yadda yadda. At some point, everyone will be mouthing the same platitudes. When that is the norm, distinguishing oneself requires presenting a vision and a plan for how to get there.
How quickly can the wreckage left by Trump be repaired, and how can that be done to provide maximum benefits to all Americans?
Do the Democrats even know the answers? Are they actually qualified and prepared for the big job ahead?
Of course, negative campaigning — underlining everything that has gone wrong under the GOP’s leadership — is a tried and true approach, and makes sense. But I think people are tired of being jerked around by two parties without concrete solutions. Saying, and proving, that you’re working to fix the mess, and giving a few examples that most reasonable people will support, is hardly, on balance, risky.
One test of whether Democrats can get the job done is how they behave when personal ambition runs counter to the greater good.
Take the California governor’s race: The design of the state’s primary system means that — if the Republicans calibrate correctly and if some of the many Democrats don’t drop out to avoid splitting the vote — two Republicans and no Democrats could advance to the general election in November, thereby guaranteeing a Republican governor for this overwhelmingly Democratic state come 2027.
A MAGA-led Golden State would be a gold-wrapped gift to Trump as his regime seeks to further impose its will nationwide. Do none of these savvy Democratic candidates get that? Are none willing to put the fate of their state and their country ahead of their own political ambition by withdrawing from a primary they know they can’t win?
