DEEPER LIES: Trump Displacement Syndrome Hits MAGA in Bitter Outrage over Betrayals
The Iran War is defeating President Trump as lies upon lies are no longer working for him in markets or with supporters.
For awhile it worked—all too long in fact. The president could lie about negotiations and jar the stock market up and the oil market down. His base, however, was becoming increasingly unruly and some were starting to turn hard against him, but most either forgave the lies or believed them. And then there was this past wee when everything flip-flopped on the King of Flip Flops, and suddenly no one believed him anymore.
Most notably, Trump's pet stock market failed to respond as it finally seemed to figure out that the president’s third revision of his announced plan to destroy all of Iran’s electrical power plants was a string of bluffs. The trail of wartime bluffs became a trail of outright as Trump made up reasons to stall, which went like this: The president told Iran he would destroy all of its power plants if Iran didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz in 48 hours. Iran did not open the strait. As the deadline approached, the president announced that fruitful negotiations with the Iranians over the strait and 14 other demands the US was making caused him to postpone his destruction of all power plants for another five days. Iran, however, still did not open the strait, and it said the president was lying. No negotiations of any kind had happened; nor did Iran even have interest in negotiations with the president because, Iran claims, he lies all the time.
As the next deadline neared, the president announced he had decided to postpone his total destruction of Iran’s power plants until ten days because, not only had negotiations gone very well, but Iran was now offering the president a nice present having to do with traffic flow through the strait. He said Iran would be allowing more ships through. Iran did not open the strait, and it did not let more ships through. It said the president was lying about negotiations and that it had no interest in negotiations. In fact, it mocked the president, saying his deeply troubled mind must be negotiating with himself. This time, as if to prove its point, it raised its level of destruction, attacking a US military base in Saudi Arabia, injuring a dozen troops and a number of significant planes:
An Iranian missile strike on a base in Saudi Arabia damaged several military jets and destroyed a valuable E-3 Sentry early warning and control aircraft — the first known combat loss for that type.
The roughly $300 million plane was hit in an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in recent days, according to a person familiar with the matter asking not to be identified discussing sensitive military operations. Unverified photos of the jet showed its tail completely severed, rendering it unflyable. (MSN)
The damage appears concentrated at the rear of the aircraft, the section that houses the rotating radar dome and the sensitive electronics tied to its surveillance system. (The Daily Mail)
A precision hit, taking out the most important part of that particular plane. Then Iran showed the president it is not about to let merchant ships through, as he claimed it had offered as a present. Even two Chinese container vessels got turned around, and they are not even involved in the oil trade:
Two container vessels owned by China Ocean Shipping Company tried to pass through the Strait but were turned back, according to the ship tracking firm MarineTraffic. China is an ally of Iran and the Islamic Republic has previously said friendly ships can pass through the Strait.
This was the first attempt by a major container carrier to cross the sea route since the war started, the firm said. COSCO is the world’s fourth-largest shipping line by capacity.
The “developments overnight suggest the situation in the Strait of Hormuz remains highly unstable,” the firm said in a social media post. (CNBC)
Not just unstable. Now Iran is turning back the kind of allied ships they said they would let pass, which indicates they were trying to prove the lie to Trump’s statement about fruitful negotiations in that they actually took back some of what they had recently announced they would start to allow for the sake of their own friends.
Iran also claimed that they sank six US landing craft near Dubai:
No confirmation could be found in American mainstream media where the White House has said it will soon be illegal—maybe even treasonous—to publish information that contradicts the US government. Iran claimed casualties were inflicted on 500 US troops, though the US denies that, too.
“We had previously warned that the invading American army, due to the decisive assault of the Armed Forces (of Iran) and the destruction of their bases in the region, has fled and hidden outside their bases,” the Iranian spokesman said in a statement on Saturday, March 28.
“In recent hours, two of their hideouts were identified, with more than 400 individuals in the first hideout and more than 100 individuals in the second hideout in Dubai, both of which were targeted by precision missiles and drones of the valiant Aerospace Force and Navy of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, resulting in very heavy casualties for them,” he added.
According to the spokesperson, ambulances have been busy transporting the dead and wounded American commanders and soldiers for hours. (Tasnim News)
Iran also claimed the American-Israeli alliance violated Trump’s claimed postponement of attacks on energy plants by striking a hydroelectric power plant in Iran. It further claimed that Israel struck the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor in central Iran. Iran further claimed to have attacked some of the marines Trump just deployed to start seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz:
Developments in the Middle East are rapid, with Iranian forces launching a powerful attack against American and Israeli Marines on Bubiyan island of Kuwait on the afternoon of 27 March.
Specifically, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched an attack against American and Israeli forces on Bubiyan island of Kuwait, according to what was reported by the Mehr News Agency.
According to Iranian analysts, the attack appears to be a preemptive strike, message against a possible American ground intervention on islands of the Strait of Hormuz. (Banking News)
All of that is the side of the story Iran reports. Much of it was not carried in US news. It may not even be true. Who knows in the fog of war, but especially when one nation has been notorious for it saber rattling for decades while the other appears to have a president who is vigorously trying to control US media via threats of suits, edicts and legislation and who makes up his own facts as he goes and hopes he can sell them?
Trump is rapidly losing any shred of credibility
This time, even the stock market didn’t buy the president’s latest jawboning of markets when he claimed a postponement to the ten-day marker due to very promising negotiations. Apparently there are some things that are even too great of a stretch for investors after enough tricks. It became a case of “fool me three times, shame on me.”
Oil prices also closed at their highest level since 2022, having been talked down by Trump’s two earlier negotiation claims. 2022 was when Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent a panic bid into oil. As of my writing of the initial draft of this article, the price of Brent crude topped $112/bbl, and WTI touched the bottom side of $100.
(And, as I am proofing the article, Brent has leaped to $116 and WTI to $102.5 So, the Trump bluff has been called and is not helping oil at all because news at the close of the weekend has turned red hot—negotiations having been so fruitful and all!)
We have now entered a phase where the inflation of oil prices is dangerous as are the actual shortages of oil in several nations:
“For nearly four weeks, markets have shown remarkable resilience … supported by a combination of pre-war surplus, crude-on-water, and policy barrels that provided a temporary buffer and kept prices contained. That phase is now ending,” she said.
According to Rystad, the global system has shifted from “buffered to fragile” after weeks of supply losses and inventory drawdowns, leaving little room to absorb further shocks.
Yet, as if to raise the stakes (and prices for themselves), US oil producers actually cut back US production.
The number of active oil rigs fell by 5 to 409 during the latest reporting period, according to the data. This is 75 below this same time last year. [Where we were one month after Biden’s supposedly oil-destructive term.] The number of gas rigs fell by 4, sinking to 127, which is 24 more than this time last year. The miscellaneous rig count stayed the same at 7….
The latest EIA data showed that weekly U.S. crude oil production fell for the fifth week in a row during week ending March 20. (OilPrice.com)
So, even Trump’s repeated claims that he is good for oil, compared to Biden are looking like lies. Far more importantly in terms of the damage this war is doing to Trump, coming as all these flip-flops do after a parade of lies about releasing the Epstein files and about how they contain nothing potentially damaging to Trum, a large number of Trump’s MAGA voters have turned this past week from irritated to openly hostile, even demanding his impeachment at an event that would normally have served as a Trump pep rally.
Pictures of the conference were striking just due to the sheer number of empty seats when such events used to be packed out:
Conservative activist and lobbyist Matthew Schlapp drew an unexpected response Friday while addressing attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas.
While speaking from the stage, Schlapp asked the audience how many people would like to see impeachment hearings. The question prompted loud cheers from the crowd, prompting Schlapp to respond it was not the answer he was seeking. He repeated the question a second time, which resulted in a mix of applause and boos.
Whether the audience was even awake and understood what Schlapp was asking for might be debated, but it was not what he wanted to hear, and empty seats at a Republican event like this have not been typical during these MAGA years. It seems the MAGA energy is draining into lethargy because of all the betrayals of promises that many very popular MAGA influencers have started to cry out about. If the GOP is losing seats in its own conventions, how will it do in the elections?
Young Republicans are particularly turning away from the president over his endless parade of lies:
‘He’s lied about everything’: Iran war puts Trump on shaky ground with young MAGA men
Joseph Bolick feels betrayed by President Donald Trump. And it’s because of the war in Iran.
The 30-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran voted for Trump in 2024. But at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference gathering this week he sported a hat emblazoned with “America First” — a slogan Trump championed during his campaign, along with the promise not to start new wars in foreign countries.
Bolick is part of a cohort of young MAGA loyalists who are increasingly frustrated with Trump over the war in Iran. While Trump’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran has rallied war hawks and his older supporters, it has alienated many of the young men who swung toward the GOP in 2024. That split is resonating among not only the rank-and-file, but also conservative media influencers and some corners of the White House….
“Trump and Republicans in general are going to have major issues in the midterms, in 2028, if we can’t wrap this up in a relatively quick amount of time,” said 21-year-old Andrew Belcher, president of the Ohio College Republicans. He added that Trump is doing “relatively poorly” with hyper online young men who are influenced heavily by media figures like Tucker Carlson and other isolationists in the GOP.
A POLITICO poll this month found that Trump voters largely continue to back him. But men who self-identified as “MAGA Republicans” and voted for Trump in 2024 are deeply split by generation over their trust in the president and their view of the war, especially if the number of U.S. casualties rises….
Some of the most prominent MAGA voices are opposed to the Iran war, like Carlson and Megyn Kelly, along with influential figures like Joe Rogan, who holds tremendous sway with young men. There’s even growing consternation among younger, more-right wing White House staffers, said one person familiar with the dynamics who was granted anonymity to discuss them.
“They’re very frustrated. They didn’t love the war to start with, and since it began, the constantly contradictory messaging from the president himself, is just brutal, brutal for staff to deal with and making their life really hard,” the person said. “He puts his people in a really tough position, especially people who are public-facing.”
You see, it is the endless lies—the flip-flops, the TACO threats, the claims that victory has been won over Iran, moving from that to the war will go on longer, then moving in thousands of marines to storm heavily armed islands that will easily become a long quagmire. It’s now abundantly clear that the victory was more grossly premature than Bush’s claim of “Mission Accomplished” at the 100-day mark of the Iraq War.
And “It’s the economy, Stupid,” as has been said of many an election:
But interviews with a dozen young men at CPAC revealed broad concern that Trump is imperiling the U.S. economy, which has seen spiking gas and fuel prices caused by the war.
“A lot of the young generation feels that there’s just not a lot of hope for the economy,” said a 30-year old attendee who was granted anonymity to speak freely about party dynamics.
His superfans are proud of him bestriding the world, imperiously putting countries and leaders in their place, but wish he directed more attention to the home front. Trump is the incredible shrinking President. While his behaviour is larger-than-life, his stature is diminishing….
Trump boasted of ushering in a “golden age of America” in his State of the Union address to Congress last month. More obviously, he has been enriching himself and his family – Forbes has just upped its tally of Trump’s net worth to $6.5bn – and he continues to collect glittering new baubles.
Truly, Trump’s vanity is insatiable. On Wednesday the President received the first-ever golden “America First” award, presented during a Republican fundraising dinner by the spineless House Speaker Mike Johnson. As if Trump’s mantelpiece was not crowded enough with the phony Fifa inaugural peace prize and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s hard-won Nobel.
The next day, the US Treasury announced that Donald Trump’s signature would adorn every dollar bill in honour of the USA’s 250th birthday – the first time the name of a sitting president has appeared on American currency. Increasingly, the very founding of the country is becoming all about Him.
Yet with petrol prices reaching $4 a gallon and global economic forum the OECD predicting US inflation ticking upwards to 4.2 per cent, in future, every time a consumer reaches for a sheaf of dollars to pay for goods, they will be reminded of just who is responsible for the high cost of living. (iNews)
It’s imperial, narcissistic ego all the way.
The tide of war turns against the president
Yet, the president is digging deeper into the war with its huge costs to the US Treasury and its growing cost in US lives, and an absolutely massive cost to the entire global economy that we will be sorting our way into all year long as we find out how bad the oils shortages are along with all the other damage.
Trump faces a bloodbath as he prepares 10,000 more troops to confront Iran
The US President is reportedly weighing up a deadly, high-risk mission to seize key islands off the Middle East country….
Trump is reportedly considering sending 10,000 more ground troops to the Middle East to give him “more military options” even as he pushes for peace talks with Tehran, US media reports. An estimated 7,000 Marines and paratroopers, as well as amphibious warships and landing craft, are already being sent to the region. (iNews)
Iran is apparently not negotiating as seriously as the president has claimed to the US public (and markets) because …
He added: “They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!” He also joked about launching a ground invasion at 3pm on Friday.
That sounds like someone who is actually concerned they are just playing him and stalling.
In my view, Kharg Island looks like a death trap—a suicide mission. In the very least, it looks like Iwo Jima:
Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Trump ally, has claimed that “he who controls Kharg Island controls the destiny of this war” and called for the US to seize it.
“We did Iwo Jima, we can do this. The Marines, my money’s always on the Marines,” he said this week, in reference to the bloody five-week battle of the Second World War when nearly 7,000 US troops died on the Japanese island.
But does America want a fight like that in order to stop a nation that did not attack it in the way Japan attacked Pearl Harbor—a nation that, for all its spasmodic terror—was not on an active, violent military campaign to take over the world as Japan and Germany were in WWII?
Kharg is easily reached by nearly every missile in Iran, and the Pentagon has just admitted Iran still has a lot more missiles left than what the president claimed when he said the US had destroyed most of Iran’s air power. (So, those were more lies.)
Exclusive-U.S. can only confirm about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal destroyed
The United States can only determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran’s vast missile arsenal as the U.S. and Israeli war on the country nears its one-month mark, according to five people familiar with the U.S. intelligence.
The status of around another third is less clear but bombings likely damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, four of the sources said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the information. (Yahoo!)
That leaves, at least, a third left, maybe half, depending on how extensive that tunnel destruction was—far from the “obliteration” of Iran’s air power that Trump bragged about like a 3rd-grade school boy:
The intelligence stands in contrast to President Donald Trump’s public remarks on Thursday that Iran had “very few rockets left”. He also appeared to acknowledge the threat from remaining Iranian missiles and drones to any future U.S. operations to safeguard the economically vital Strait of Hormuz.
Even Trump acknowledged that numbers far smaller than 30% of the missiles remaining are numbers too large:
“The problem with the straits is this: let’s say we do a great job. We say we got 99% (of their missiles). 1% is unacceptable, because 1% is a missile going into the hull of a ship that cost a billion dollars,” Trump said at a televised Cabinet meeting on Thursday.
And the truth is always that intel isn’t perfect. We may have, at best, destroyed as much as 60% or Iran’s missiles that we know of; but how many are there that we know nothing about? How many might be smuggled in by Russia and China or North Korea, just as the US has been arming Ukraine?
Still, Central Command has declined to state precisely how much of Iran’s missile or drone capability has been destroyed.
One source said part of the problem is determining how many Iranian missiles were stockpiled in underground bunkers before the war started. The U.S. has not disclosed its estimate of the size of Iran’s pre-war missile stockpile….
[Iran] has also displayed new capabilities. Last week Iranian forces for the first time fired long-range missiles, targeting the U.S.-UK military base Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean….
One senior U.S. official voiced skepticism about the United States’ ability to accurately assess Iran’s missile capabilities, in part because it was unclear how many were underground and accessible in some way. “I don’t know if we’ll ever have an accurate number,” the official said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged the challenge posed by Iran’s tunneling in remarks on March 19, saying: “Iran is a vast country. And just like Hamas and their tunnels (in Gaza), they’ve poured any aid, any economic development, humanitarian aid, into tunnels and rockets.”
Iwo Jima was one very bloody, intense battle; yet, it sounds like old longtime warmonger Lindsay Graham is salivating for another opportunity of an engagement like that. I’ll bet he wouldn’t be if he were the one fighting in it. Right now Kharg Island is a suicide mission because …
The Persian Gulf is still too dangerous for US warships to enter. While Marines could go ashore on MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, for ships to reach Kharg, which lies at the north-west of the Gulf, they would need to travel more than 350 miles past the Strait of Hormuz.
That would make them targets for Iranian ground-based, short-range ballistic missiles fired from mobile launchers, drones, mines and fast boats laden with explosives. (iNews)
In fact, taking Kharg, like Iwo Jima, is a process that likely requires taking many other islands first because you cannot take an island that fortified that is also surrounded by other nearby fortification, using just Ospreys. You need supply lines in order to hold the island, and that typically takes ships to move in enough supplies to hold what you gain:
“If I had to make a guess, it would [be seizing] something in the Strait to open it up, and then maybe moving onto Kharg Island,” Cancian told The i Paper. “Because Kharg, all the way up in the Gulf, is much harder to get at, the Marines would be under fire, so the first step would be to open the straits.”
That alone might be enough to gain leverage over Iran, he added.
These islands might include Qeshm and Larak, on the horseshoe bend of the Strait, the Greater and Lesser Tunbs – claimed by both the UAE and Iran – or Abu Musa farther west….
Cancian emphasised that reopening the Strait would be a major operation. “It would involve convoys, navy escorts, minesweepers, possibly the Marines and paratroopers. It would likely have army helicopters in the theatre sweeping for the fast boats, aircraft overhead and maybe air defence on the ground,” he said.
Tannehill wrote in The Atlantic that: “The result could be a grinding war of attrition that more closely resembles the battle space in Ukraine than it does the shock and awe–style campaigns that Americans are used to.”
“Substantial casualties would be inevitable, and the mission would further erode US missile stockpiles,” said Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. “The operation could well stimulate a pro-government response in Iran and would likely be seen by many there and around the world as a US attempt to seize Iranian oil.”
So, Trump is now considering an escalation that looks more like the South Pacific during WWII. And to what end?
“If the idea is to then bargain with Tehran for an opening of the Strait of Hormuz, it is unclear that the remaining leaders of the regime would be cowed by the threat of losing Kharg,” Stavridis wrote. “They might baulk at agreeing to give up anything for Kharg,” he added.
Is America willing to see large ships with crews in the thousands sunk to the bottom of the sea just to stop the Iranian regime? Targeted strikes on the rest of its nuke facilities, maybe; all out war like the South Pacific, which is what you get with a battle like Iwo Jima? Probably not. Certainly not from a president who campaigned on getting America out of its endless marathon of regime-change, imperial wars in the Middle East. Now we are in one with the most militarily powerful nation, outside of Israel, in that region; and its’ allies are joining in. The Houthis jumped back into the Frey this weekend, too. So, the war keeps spreading horizontally:
Four weeks in, a war of choice is expanding across the Gulf and compressing energy flows, exposing system fragility, and raising the risk of a deeper global shock.
Four weeks ago, the conflict with Iran was expected to be short-lived. On March 1, President Trump suggested the war would last “four weeks or so,” insisting it would not be difficult to sustain and bring to a close…. That gap between expectation and reality is now the story. What began as a war of choice, entered with the belief that it could be decisive and contained, has evolved into something far more complex and consequential. The assumption of a quick resolution has not just proven optimistic; it has been overtaken by events on the ground.
That is why they say a war plan is obsolete as soon as the war begins because the enemy has other plans.
What we are now seeing is not simply a war continuing, but a war expanding: geographically, operationally, and economically. Iran’s response has not been confined to a single theater. It has been horizontal, layered across the Gulf, and now extending beyond it. The recent strike on Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, reportedly wounding 12 American personnel, is one indication of that widening scope. The Houthis’s entrance, launching missiles against Israel and signaling potential escalation in the Red Sea, is another. This is no longer a contained conflict centered on Iran. It is a multi-front disruption with implications that extend well beyond the region….
With renewed threats to Red Sea shipping [by the Houthis], that fallback route is now at risk just as the primary one remains constrained. If that happens, the primary maritime artery is restricted, and the secondary route is compromised. Fewer routes, longer distances, higher costs, and delayed deliveries across everything from crude to petrochemicals, fertilizers, and helium. It is a disruption cascading across interconnected supply chains, with consequences accelerating.(Energy Common Sense)
Through all of that Trump continued his vain boasting that huge progress was made in negotiations with Iran, which really meant nothing was gained, so he had to keep postponing his bluffs:
Just hours before the Monday deadline expired, Mr. Trump delayed his threat by five days, easing fears of an imminent escalation with profound military, diplomatic and economic implications.
Still, he warned that “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out” if Iran would not make a deal, and as the week progressed he made new threats that left allies off balance and spooked the markets. So on Thursday afternoon, after stocks on Wall Street suffered their largest daily decline since the start of the war, he added another 10 days to the clock, again seeking to ease the fears ignited by his own hard-line positions.
It is too soon to know whether the extra time will result in productive diplomacy. But it is already clear that Mr. Trump’s wild swings — from optimism to frustration and anger, from de-escalation to escalation — have combined to give his management of the war an erratic, make-it-up-as-it goes feel. (New York Times)
It isn’t just a “make-it-up-as-it goes feel;” he is just making it up as he goes, trying to alter reality with his mouth.
The disconnect underscores just how much the Iran war is testing Mr. Trump’s usual strategy for dealing with crises: imposing his own reality and disregarding inconvenient truths.
“He thinks everything is transactional, he can deal with the deal one step at a time and see how things unfold, but war is fast, uncontrollable, unpredictable and deadly,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and the editor of a book of essays about Mr. Trump’s first term.
“He’s doing the same techniques he always does — threatening people, insulting people, seizing attention to what he wants to say — he’s learning that it doesn’t always work,” he added. “He’s doing the art of the deal in a way that’s just creating chaos.”
The only way this will be a four-week war, ending this week is if Trump turns tail and runs, and that is clearly not happening with the expansion to more than ten-thousand of boots on the ground at the point where I am writing this. So, the president is in a quagmire he initiated up to his neck now, and so is the nation … and so is the world. (And Iran knows it, and they are determined more than ever to keep pounding the lesson home)
On top of all that, Trump sounds a little more unbridled than usual:
“We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time — Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” he wrote in a Truth Social post this month. “They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
It sounds like Old Bone Spurs is having the military time of his life now that he can fight without having to be on the line himself.
“The war, like everything else that comes out of the White House, is a reflection of Donald Trump’s very unique personality and leadership style,” said Steven M. Gillon, a historian and the author of “Presidents at War: How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents.” “It’s focused on him as a great man. It is vague. It’s undisciplined. It’s unfocused.”
But it’s great—great fun for the ego and “a great honor!”
The risk for the president is that the bluffs aren’t working with anyone anymore. When you are all lies all the time, and the enemy is able to prove it to the world again and again, the lies lose all their power.
He still has champions on his behalf, of course:
“President Trump is acting like a wartime president should — decisive, unafraid to use his constitutional authority and focused on protecting Americans rather than getting bogged down in the kind of endless and rudderless conflicts we saw under his predecessors,” said Mike Davis, who leads the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group, and was an early supporter of Mr. Trump’s war.
It looks like he’s bogged down in an endless, rudderless conflict to me, making up bluffs of blowing up all of Iran’s power plants, which was likely never part of a war plan as it goes against the Geneva Conventions because it could starve and kill millions in the desert heat in a nation that has developed around electricity to combat nature for survival … then tacking on five days then ten more to avoid doing what he said threatened to do. Now, he will have to bomb all the power plants or prove himself a liar because his bluffs have painted them into that corner of having to desperately harm civilians by the millions.
However, this president doesn’t care about international law or even constitutional law:
Still, the conflict is deeply unpopular with a majority of Americans. The president chose to launch the war without first making the case to the American public or Congress, which perhaps contributed to the absence of a “rally around the flag” moment that many wartime presidents see. (He has acknowledged that he has been advised against calling it a “war” because he did not seek congressional approval, so he prefers to call it an “excursion.”)
Straight out of Putin’s playbook.
Aside from the question of congressional approval, Mr. Trump has failed to provide any evidence that Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the United States. And he has repeatedly moved the goal posts for success — even declaring victory while at the same time arguing that the mission was incomplete. He said he would accept nothing less than an end with the “unconditional surrender” of Iran, a condition that his aides have said is up to his discretion.
And now he is negotiating with them and extending his own deadlines, which is anything but “unconditional.” It’s highly conditional. But he flies by the seat of his pants and makes it all up as he goes.
When Roosevelt set the objective of unconditional surrender, he got it, but only by bringing Germany to its knees under the threat of total destruction once the German military was clearly defeated. Hitler even killed himself so Roosevelt wouldn’t get the opportunity to put him on trial and then kill him.
But, as this president said near the start of the conflict,
“We’ve already won!”
So much winning that people are begging him to stop. “Stop, we can’t handle this much winning!” His own words now mock him.
He was right: people are begging for this kind of winning to stop because it is spiraling into World War III with no clear end or objective in site as the goal posts are constantly changing:
Was the goal to exterminate the regime and exchange it for a better one? The old regime is still surviving and running the nation with a terror grip on its people.
Was it unconditional surrender with the regime still remaining in place? They just sent him a sheet of their conditions this past week, which include many demands the US would never accept.
Was it to thoroughly denuclearize Iran as he bragged months ago his “obliteration” campaign had already achieved, making him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize? They still have all their uranium and full control of their nuclear sites.
Was it to open the Strait of Hormuz back up, which was already wide open before his attack? It is now shut as tight as ever, after Europe scoffed at his plea for help, even though he said he boasted he didn’t need international help, anyway, like a boy who picks up his marbles and runs home when his friends won’t play by his rules.
Was it to completely destroy Iran’s military might? Their attacks this past week have grown more destructive, and his own military admits Iran, in the very least, still has a third of its missiles and drones, maybe half that we know of … and that we don’t know how many more they have that are hidden in tunnels.
Was it to end Iran’s broad terror networks? So far, their teammates in terror have enjoined the battle.
Was it to destroy every power plant in Iran in order to suffocate the people in the coming summer heat and starve them to death by ending the ability to process and refrigerate food for the next decade? That plan, if it ever was one, is on postponement because of the great presents Iran supposedly offered him of letting more ships through.
Was it to make America great again by expanding the empire and proving its power? America has been weakened economically by this more than we know.
So much winning. Our military has achieved massive destruction, but winning requires a goal that is accomplished. The president has been unable to articulate a single goal that has been won, unless wanton destruction was the sole goal. In which case, mission accomplished!
Global economic ruin achieved!
Now we’ll look at how severe the damage to the US and the rest of the world is—the economic damage that is already firmly in place. If Trump’s goal was ever to shred the New World Order, I doubt he has done that in terms of disempowering the elites of Davos; but, if it was to shred the global economy, he has likely achieved a lot more than any of us realize. Right now, all nations are running on stockpiles; but for some nations those are running out, and it won’t be long before that is the case for everyone. Let’s go over some of the coming economic ruin we are goin to see in a much larger way than what has showed up so far … once all the stockpiles are depleted …
