TACO TUESDAY: Trump Maneuvers Some Great TACO Trades This Morning after a Tactical Retreat on Tuesday
Stock and oil markets can hardly keep up with this president's moves, but it appears White House traders (traitors?) get a jump on his moves every time!
Yesterday was TACO Tuesday all over again. The TACO king’s retreats and reversals from his braggadocios claims of hugely successful new war programs is happening as often as he takes his medication for his cankles. Maybe they are a side effect of the meds. Today’s move was a surprisingly rapid retreat, though, but then aren’t most of them? It came awfully quickly and with the usual face-saving claim by Trump that he was only backing off for Iran’s sake to help nudge them toward peace.
With equal predictability, the greedy stock market and oil market, again, lapped up any hope the president gave for peace, with no mind to how many times those hopes have evaporated into mere reeking vapors of fermentation in the past. Stocks pumped upon the news and oil prices plunged … only to do it all over again next week no doubt. But just think of the money being made on those trades by the White House staff who appear to always manage to place large bets minutes ahead of the president’s big gyrations.
This time the TACO trade of the day was the termination of the biggest and most successful naval event in the history of the navy (as Trump tells it) right after the navy successfully chaperoned its first and final two merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday.
As of Tuesday Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Epic Fury was ending, and that Project Freedom - to open the Strait of Hormuz - is the new focus. But even after that President Trump in the evening announced a ‘pause’ to allow negotiations to proceed.
Just in time, after the market’s close, to allow future bets before the market opened again today. Here are the president’s words about this amazing military mission, first starting with today’s great hope:
In an early morning social media post, U.S. President Donald Trump gave no details of any specific proposal but said the war could end if “Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to….”
So, all Iran has to do is agree to what it has already agreed to, and the war will be over. Just like all the other times Iran had to agree to the things it had agreed to agree to, though its own people always stated they had never agreed to anything at all, even asking what voices in his head Trump is negotiating with.
“We will close this very soon. We are getting close,” said the source from Pakistan, which hosted the war’s only peace talks so far and has continued in that role of mediator, ferrying proposals between the sides.
Uh huh.
In his morning post, Trump said: “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran.”
Of course, he is the only reason it closed in the first place.
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before,” Trump added.
The markets, of course, ignored the final threat because it doesn’t fit their sentiment toward greed and because oil and stock traders have seen Trump Always Chickens Out on those grandiose threats anyway, so they don’t believe his threats.
Hours earlier, Trump paused a three-day-old naval mission to reopen the blockaded strait, citing progress in peace talks….
The mission had failed to bring about any significant resumption of traffic through the waterway, while provoking a new wave of Iranian strikes on ships in the strait and on targets in neighbouring countries.
In the latest incident, a French shipping company reported on Wednesday that one of its container ships had been struck in the strait the previous day, and that injured crew had been evacuated.
In announcing he was pausing the mission, Trump cited “great progress” in negotiations with Iran, without giving further details.
In other words, the naval mission to deliver two ships through the strait, which Trump touted as one of the greatest naval missions of all time, was such a hyuge success that it resulted in one ship being hit during passage and a new wave of Iranian attacks by the same Iranian navy that Trump has already completely destroyed several times now. After the latest blistering attacks by Iran in rebuttal to the president’s new successful mission, no more merchant ships were willing to take up the offer of a US naval escort, and so Trump cancelled the program because talks with Iran were looking successful again. So much winning!
Trump’s Project Freedom mission to use the U.S. Navy to open the strait failed to persuade merchant ships that it was safe, while provoking new attacks from Iran, which said it was expanding the area under its control to include swathes of the coastline of the United Arab Emirates, on the strait’s far side.
While the mission was in effect, Iranian drones and missiles hit several ships in and around the strait and targets in the UAE, including the only major Emirati oil port on the coast beyond the strait which allowed exports without crossing through it.
Now, if all of that wasn’t loopy enough, the really wild spin comes in one of the almost hilarious videos below when the chief Trump propagandist for FOX News, Jesse Waters, explains that Trump only ended the navy’s big mission because its huge success was a deep embarrassment to Iran, and Trump was concerned such embarrassment might cause Iran to pull out of the latest peace talks right on the cusp of peace.
Yeah, because that is what victors in war do. They worry about the enemy becoming embarrassed by its failures.
Between laughs, Iran responded, “Peace talks? Were we in peace talks?”
America’s ally (or boss), Israel, also said this was the first it had heard of any ongoing talks that were nearing a finish and that it was a bit disappointing to hear the president thought the war was close to a close because Israel is itching to launch more attacks as soon as the president realizes his Schmeasefire has already ended.
The headline of “US and Iran closing in on one-page memo to end war” was enough to raise alarm bells in Israel, which has insisted that the conflict must end with a nuclear-free Iran.
“Israel was unaware that US President Donald Trump was close to reaching an agreement with Iran to end the fighting and open the Strait of Hormuz,” an Israeli official told Army Radio soon after the optimistic peace deal headlines went international.
“We were preparing for an escalation….”
The Netanyahu government is waiting for the ‘green light’ from Washington to renew the aerial bombing campaign….
“In Iran, we have a further series of targets ready for attack. We are on high alert to return to an intense and broad campaign that will allow us to deepen our achievements and further weaken the Iranian regime,” Zamir said further.
The comedy writes itself these days.
This is some of the stupidest Keystone Cops stuff I’ve seen in the history of war; but, hey, it resulted, I’m sure, in some amazing stock and oil trades inside the White House this morning just before the news of the latest pause was announced.
What flavor of TACO do you want next Tuesday?
