With Iran war, reality doesn’t matter to Trump
For the last year Donald Trump has told us that he’s made life safe for democracy, and more affordable and better all around. During his record-long State of the Union address on Feb. 24, he told us that our economy was strong, gas prices were $1.85 a gallon and the stock market was above 50,000 for the first time. “When I came back our country was dead. Now it’s the hottest country on the planet,” he said in what has become the standard stump speech pickup line.
Three weeks later, the average price of gas is $3.60 a gallon. The Dow Jones Industrial average closed down another 739 points Thursday at 46,677, a loss of more than 9% since the State of the Union. On Friday it was down another 119 points, finishing at 46,558.
In response, Trump told us this week that high gas prices were fine, even “patriotic,” and that everything will be fine with the stock market. Remain calm.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reinforced the message from the briefing room with a big smile: “Americans will soon see oil prices drop rapidly – perhaps even lower than ever before the start of the war.” Then she promised that, in the future, “we will live in a world where Iran will never be able to threaten us with a bomb.”
Trump also said that the Strait of Hormuz will soon be completely safe and we have nothing to worry about. A public message attributed to Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei was read on state media Thursday, though he has still not been seen in public since his appointment. Unconfirmed reports say he was severely wounded in the attack that claimed the life of his father. The message said the strait will remain effectively closed as long as the Islamic Republic remains at war with the U.S.
The funny thing is, we hadn’t heard it was closed before that statement. Trump had told us the opposite is true. The Strait of Hormuz, he said, will soon see “great safety,” Iran has been “decimated,” we’ve “knocked out their navy, we’ve knocked out their air force, we’ve knocked out all of the anti-missile defenses,” and Iran is paying “a big price now” for 47 years of killing.
But facts are always in question with Trump and never settled. Those who currently work for him and those who used to work for him both count on and are fearful of this particular quirk in Trump’s personality. Some, like Stephen Miller and Susie Wiles, have learned how to ride the waves. Others have tried to survive being first ground under the bus and then tossed aside.
Trump and his staffers have tried to master the art of manipulation, but there’s one fact that cannot be manipulated because it is so painfully self-evident: The world is more dangerous today than when the president returned to office.
Trump and his staffers have tried to master the art of manipulation, but there’s one fact that cannot be manipulated because it is so painfully self-evident: The world is more dangerous today than when the president returned to office. Whether the administration wants to admit it or not, we are in a proxy war with Russia. On Wednesday, CNN reported that the country was helping Iran with advanced drone technology. There are GOP members of Congress who privately say they are concerned that Trump is out of control — but won’t confront him. And Trump keeps insisting that all is well.
On Friday afternoon the White House told us “CNN’s hack ‘journalists’ are peddling Democrat-sourced fiction to undermine our decisive victories in Operation Epic Fury.” But Trump saved his greatest vitriol for a Truth Social Post on Friday. Calling the Iranian leadership “deranged scumbags,” he claimed we have “unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time” before then saying that Iran has “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!”
Speaking from the podium at the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth berated the press for “unserious” reporting — while acting as “unserious” as I’ve ever seen a defense secretary act. Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates he ain’t.
Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
After Hegseth gave us his version of news headlines, he performed a brief off-key song and dance before skating out of the room having accomplished little and settling nothing. He did not address an FBI bulletin released Wednesday evening warning that Iran “allegedly aspired” to attack California with drones as part of their war effort. Wishful thinking? True danger? The bureau’s field office in L.A. declined to comment. But the uncorroborated reports could be used to justify further military action in Iran. It’s not dissimilar to how George W. Bush built a case from fiction to justify his war in Iraq.
Trump told us a missile attack on an Iranian elementary school during the initial round of airstrikes on Feb. 28 that killed at least 175 people, mostly children, was self-inflicted. But sources told the New York Times that “outdated targeting data” may have been the cause and the U.S. was at fault. According to the Washington Post, the school was likely misidentified as an Iranian military site. As one member of the defense department told me, it was a case of “bad intelligence” from an outdated source.
Trump still hasn’t admitted this, mentioned it or said anything more about it. Hegseth, who gutted oversight offices at the Pentagon that would have been tasked with mitigating risks to civilians during wars and airstrikes, dodged a question in a Friday briefing about who was responsible for the attack. “There’s only one entity in the conflict between us and Iran that never targets civilians,” he said, promising a thorough investigation of the attack and claiming “the truth matters.”
The truth simply hasn’t mattered to this administration, particularly when it gets in the way of Trump’s narrative.
The truth simply hasn’t mattered to this administration, particularly when it gets in the way of Trump’s narrative. The next piece of evidence in that exhibit is what constitutes “unconditional surrender.” Trump has said repeatedly this is a prerequisite for ending the war with Iran. But apparently Iran doesn’t get to decide when they’ve unconditionally surrendered.
According to Leavitt and Trump, it remains up to the president to decide what that means and when he will end the war in Iran. In a Friday morning interview with Fox News Radio, he promised to end the war when “I feel it in my bones.” While the comedians among us carefully craft their punchlines, let me merely and pragmatically ask: What is he talking about? People will die based on how he feels? Can he possibly be any more removed from reality without being catatonic?
Many in Congress privately say Trump cares nothing about facts because he believes his own existence is approaching its end. He is determined with his wealth and power to provide a legacy that “spans the ages,” even if it is at the cost of others. He is bitter and scared, and he has lost the ability to reason rationally, if he ever had that ability.
Donald Trump may be one of the angriest, most bitter individuals I’ve ever met in my life. But he is symptomatic of the America in which we live.
Read the headlines. Look for the facts. Because of Trump, American citizens are being shot in the street and incarcerated without due process of law at the hands of their own government. Service members are dying overseas in a war we started without any credible mention of an “imminent threat.” The best Trump can say is that Iran has been an imminent threat for 47 years. That makes no sense. Again, to him it doesn’t matter.
Our economy is in freefall. The stock market is down. Gas prices are up. We shed 92,000 jobs last month — and those numbers come from the administration that fired people for providing numbers the president didn’t like just six months ago.
While wars rage around the world, lives are lost and people are suffering, Trump just doesn’t care. He never has.
Mary Trump, the president’s niece, has famously said there is something that easily explains her uncle. As the clock winds down on his life, her words should ring in all of our ears: “With Donald there is no worst. Each day is worse.”
Read more
about Iran