“In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed – amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.”
Søren Kierkegaard[i]
Now that America is at war with Iran, we reach the moment of truth: Is Donald Trump a hero or a clown? Someone has made the argument that Trump, besides being a reality TV entertainer, has been a counter-intelligence agent of the FBI or other intelligence organizations. As we shall see, it has been suggested that Trump’s grandfather and father were agents of the U.S. government. It is an interesting argument which – for the sake of covering every possibility – we should briefly examine. In the intelligence world many people have played the villain intentionally, allowing themselves to be compromised to serve as double agents feeding false information to enemy intelligence services. It is worth noting that a notorious German politician started his career in politics as a spy. While intelligence agencies are usually forbidden to dabble in domestic politics, they have been known to do so (especially when a country has entered into a period of internal crisis).[ii]
To preface the discussion of Trump’s possible role as a creature of a secret counter-intelligence group, we are obligated to note Trump’s recent dance on stage with a raised military sword. If Trump is a spy, he nonetheless retains some bizarre personality traits unsuitable for an intelligence agent. As if to underscore Trump’s lack of emotional intelligence, he recently enthused that the King of Saudi Arabia was compelled to kiss his ass. Trump explained his first meeting with the Saudi ruler. “He would grab me,” Trump said. “We bonded…. I think he likes me.”[iii]
The Saudi king had reasons for grabbing Trump’s arm other than feelings of affection. The Saudi kingdom depends on America for its survival. In fact, America’s survival is tied to the survival of Saudi Arabia because the price of oil is kept down by Saudi oil production. This is because the price of oil affects all prices within the American global trading system. If oil prices remain high for too many weeks, severe financial losses may occur. When Trump began the war against Iran, the Saudis attempted to remain neutral, fearing that Iran would strike their oil fields or close the Strait of Hormuz. When Trump and the Israelis began the war, the Iranians sent most of their missiles and drones against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. They also closed the Strait of Hormuz to ships that buy oil using petrodollars. The Iranians attacked tankers with underwater drones, and set two ablaze. Israel was not Iran’s main target of this counterattack for good reason. America was hurt worse by the shutting off of the Saudi oil than by missiles hitting Tel Aviv. If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed through April the West faces financial ruin and political unrest.
Now that Trump started the war, and Iran is sending most of its drones and missiles at the Saudis and Gulf States, we can see why the Saudi king must kiss Trump’s ass. During a speech in Miami, Trump referred to the Strait of Hormuz as the Strait of Trump. As if to underscore the importance he attaches to having things named after him, on 30 March Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill to rename the Palm Beach International Airport the “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Here we see Trump’s underlying motivation. He sees himself as the kind of hero you name important places after. To be a hero, to reopen the strait, Trump has therefore threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants and other important infrastructure. Trump apparently thinks that great statesmen are obliterators. He added that he might also obliterate Iran’s desalination plants. By saying this, however, Trump is not merely threatening a lethal blow against the Iranian people (as opposed to the Iranian state), he is also demonstrating that he hardly cares if the Saudi king loses his country’s desalination plants in the crossfire. In effect, the loss of the Saudi desalination plants would be the equivalent of dropping a hydrogen bomb on Riyadh. The Saudi desalination plants make fresh water for 37 million people. Without desalination, the major cities of Saudi Arabia (including Riyadh) would have to be evacuated within days because their reserves of water would be quickly absorbed by the population. In the heat of the desert, people would begin to die. Trump now shows us his dark side, which is not merely vulgarian.[iv]
In this context let us return to the idea that there is a super-secret shadow government or intelligence organization engaged in protecting the United States. In an earlier part of this series, we commented on a schizophrenic taxi driver who allegedly belonged to a band of super-secret agents fighting against the Soviet long-range strategy. It would be comforting to think such agents are protecting us; but with all that secrecy, and a secret budget, a certain risk of corruption appears. How is secret power accountable? It is not. Furthermore, a problem arises when the counterrevolutionary adopts the methods of Lenin, or when the defender of civilization decides to use conspiratorial methods that belong to the criminal underworld. This approach to intelligence strategy might be akin to pouring gasoline on a fire.
In terms of the West’s intelligence organizations, we find that bad men predominate, and there is another danger within these organizations: namely, that such men are easily turned into double agents working for Moscow. If MI5 was run by a Soviet mole named Sir Roger Hollis, and if Kim Philby was discovered to be KGB shortly before he would have been the head of MI6, and if we had traitors like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen in the CIA and FBI respectively, what does that tell us? Furthermore, there have been no similar penetrations by the Western services into the Soviet service. The fact that the KGB could penetrate to the very top of Western intelligence shows that the Russians have mastery in this kind of work. The CIA’s chief historian, in fact, has said that almost all our agents in Cuba were doubled back on us during the Cold War. Almost all our agents in East Germany and the Soviet Union were also doubled back on us.[v] Given the CIA’s inept record, what chance would some other American superagency have when facing the KGB? What disasters of corruption might attend if we attempted such games after the Berlin Wall fell, when KGB-linked Russian criminals (and pedophile rings) came flooding into the West? If a secret cabal of patriots had set up Donald Trump or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama as special agents to prevent the subversion of our political system, the Russians would almost certainly have come up with a frightening work-around. Here is an idea that might explain a few things.
We need to remember that the Russians had the CIA penetrated from the start, especially when we look at the history of CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, who fell under suspicion of being a Soviet agent in 1953, and whose deputy was Allen Dulles, handpicked by Smith on account of the director’s special authority to personally select his Deputy Director (DDCI). This is well known, and we have discussed this at length before. One might say that the intelligence game against America was rigged in favor of Moscow from the start. This may explain why the Soviet Union had such confidence about infiltrating organized crime and drug trafficking.
Consider, as well, the KGB’s entry into child trafficking and prostitution. With pedophilia as a weapon, we are looking at the supercharging of honeytraps in ways that might indelibly taint a James Bond. The fact that the Epstein pedophile ring was allowed to continue so long, and government officials knew about it with over a thousand girls molested and injured (some allegedly under the age of 11, according to Nick Bryant), suggests that our institutions have been compromised by a hostile foreign power. The danger is not from the CIA. The danger is that the KGB/SVR has penetrated the higher management of the CIA and FBI and White House.
Thanks to the many loudmouths and kooks who populate social media, however, a large chunk of the population believes that a CIA-linked cabal killed JFK, faked the moon landings, and are hiding alien technology from the rest of mankind. People on the right complain about the “deep state,” while on the left many have referred to the “shadow government.” Those who believe that alien spacecraft have crashed on earth refer to the Majestic-12 group; others site books like The Report from Iron Mountain. The latter, of course, was a famous literary hoax from 1967, which presented fake documents that were supposedly leaked. Forgetting the effectiveness of the KGB and the communist movement at infiltrating and taking over countries, these hobbyists of conspiracy lore have effectively obscured a more serious threat. Whatever secret level of capitalist conspiracy exists, it is not so smart, or so powerful, as the threat from Russia and China.
Americans are not very good at secret work. And we have not been effective at defending our culture. Communists have infiltrated our schools, corrupted our universities. Why would the CIA be safe from the same kind of infiltration? We are culturally and intellectually disoriented. The loudest voices of our day confuse friends with enemies. Tucker Carlson does this. Fox News commentators have done this regarding Ukraine. President Trump, in his comments about Russia, China, and Ukraine, is completely befuddled. But then, his fans will say that he is playing three-dimensional chess, or that he is a secret squirrel who has outwitted everyone. Please note: We have not changed the regime in Venezuela (despite what Trump says). We have not defeated Iran (despite what Trump says). We are not supporting Ukraine as we should have.
Now for the argument that Trump is a veritable James Bond working for the good cause (i.e., pretending to be the friend of Jeffrey Epstein, pretending to work with Russian oligarchs and launder Russian money). There is a research paper, perhaps a bit thin, written by Dawson S. Field, in three parts.[vi] According to Field, corruption has grown within the banking world. This corruption has accelerated in recent decades, so that law enforcement has been unable to cope. According to Field, nobody,
“has a motive or the tools to stop the corruption. But over the past few decades, systemic legal changes have occurred in banking & finance that present a unique opportunity to put a stop to it. A storm of epic proportions.”
To fight this systemic corruption that threatens the integrity of our system, a businessman “with a history of working as an FBI asset” was needed. Someone who could penetrate the Swamp, and be effective within the Swamp, “because there are rumors that he is as swampy as they are….” That FBI asset, he suggests, is Donald J. Trump.
Field then offers a history of the Trump patriarchs going back to Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump. Field finds tidbits suggesting that the family, being from Germany, was not happy with the Kaiser regime. He suggests that the Trump patriarchs were recruited by U.S. law enforcement to track clandestine German activities in America before and during World War I and World War II. Having proposed all this, Field then offers links showing that many FBI sting operations were run out of Trump businesses. Field explains this as follows:
“Starting in the late 70s or early 80s [there were operations] against the Mafia in NYC, moving on to identifying corrupt politicians in NY & NJ in the mid-80s then moving into the world of international money laundering. The cases expanded from Manhattan to Atlantic City, then Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, even Baku. All happening in similar manners, an FBI informant who looks like a shady character makes a deal with a lot of bad guys exposing corruption on a regional, national, and global scale.”[vii]
Here we have something more grounded than a schizophrenic taxicab driver. According to Field, the FBI was unable to make progress against criminal syndicates infiltrating the capitalist system of finance and big business. Therefore, “a new plan was hatched,” alleges Field,
“[and] we don’t know if it was a plan by Donald J. Trump or his allies in DOJ & FBI who hated the corruption that was blocking them from draining the Swamp. But the case in the early 90s against BCCI … was blocked by the efforts of Swamp figures from around the world.”
Field suggests the possibility that Rudy Giuliani, who prosecuted many Mafia bosses, was part of an effort involving Trump as an agent against the mafia long ago. Field also names U.S. Attorney James Comey, who brought down the Gambino family using Trump as an informant. Field also connects AAG Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein with this project, with further connections to Attorney General William Barr and his Deputy AG George Terwilliger. Writing in 2019, Field explains,
“If you think it is a coincidence that the officials who tried to Drain the Swamp in 1991 are almost all intimately involved in current events, then you didn’t need to read this thread. Only one of those individuals is not involved at this time, DAG Terwilliger, but his son is playing an interesting role. He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, then was assigned to help Senator Chuck Grassley’s Judiciary Committee investigate misconduct at the FBI & DOJ during the Obama Administration. In 2017, he became Chief of Staff to Rod Rosenstein involved in helping clean out the Swamp assets at the DOJ. Until 2018, when Zachary Terwilliger was nominated & confirmed to become the U.S. Attorney for EDVA. Taking over many of the national security cases being run by former USA [U.S. Attorney] Dana Boente, including Wikileaks & a CIA contractor who was spying on Americans.”
It is intriguing, and Field could be onto something. However, all these FBI figures are themselves equivocal. Here we are, back in the Wilderness of Mirrors. William Barr started out as a CIA fixit lawyer with some unusual doings, especially regarding the Nicaragua-Mexico-Arkansas side of the Iran-Contra scandal, wherein George H.W. Bush was supposedly compromised by his association with Felix Rodriguez (alleged by Terry Reid to have been a KGB double agent). Here we find ourselves rubbing up against notions first pedaled by our schizophrenic taxi driver. William Barr was George H.W. Bush’s AG, having cleaned up the mess of the Contra supply operation which intimately involved the next two presidents of the United States: George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
It is very strange, indeed, that Terry Reid’s CIA front company and associated CIA elements were allegedly infiltrated by KGB and DGI (Cuban) operatives who began using the CIA’s gun-running operations and warehouses in Mexico for moving cocaine (i.e., red cocaine) into Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, where the cocaine profits were laundered and all the CIA players were either compromised or murdered (with Bill Clinton being the CIA’s “fair-haired boy”). As the story goes, Terry Reid found out – from a Mossad official – that his company was being used for cocaine trafficking. And this trafficking was being done by KGB agents within the CIA. A Mossad official begged Terry Reid to warn Vice President Bush about Felix Rodriguez, etc. The sordid tale was told in Reid’s book, titled Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA.[viii]
It is possible to read such accounts in two ways: Using our first interpretation, we could read everything in accordance with the schizophrenic taxicab driver who said we were preparing a sting operation against Gorbachev’s perestroika deception. Using this interpretation, we would have to list Rodriguez, Bush, and Clinton as “dangles” who allowed themselves to be compromised or recruited by the KGB during Gorbachev’s Great Liberalization Game. You have your own agents get dirty to lure your enemy so you can run your “sting operation.” Thus, when the Russians retreated from Eastern Europe, they expected the Americans to disband NATO and pull out of Europe. But this did not happen because the politicians they were relying on, the ones they thought were blackmailed, were double agents. This would explain the perplexity of Boris Yeltsin when he told Bill Clinton to give Europe to Russia during their last face-to-face meeting in December 1999. At that meeting, Clinton said, “No.” Boris was not happy.
On the other hand, the second interpretation has strong points in its favor. First, Terry Reid was in no doubt that Rodriguez was a KGB double agent, with George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton being compromised. In fact, Clinton tried to put Terry Reid in federal prison for a crime he did not commit. We also know that Gorbachev’s perestroika deception went forward and nearly everyone fell for it. Of course, the Russians made a few mistakes and lost control of some countries (like Ukraine). But Clinton’s refusal to pull out of NATO was more along the lines of self-preservation than patriotism. Smart Democrats know when they are being asked to commit political and personal suicide. The value of Donald Trump, in this situation, may be his strategic illiteracy. Would he know that he was committing political suicide if he abandoned NATO? Would he understand the strategic significance of leaving the Strait of Hormuz blocked? Trump might be tricked into doing something that Democratic politicians would not dare.
Which interpretation of history better fits the facts?
Even if we grudgingly agreed to the idea that Bush and Clinton were dangles who led the Soviet leaders to fall into their own trap, how do we explain the emergence of China as a superpower? These same presidents enabled China, fed China, nurtured China. Was this part of the plan? And now we discover that China has been colonizing California, Canada, and Mexico (not to mention New York City). Where is the strategic ingenuity of this “shadow government” of spies and assets? How clever were they – if their counter-conspiracy existed at all?
But according to Dawson S. Field, Trump is an FBI asset – a dangle just like Bush and Clinton. Field does not apparently know of Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.’s work, Red Cocaine, where the ultimate source of corruption and financial subversion in America has been the work of the KGB. This puts everything in a different light. The corruption in American banking is not simply about banking. It is an enemy’s attempt to launder money through American banks for the sake of future infiltration and sabotage operations. Field wrote his interpretation in 2019, and it can be argued that his thesis has not played out as one might expect. Rather, the corruption of “the swamp” has gotten worse; and there has been no sting, since there are no tangible results. After all, what kind of sting operation leaves Moscow to build a new generation of nuclear weapons while the United States builds none? It makes no sense.
Here we have a wilderness of broken mirrors. Nothing here works, nor can it work, for anyone; and everything now has acquired a sharp edge, so that we are constantly being cut and are bleeding at every turn. Here is another aspect of the “race to the bottom,” where all countries decay and break, even as they contemplate the most destructive actions for destruction’s sake.
If we consider the truth of what Richard M. Weaver explained in his book, Ideas Have Consequences, we will see that Weaver’s worst fears for America and the West have been realized. The crisis of our civilization has worsened. The tedious details of intelligence operations cannot change this reality. The general downward plunge, the dissolution of the West as we know it, continues day by day. Our incapable leaders have not been able to reverse the process of social and cultural unraveling. Meanwhile, we were busy for two decades fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, wasting trillions to accomplish nothing of strategic value. At the same time, Jeffrey Epstein was cavorting with presidents and billionaires, congressmen and scientists.
In terms of the lamentable situation of the right and left here at home, the secret doings of our clandestine protectors cannot possibly cope with the monstrous bloggers and podcasters who continually inject ideological poisons into the body politic. The turn to barbarism is not in any way mitigated by secret squirrel superspies tricking the Russians and Chinese (who never seem to deviate from their mission). Here is an absurd conceit. Whatever our counterspies have been up to, the overall situation has not changed for the better. We see in Trump’s threats against Greenland and Canada a chaotic madness. That alone shows that our super-secret squirrel brigade is a pack of bungling, dangerous, imbeciles. If these people exist as such, as a shadow force – and I do not believe there is such a force – then they are approaching a dead end; that is, the final bankruptcy to which all deceptive practices lead. They have solved nothing. They will solve nothing.
Furthermore, a secret shadow government would operate, if it existed, like a committee without checks or balances. It could easily fall into corruption and, consequently, under enemy control. Such a group would begin to stink very quickly – and prove unequal to events. And a committee is the worst possible thing when it comes to managing important business. Consider what a building looks like when it is designed by a committee of bureaucrats. In Eureka, California, the county court building was designed by such a committee. It is shaped like a giant, ugly, four story, cement block, painted pink and butterscotch. This is what you get with a committee.
The general situation of the United States, at present, must be viewed realistically. Whatever material progress we enjoy, it is more than canceled by our precipitous moral decline. The great pessimistic observers should be read and studied in this context. These include Henry Adams, William Graham Sumner, Gustave Le Bon, William Lecky, and Jacob Burckhardt (among others). In 1909, during a speaking tour in America, the Italian historian of Rome, Guglielmo Ferrero told an American audience that Rome’s civil wars originated in one generation enjoying more than the next, until a final generation could only live better than their parents by accumulating massive debts. This indebtedness could only be paid through the sanguinary practice of proscriptions resulting from civil war. We must admit that we ourselves are approaching the end of this same cycle of spoliation.
Henry Adams compared the advance of technology and machinery to a runaway train that is going ever faster down the track. As it picks up speed it must either jump the tracks or smash up at the end of the line. In terms of the materialist, mechanistic, outlook: there is this sense of mindless striving toward an intangible nothing of Epicurean attainment. What we have is increasing means leading to increasing wants, leading to a further increase in means and a further increase in wants, etc. This cycle drives the train to its derailment.
Society is inwardly disintegrating as it ideologically bifurcates. People can sense the approach of danger. Intellectually incapable of doing their own detective work, unprepared to sacrifice a large chunk of their personal life to find answers, they readily lean toward narratives born of rising paranoia; that is, conspiracy narratives. At the same time, desperate for good news, they imagine a more hopeful future through a dangerously uninformed activism. In other words, they have believed in an orange huckster posing as a political savior. In effect, America is a diabetic enigma, covered in Cool Whip, wrapped in a conspiracy theory.
Having dispensed with the idea that people on our side know what they are doing, let us turn to our so-called “conservate” pundits who originally sold us on the genius of Donald Trump. Here we were offered: (1) Trump is a charismatic leader who plays three dimensional chess; (2) his sensational promises will be fulfilled; (3) there is no reason to abandon our economic optimism; (4) Trump is a conspiracy theory action doll; (5) he succeeds through the toad-eating mimicry of his subordinates; (6) he is above criticism.
When you become a partisan, you stop being a thinker. To be truthful, you have to leave your party affiliation at the door. And that goes double for the smug liberals. The Democratic Party has been a sad sight indeed, with all the political correctness and other ideological insanity piled on. But now, with the Cult of Trump, the Republican side has been compromised. All these acolytes are like worshippers of the science fiction “god” Nurgle,[ix] also known as the Plague Lord: – a Chaos deity who brings disease, decay, despair, and death. Often seen as a twisted, jovial, grandfather figure with a torn and suppurating gut, Nurgle offers his followers the blissful acceptance of corruption, relief through horrific mutations that promise joy in decay and eternal peace through wounds that weep pus, mixed with blood. Like a rotting corpse, Nurgle is covered in flies (as are his legionaries). His elite troops include the Death Guard, Poxwalkers, and the Great Unclean. Here is a foul metaphor for the intellectually and spiritually stagnant ideologists of our time.
In recent years the Democratic Party has afflicted Americans with open borders and the Cloward-Pivin bankruptcy scheme.[x] Afraid of being called racists, the Republicans did not effectively confront the Democrats on this issue. It is not generally known, but the Democratic Party’s use of race and immigration closely follows the program of the Communist Party USA, which calls for a coalition of minorities, women, and undocumented workers to change the United States into a socialist country.[xi] As a model for political intimidation, it is an effective plan. Year by year the Republicans were afraid to oppose it. At the same time the Republicans were behind free trade policies that sent our factories to China and Mexico. The United States has largely de-industrialized since that time. The problem was recognized at last when presidential candidate Donald Trump made illegal immigration and trade the two big issues of his campaign. He used the slogan, “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). But as we shall see, there are serious problems with the way this movement has played out, and the way Donald Trump plays the Great Game.
Trump emerged because there were problems with border policy and trade policy. But there were also problems with the Republican Party. Behind the Republican Party and the successful presidency of Ronald Reagan there was something called the “conservative movement.” But American conservatives can rightly be called “conservatives with nothing left to conserve.” If we are to be realistic, the conservatives lost the culture and the media even as the family courts turned marriage into an unenforceable contract. Moral standards have collapsed. One example, affecting our elite institutions, should suffice. According to various studies, roughly 75-98 percent of college students are cheating their way through school. In fact, cheating has become the primary method for self-advancement in American society. Enforcement against cheating is not serious. All of this continues because self-deception is pervasive. We all want to get away with something, so lax enforcement has become desirable and popular. Consider America’s self-deceptive approach to deficit spending, global warming “science,” and expensive educational programs that guarantee rising illiteracy. Does anyone think self-deception, as a cultural phenomenon, is limited to these areas alone?
There has, in addition, been a progressive decline in the individual’s sense of personal responsibility. A great deal more could be written on this topic, but our focus here is on political leadership – on their sense of strategic responsibility, statesmanship and war. We should not be surprised to learn, given our progressive decline, that the celebrated victory of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher over communism was exhibit one in a long line of self-deceptions. The West’s reaction to the equivocal reforms in the USSR was shameful. We ignored every piece of evidence that a deception was being perpetrated by the communist elite because our elites – from left to right – wanted to be deceived. Almost no one, in academia, the media, or politics, had the discernment to see that Gorbachev’s New Economic Policy closely resembled Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Reagan and Thatcher were not honest when it came to claiming victory in the Cold War. We should not be surprised, in consequence, that the self-deceptions of the Reagan era have metastasized into the self-deceptions of the MAGA era, though MAGA’s self-deceptions are more grotesque; for example, it is grotesque to say that our alliance with Europe is useless, or that the United States can annex Canada or Greenland, or that Ukraine is at fault for being invaded by Russian troops.
The Republican Party made a serious mistake when President Ronald Reagan embraced Gorbachev and his “reforms.” When the Berlin Wall fell, there was a celebration in the West. But it was all self-deception. Agents of the KGB took charge of major industries. Secret Communist Party structures remained in place. They simply took on new names and slogans. Attending this was the idea that socialism was a failed economic theory. Conservatives, especially, failed to see that socialism was a revolutionary faith, not an economic theory. If the prophecies of Karl Marx failed to come true within the imagined timeframe, what committed socialist would abandon his ideals because of it? The Apostle Paul believed in the imminent return of Jesus Christ in the first century.[xii] Did Christians abandoned their faith because Christ did not return in those days? Likewise, Marxists would not abandon their faith over a similar misunderstanding of the master’s prophecies. During the 1980s, rather than reading Das Kapital, students of Marxism were encouraged to read Marx’s earlier philosophical writings. The elder professors of the genre said that Marxism was not about economics. It was about revolution, or “the negation of the negation,” the law of change and development.
Reagan and his team did not realize that communist ideas are highly flexible and non-ideological. Marx and Lenin said that there was no Marxist dogma. Within the USSR and other socialist states, ideology was adopted purely as an administrative measure (i.e., as the Party line). This was a temporary expedient subject to amendment. State power was seen as a stepping-stone to universal freedom. The state, said Marx, would wither away. President Reagan, for all that he understood about the communist threat, did not know that capitalist reforms had taken place in Lenin’s Russia during the 1920s. He did not see that Gorbachev’s “perestroika” was about “restructuring” along Leninist lines. It was not an admission of defeat.
In 1958 two KGB generals, Nikolai Mironov and Alexander Shelepin, pointed to the role of the Soviet secret police in carrying out Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s. Mironov and Shelepin wanted the USSR to prepare for a new and enlarged NEP. This would be carried out by a reorganized and flexible KGB. For this brilliant suggestion they were awarded posts in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The strategy that evolved into Gorbachev’s perestroika began in the 1950s, but President Reagan and his team were clueless. Margaret Thatcher was clueless. The Soviet nuclear arsenal became the Russian Federation nuclear arsenal. The KGB lieutenant colonel in the Kremlin is threatening us with these nuclear weapons today. As for capitalism in Russia, the country’s billionaires are not like Western billionaires. They were recruited by the KGB and CPSU.[xiii]
Gorbachev’s New Thinking was Lenin’s Old Thinking. It was, as KGB defector Golitsyn said, a case of “New lies for old.” President Reagan and his conservative intellectual supporters were not merely ignorant about the Soviet long-range strategy. They wanted to be deceived, and they shot down anyone who suggested the Soviets were practicing deception. As I have noted earlier, William F. Buckley attacked James Angleton and Golitsyn in the pages of National Review following the August Coup of 1991. Anyone in the conservative movement who tried to defend Golitsyn became a nonentity. The Russian dissident and former gulag prisoner, Vladimir Bukovsky, tried to warn Western conservatives; but nobody would listen to him, or to other Russian dissidents who knew what was happening. Bukovsky later explained to me, “They said we were bitter, that we were not willing to forgive and forget the crimes of the Soviet regime. We became inconvenient for the West. Nobody would listen to us. They preferred to listen to people presenting Moscow’s new line.”[xiv]
Reagan became friends with Gorbachev. The two sides of the Cold War embraced as the communist side apparently gave way. But the communist movement only pretended to disappear. After all, such a large political apparatus could not have disappeared overnight without advanced planning, even though parts of the plan miscarried. Many communists began to call themselves democrats, or “democratic socialists.” Using new guises the communist movement was free to make advances in many countries. Meanwhile, anticommunism withered away. Nobody was interested in opposing communism because everyone thought it was dead.
The conservatives and Republicans made other mistakes in dealing with communism, as well. Reagan had begun to help China to modernize.[xv] President George H.W. Bush went along with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, pulling our tactical nuclear weapons out of Europe. Encouraged by these U.S. moves, NATO countries broke down their armies and took advantage of the so-called “peace dividend.” East European communist elites, who were not punished for their crimes, melted into the fabric of NATO and EU countries (e.g., Viktor Orban). The stage was set for a new round of aggression in the future.
History then took a curious turn. After President Clinton refused Boris Yeltsin’s request to pull out of Europe and disband NATO in December 1999, George W. Bush became president. And then, in September of 2001, terrorists attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center with hijacked passenger planes. This provocation led the United States to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. After spending trillions on unwise military adventures, the Republican Party found itself discredited. The American people then elected a Democrat, Barack Obama. Obama reset relations with Russia, after relations were disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. Growing closer to Moscow, Obama advocated unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament, which one might expect from a leftist U.S. president. The establishment, however, refused to go along with Obama’s disarmament plan. The Republicans ran Mitt Romney for president in 2012, who said Russia was America’s “number one geopolitical foe.” To this claim Obama replied,
“Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked, what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia; and the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
This is a very important statement from Obama, showing his true leanings. In fact, Obama then believed that the greatest existential threat to America was global warming. “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations,” he said in his 2015 State of the Union address. So, it was doubly unreal when, in 2016, the Democrats started talking about the Russian threat, and Russian interference in the 2016 election. That was the year Donald Trump emerged as the Republican frontrunner, speaking against open borders and de-industrialization. Trump won the election in November 2016 and the left was outraged. The Democrats insisted that Trump was working with Russia, and that the Russians wanted Trump in the White House, that he won the election through Russian interference. It was the strangest rhetorical turn in recent memory. The people who had always been soft on Russia were suddenly hardliners accusing the Republican side of being Russian sympathizers. And although there was no visible love for Russia among Republicans in 2016, by 2025 a pro-Russian attitude would emerge onto Fox News with open sneers directed at President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. The two politics parties had reversed their poles.
In 2016 it was easy for many voters to mistake Trump for a patriotic conservative. But Trump was playing a different game, a game of self-aggrandizement. The whole affair was made for television, and Trump was a reality TV star. Despite his occasional use of conservative rhetoric, Trump has always been a revolutionary accelerant. He won support for saying things nobody else dared to say. This endeared him to many voters. What these voters did not notice, however, was Trump’s insincerity and irresponsibility. Everyone can see his inflated ego, his bragging, his delusions of grandeur, his misrepresentations. But he tells some hard truths, mixed with some very obnoxious lies.
Trump won his political battles by verbally battering, insulting, and belittling those who stood in his way. It was, at times, entertaining to watch. As he said many times, “This makes for good television.” Trump is, after all, a showman. He gets attention by saying strange things so that people slow down and crane their necks to see. He embarrasses, threatens, demeans; and it is a mesmerizing kind of entertainment.
An amusing event, which occurred recently, shows the kind of games Trump likes to play. Trump allegedly purchased $145-dollar Florsheim dress shoes for certain cabinet officials, who were “afraid not to wear them.” He supposedly bought Secretary of State Marco Rubio a pair of shoes “with a sizable gap between the heel of his foot and the heel of his shoe.”[xvi] The mockery of this gift traces back to the Republican primaries of 2016 when Trump defeated Marco Rubio by calling him “little Marco,” alluding to more than Marco’s diminutive shoe size.
Why would anyone carry out such a demeaning prank? Here Trump signals that he is the “alpha male” at the center ring of the administration’s three-ring circus. But as president he is already the center of attention without having to do any pranks at all. His cravings for power and acclaim are pathological, indeed. His global importance, his “hugeness,” must be continually underscored. Recently Trump said he can do anything with Cuba. Is this to be taken literally? Can he stuff and mount Cuba? Can he grill it, stomp it, throw it in the trash, keep it. He enjoyed musing over the fact that he has such power. This was obvious when listening to Trump’s stream of consciousness confession. But there is no sense of responsibility in these monologues. There is only the sense of his own greatness, his own godlike powers.
Whereas, the father of our country, George Washington, saw the presidency as a burdensome responsibility, Donald Trump sees the presidency as ego-enhancing and self-affirming. Again, his sense of responsibility has been confused with his sense of self-importance. He is intellectually unserious, unethical, ready to blame everyone else – incapable of taking responsibility despite having embraced the greatest responsibility of all. Trump sees everything as easy because everything supposedly comes easy to him. He said he would lock Hillary Clinton up. He said he would build a border wall. He claimed he could end the Ukraine War in a few days and defeat Iran in less than four weeks. He can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane! No. It’s Donald Trump streaking across the sky on his way to slay ayatollahs and kidnap Latin American despots.
Great men are not remembered for their deceitful tricks and egotism, but for achievements requiring courage and insight. Trump appears to show courage by stating certain truths, and this has led some people to think he is a great man; but Trump’s courage is that of the bully and blusterer who wins through intimidation and self-advertisement. Rather than offering insights, Trump tells people what they want to hear even as he confabulates or completely misunderstands key events (e.g., the Russian invasion of Ukraine). Trump has certain skills, to be sure; but his main focus is on appearances rather than substance. Trump knows how to use the media. He knows how to create entertaining controversies. But he feels no real sense of responsibility, having no commitment to truth. The Greek historian Xenophon wrote that Socrates,
“…was in no hurry for his associates to become eloquent or capable or inventive; he thought they ought to first acquire a sense of responsibility, because he considered that without this the possession of those other faculties made them more unscrupulous and more capable of doing wrong.”[xvii]
The difference between what Trump promises, and his sense of responsibility, appears in the following example: In 2015 the “hard-right” constitutionalist, Ann Coulter, began to support Trump for president. She wrote a book titled In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome, praising Trump for promising to curb illegal immigration. She argued that a “bull in the China shop” approach was needed to challenge the establishment’s open border policies. But Coulter changed her mind about Trump’s trustworthiness after he lost interest in building his border wall. Coulter accused Trump of betraying his core 2016 campaign promises. Though she voted for him in 2024, she declared that Trump was unscrupulous and politically inefficacious. Coulter has said Trump is an “awful, awful, person” that cannot be trusted.[xviii] She has also described him as “abjectly stupid,” “narcissistic,” and a “con man” whose primary interest is his own “permanent grift.” These harsh criticisms of Trump were made by one of his most fervent supporters who paid a price for turning against him. The MAGA faithful were enraged at her criticisms, calling her a “traitor” or a “Jealous girlfriend” or attention-seeker. Trump publicly denounced Coulter as being “off the reservation” and said he “hardly knows her.” Coulter’s popularity began to decline. She had supported Trump, helping to build his initial popularity against other candidates, like Ben Carson. As she became disillusioned with Trump, she could not persuade many of her own readers that Trump was a bad man. When Trump was chosen by the Republican Party to run again in 2024, Coulter’s frustration was so great that she wistfully said, “Maybe he could die.” When Trump planned to deport a resident alien (and holder of a green card) for leading pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, Coulter tweeted, “There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the first amendment?”[xix]
Trump’s political persona was created by television and publicity. Trump is not a statesman. Trump is an actor. He was the clown who said, on TV, “You’re fired!” Coulter should have known better than to say this man was awesome. She contributed to the initial bandwagon effect that made Trump president. In 2015 and 2016 Coulter agreed that Ben Carson was excellent in all respects, but she argued that he could not win a national election. The only alternative, she said, was to vote for Trump. By ditching morality for pragmatism, she opposed a good man in favor of a bad man (because the bad man was more electable). Trump had been a TV star. He had better name recognition than Carson and this made him the best man to vote for, from a pragmatic point of view. Neil Postman, writing more than forty years ago, said:
“I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.”[xx]
Trump is our Dadaist president. He observes no logic, reason, or sequence. As a madcap nihilist, he has reduced our politics to vaudeville. Today he makes war and conducts foreign policy whimsically, threatening to annex countries and territories like Canada or Greenland, kidnapping Latin American presidents, hijacking oil supplies, seizing ships on the high seas, setting the Middle East ablaze, and praising himself as a “peace president.” Trump has attained his status through the masses, by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Richard Weaver once commented that aristocrats prefer drama, the bourgeoisie prefers comedy, while the working class prefers farce. Trump is the master of farce. While socialist demagogues, like Friedrich Engels, believed the “The masses are frightfully stupid,” composed in large part of “degenerate rabble,” Trump has a more appreciative perspective. “I love the poorly educated,” he opined during a 2016 speech to the Nevada caucuses. At the same event, Trump admitted, “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.” According to former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, Trump privately refers to his supporters as “basement dwellers” and mocks them when the cameras are off.[xxi]
While some of us voted against the Democrats out of desperation, the masses who voted for Trump were genuinely attracted by his image. Jean Meslier (1664-1729), an exceptionally cynical French priest who secretly wrote a massive 600-page memoir favoring socialism and equality for the people, wrote of the common man in his day, “I came to know the errors and the misdeeds, the vanity and the stupidity of the people. I hated and despised them.”[xxii] Meslier himself was a secret atheist, materialist, an enemy of monarchy, who believed in a classless society (even though he was, officially, a Catholic priest). Yet Meslier wanted a political system that favored these same masses. Is it not strange that the champions of the people, who want to promote the interests of the masses, have the greatest contempt for them?
Returning to Neil Postman’s observation, perhaps we have discovered a new principle: Those who live by television will die by television. Perhaps our culture, no longer being literate, has come to this grim end. The whole country was, as Neil Postman explained, amusing itself to death. “If on television,” wrote Postman,
“credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves very much with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude.”[xxiii]
When Trump came back to power after four years under Biden, he returned with the strangest cabinet in American history. Fox News analysts, like Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, Tusli Gabbard, and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, were appointed to high office. Gabbard and Hegseth were put in charge of U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, respectively. Indeed, our reality TV president recruited people right off the television screen. These were good-looking, telegenic faces. Of course, Trump wanted his government to have the right look. But are these people capable?
As Trump’s administration spirals toward disaster, as his poll numbers plunge, his team does not seem equal to the job. Nearly every campaign promise has been broken – from releasing the Epstein files in the first ninety days to staying out of “forever wars.” He has repatriated fewer illegal aliens than Obama. It seems that Trump is not the man to save the country. Watch what happens during the midterm elections when the Democrats take control of Congress. Watch how fast the Democrats impeach Trump after they are sworn in at the beginning of next year. Trump’s third trial in the Senate will not go so well as many Republican senators, filled with disgust, will want to be rid of him.
And now we are in the fifth week of Trump’s war against Iran. Did he consult Congress? Did he consult our NATO allies? Did he consult the Arab oil countries before launching his offensive? No. He acted in conjunction with Israel, starting a war on the world’s most sensitive waterway. Our allies depend on that waterway for oil and gas. The problem of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open needed to be solved before Iran was attacked. Do we see a belated solution coming into view? No. How long will the Strait of Hormuz be closed? Indefinitely. Are there negotiations to end the war? Trump says there are, but the Iranians say there are no negotiations. In other words, Trump has been lying about ongoing negotiations.
Two days after Operation Epic Fury began, Trump told the Daily Mail and The New York Times that he expected the war to last “Four weeks or less.” On 3 March, the next day, Trump publicly adjusted his estimate to “four to five weeks.” As of 21 March 2026 the administration said the war might last six weeks, “winding down” when the objectives are met. On 1 April administration sources were saying the war would last more than six weeks. A responsible president would assess things differently. He would see that he has no choice, that he must fight to open the strait. It will not be easy because Iran is being given thousands of drones by Russia and China. These drones will strike ships that enter the Persian Gulf to trade in petrodollars.
While Iran’s ability to launch drones and missiles has been degraded by air strikes, Iran possesses thousands of submersible and aerial drones, plus deployable sea mines. These are hidden in caves, tunnels, and bunkers. Iran can build new drones in retooled commercial plants or specially fitted underground facilities. At the same time, drone factories in Tajikistan, China, and Russia are supplying Iran at a steady rate. There is no way to prevent Iranian drone strikes unless we invade the country and topple the regime. But there is no support in America for an all-out invasion of Iran.
On 21 March Donald Trump posted a Truth Social ultimatum demanding that Iran “FULLY OPEN” the strait within 48 hours or face massive destruction. And then the 48-hour deadline became ten days. After ten days it will be extended to ten weeks. This is how Trump blusters. How serious is Trump about invading Kharg Island? This would cut the supply of Iranian oil to China. Would he dare do this? As for a negotiated solution, Trump has killed the leaders who were willing to negotiate. If you break with courtesy, and leaders are killed under the flag of truce, with the understanding that there is time left on a deadline, you are not going to find anyone willing to talk peace. What the leaders in Iran want now is revenge. Does anyone in Washington understand what has happened? From now on the Iranians are going to issue ultimatums of their own because. As everyone can see, they have successfully closed the Strait of Hormuz. And their ultimatum is very simple: The Strait of Hormuz stays closed to Western oil tankers until the Americans leave the region.
Trump complains that NATO will not help him. But did he consult NATO before launching this ill-advised surprise attack on Iran? NATO’s charter is about defense, not attack. NATO countries are not obligated to help the United States since Washington launched the war on its own. Besides, Europe does not have the military wherewithal to open the Strait of Hormuz. If America cannot do this, then it is not doable. Failing to take any of this into account, Trump bitterly berates Europe’s leaders as “cowards” and “paper tigers.”
The philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, said that the genius for war required “strength of character” and “presence of mind.” War, he said, consists of danger, physical effort, uncertainty, and chance. Trump is squirming, blaming, ducking, and lying. He alternates bragging with lashing out against allies. And then, in the midst of this, he says, “I do believe I’ll have the honor of taking Cuba…. That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form.” He then added, “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it, [if] you want to know the truth.”[xxiv]
Would it be a bad thing to liberate the Cuban people? Would it be bad to liberate the Iranian people? No. It would be very good. It would be a great achievement. But Trump has not accomplished anyone’s liberation, whatever he says to the contrary. Airstrikes are not a method for liberating countries. Kidnapping the president of Venezuela did make Venezuela into an ally, even if the government there is momentarily cooperating. If military history has taught us anything, it is that you cannot liberate a country with air strikes alone. You cannot take control of a country by arresting its president, or by blowing a Supreme Leader to bits along with his cabinet. You must put boots on the ground. To liberate Cuba, you must invade Cuba. To liberate Iran, you must invade Iran. To liberate Venezuela, you must invade Venezuela. Will the American people support wars of national liberation in Cuba and Iran? Who is calling for this today?
Donald Trump has launched an all-out attack on Iran. Under Trump’s orders, U.S. forces sank the Iranian navy. He gave Israel the coordinates to kill Iran’s leaders. Trump’s bombers are hitting Iranian bunkers and military positions every day. This is all-out war. Trump started this. He facilitated this. He did not ask for Congressional support. He did not go the American people with an appeal. He started it on his own. And when you start a big war, when you commit an act of military aggression, then you are personally responsible for what follows. If the outcome had been a happy one, Trump would have gotten full credit. But the outcome has not been happy. Perhaps the worst thing is that Trump gave the coordinates of Iranian government leaders to the IDF, and the whole Iranian government was wiped out prior to a negotiation deadline. Should Americans feel proud of this? It was a horrific act which did not produce the result Trump wanted. There is a simple rule here. You do not kill envoys, government leaders, or civilian officials engaged in their daily business.
And now, to be sure, the new leaders in Iran will begin plotting their revenge on Donald Trump. And because honor was not his paramount concern, he must live under the threat of a surprise counter-strike against American leaders. Under the rules of war – formally known as International Humanitarian Law (IHL) – the legality of killing a leader depends on whether they are a legitimate military target. Even if we think the Iranian leaders are totalitarian thugs, it is not right to butcher them like animals.
Moral rules in politics and war are not an idiotic charade. Treating enemies dishonorably costs you very little and wins you many advantages. Wars are difficult to end because of the cycle of violence and revenge that perpetuates them. Treachery at the beginning makes the greatest difficulty of all. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a kind of answer, where Pearl Harbor was the question. It is unwise to begin a war with an act of perfidy.
Could Trump win this war and, like some bungling clown from a comedy, stumble into victory? Military historian John Mosier thinks our victory is assured. He has written a blog titled, “Iran is Finished: They Just Can’t Admit it.” Mosier’s books are fascinating, and his military analysis is always good. In his substack, Mosier wrote, “in previous wars, despite the claims made by the allied bomber barons … Allied air attacks … didn’t accomplish the desired objective of destroying the military capabilities of Germany and Japan.” He then added, “So anyone arguing on the basis of the history of aerial attacks from the 1930s right on through the start of this century would logically assume that the only way to ‘win’ was by territorial conquest, i.e., a ground war.” But precision weapons have changed all this, says Mosier. Of course, this claim is baffling. Precision weapons are the same as other bombs in one respect. Aircraft cannot occupy the ground, precision or no precision. Jets cannot take Tehran. Only boots on the ground can do this.
Consider, for a moment, the Vietnam War. America dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs on the communists in Southeast Asia during that war. And we lost the war because we never invaded the North. We won every defensive battle in the South, but we never took Hanoi. We never took down the communist regime.
Marcus Aurelius wrote, “To pursue the unattainable is insanity, yet the thoughtless can never refrain from doing so.”[xxv] To be huge, great, powerful, unstoppable, invincible, etc., is noticeably part of Trump’s stream of consciousness thinking. The Book of Proverbs says that “he who digs a pit shall fall into it.” The philosopher of War, Carl Clausewitz, said that the most important considerations in war strategy are “all that can be called forth by moral qualities and effects….” He explained this as follows:
“In War … the Commander of an immense whole finds himself in a constant whirlpool of false and true information, of mistakes committed through fear, through negligence, through precipitation, of contraventions of his authority, either from mistaken or correct motives, from ill will, true or false sense of duty, indolence or exhaustion, of accidents which no mortal could have foreseen. In short, he is the victim of a hundred thousand impressions…. By long experience in War, the tact is acquired of readily appreciating the value of these incidents; high courage and stability of character stand proof against them, as the rock resists the beating of the waves.”[xxvi]
Is Trump such a commander-in-chief? Is he a rock that stands proof against the beating of the waves? Some have commented on his staying power, preferring to ignore his record as a thin-skinned petulant braggart with a broken moral compass. Let us hope he can open the Strait of Hormuz, and God save him if he cannot. Clausewitz wrote, “In war more than anywhere else in the world things happen differently to what we had expected, and look differently when near, to what they did at a distance.”[xxvii]
It seems that Trump got into this war because he is intellectually lazy. He does not read. He does not know how to think strategically. He has no real sense of responsibility, and he is unserious. He has attained high office by pretense, by bragging he could end the Ukraine War, by bragging he could expel the illegal aliens from America, by bragging that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. He also brags that Venezuela is in his pocket, that he can defeat the drug cartels in Mexico. But in all this, what has he accomplished? What is he likely to accomplish now?
END OF PART IV
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Links and Notes
[i] Søren Kierkegaard, trans. Howard and Edna Hong, Either/Or, Part I (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 30.
[ii] After World War I, Adolf Hitler remained in the army (Reichswehr) and was trained as an “education officer,”; which means he was an agent of influence and army spy. His job was to influence soldiers against “dangerous ideas” like communism and pacificism, and to monitor small political parties that might be subversive. On 12 September 1919, his superiors ordered him to investigate a meeting of the German Workers Party (DAP) which had been formed by Anton Drexler in Munich. When Hitler arrived at the meeting, one of the speakers suggested Bavaria should break away from Germany. Hitler was incensed, took the man to task, and a heated argument ensued. Drexler was so impressed by Hitler’s speaking skills that he gave him a pamphlet and invited him to join. Hitler officially resigned from the army and, using his oratorical abilities, transformed the tiny group into the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Was Hitler an agent after that?
[iii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiGHUGLVLJk
[iv] “Vulgarian (noun): an unrefined person, especially one with newly acquired power or wealth.” Synonyms are – bawdy, boorish, crass, crude, dirty, gruff, nasty, obscene, off-color, raw, rude, scatological, vulgar.” Donald Trump is the first U.S. President to regularly use foul language in his speeches and public statements. According to research that has been done on Trump’s language, he used the F-word and other profanity at least 140 times during his 2024 campaign, representing a 69 percent increase in his use of profane language compared to his 2016 campaign.[iv]
[v] https://www.hnn.us/article/cia-fooled-by-massive-cold-war-double-agent-failur
[vi] https://butnothingshappening.com/
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: Reed, Terry, Cummings, John: 9781561712496: Amazon.com: Books
[ix] A fictional god of the Warhammer 40K Universe.
[x] The Cloward-Piven bankruptcy scheme advocates the deliberate overloading of the public welfare system to force its collapse and trigger a national political crisis. The authors of the plan argued that if every person eligible for welfare actually claimed their benefits, the resulting bureaucratic and financial strain would be so immense that the government would be forced to replace the “failed” system with socialism.
[xi] https://cpusa.org/party_info/cpusa-party-program/
[xii] Early letters like 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 suggest that Paul anticipated being among the living when Christ returned as he then wrote, “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord.” In 1 Corinthians 7:29 he wrote, “the appointed time has grown short,” advising his followers to remain as they are – even suggesting that some stay unmarried to avoid the pitfall of worldly distractions before the Day of the Lord. Almost two thousand years later the faith in Christ’s imminent return continues. The socialists, with their faith in the communist millennium of peace and plenty, are bound to show the same patience. After all , they have only been waiting 178 years.
[xiii] Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984), p. 47.
[xiv] Recollection of personal conversation.
[xv] President Reagan significantly contributed to China’s modernization program by expanding China-U.S. trade, facilitating technology transfers, and selling military equipment. Reagan’s 1984 visit to Beijing firmly established a strategic partnership with China, which included the gifting of agricultural technology and energy cooperation. This was described euphemistically at the time as , “Stabilizing the Sino-American relationship.” See, especially, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-upon-returning-china#:~:text=In%201984%2C%20President%20Reagan%20visited%20China%20with,in%20God%20*%20America’s%20love%20for%20freedom – and also — https://www.cfr.org/timelines/us-china-relations
[xvi] A picture of Rubio’s shoes was posted by Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/news/2026/03/16/trump-buying-shoes-cabinet/
[xvii] Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p.190.
[xviii] https://www.yahoo.com/news/ann-coulter-calls-trump-awful-172813880.html
[xix] https://www.yahoo.com/news/even-ann-coulter-thinks-trump-232112431.html
[xx] Postman, p. 105.
[xxi] https://www.axios.com/2024/08/20/dnc-trump-stephanie-grisham
[xxii] Jean Meslier, A Memoir, p. 56.
[xxiii] Niel Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985 ), p. 102.
[xxiv] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-he-believes-he-has-honor-taking-cuba-calls-caribbean-island-very-weakened-nation
[xxv] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), 5:17, p. 85.
[xxvi] Carl von Clausewitz, On War (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 263.
[xxvii] Ibid.
146 responses to “Armageddon as Clown Show: Iran War Pratfalls (Part 4 of 5)”
Hey Jeff. Sorry to clutter your comments with this, but I paid you via PayPay for a book a good while ago. I confirmed with PP and through my bank that it went through. I’ve emailed you a couple times. I’m not complaining. I just want you to know it’s there for you when you look. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Sorry Matt. I will run to the Post Office today and mail your books. The first mailing must have gotten lost en route.
jeffrey nyquist I was looking forward to your analysis God bless you in your vision is Ukraine resisting the Russians better than analysts think?
Ukraine is hurting the Russians very badly. It is the only good news in an otherwise bleak picture.
More and more every day, we see that Trump works for Moscow. He’s managed to make Russia billions in oil revenues over the past few weeks with this disastrous war, while simultaneously undermining, if not completely destroying, the Republican Party’s chances in the midterm elections. May God help us, and may He help Ukraine. Excellent as always, Jeff.
I hate to see these things happening. I fear Trump will leave NATO and abandon our Arab allies. If he does this tonight, nobody will align with us.
Thank you, Sir. The saddest, most infuriating part about all of this is how many truly think he’s great.
It’s like Patrick Henry said, : “It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope and pride. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren until she transforms us into beasts… ”
I fall into Henry’s way of thinking: “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.’
The song of the MAGA siren is transforming many who should know better into beasts.
And instead of pursuing justice on the likes of Obama, Biden, and the Clintons, as is his job, Trump just trots them out in his ramnlings that he calls press conferences, summits, and cabinet meetings for an Orwelian “Two Minutes’ Hate” lest people begin to thinking about the incoherence, contradictions, and outright stupidity of what he says.
A guy asked me the other day, “you staying busy?” I replied, “Yes, unless prices keep going up, then maybe not.”
He said, “it’s not as bad as it was with Biden.” I told him and the other guys who were listening, “We haven’t seen the end of it yet.”
It seems Trump has conditioned people to summon their disgust with Biden or Obama to keep them from really thinking about the consequences of what he’s doing.
His first term was better, and he fooled us into expecting the same; but he really is crazy on his own. No adults in the room this round.
“Two minutes hate” is right. And it’s not just Trump, it’s the whole conservative media who seem forever obsessed with ‘owning’ the libs. Pretty soon the line “It was worse under Biden” will be replaced with “It would have been worse under Kamala” because bashing a hypothetical Democrat presidency will be the only argument left to the Trump faithful as he plunges the US into unprecedented disaster.
I hear people say that pretty regularly too. It’s crazy.
Wow, it’s hard keeping up with the cult.
Yes’m, well that’s people around here where I live.
It really is crazy.
The Democrats were destroying the country gradually. trump accelerated the process. I told a MAGA friend last night that Trump would be impeached next January and convicted in the Senate. He smugly said, “Not going to happen.” I suddenly realized he is an economic illiterate. The world economy is a system that America dominates and profits from. The president is responsible for it. Abdicate that responsibility and it collapses. And they will remove him from office for this level of irresponsibility. His own cabinet might be contemplating a medical intervention.
Very true, indeed it wouldn’t have been worse under Kamala.
I don’t think that’s what Laura1986 meant. It’s certainly not what I meant.
I know you do a lot to try to wake people up and turn this country around, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that. I just don’t think Trump is the friend and ally you want him to be. Really, it depends on everyday people if there’s any hope. We have no leaders.
She actually quite literally said that those who think Kamala’s election would have been worse are in the “cult of Trump”.
I was commenting here because I thought that there is some similarity here between our goals for America, and our desire to not see the foreign communists succeed, but I don’t know, I find the obsession with Trump rather odd, the demonization of him and refusal to have a nuanced view of him which acknowledges the very real good anti-communist things he has done slightly bizarre. I actually believe he literally saved the country from dictatorship twice. I also believe that no one but him with his wealth and media tactics could have done it. It’s almost as if people forget how close the communists came to jailing him. They are still talking about jailing him. Hillary the authoritarian would have been in charge if he didn’t succeed in 2016 and Kamala the face of Obama’s authoritarianism would have escalated their prosecution of all regime foes. I don’t know, if this is not obvious and if nuanced takes are lacking here, perhaps there is less in common than I thought.
You’ve done a great job. Set up a good persona and another blog, and applied your knowledge of logic and made your case very well.
You shouldn’t quit commenting, as it gives another thought-out perspective, and no personal abuse has taken place from any of the differing viewpoints.
But, nothing you have said sways me, just as nothing I or anyone else has said has swayed you.
I feel that logic cannot really be applied to the Communist movement as it shape shifts, morphs, camoflauges, and infiltrates all sides. As Jeff often points out, it inverts everything. If God gave us the gift of logic, and Communism is Satanic at its foundation and core, then it will not follow patterns of logic.
At least, logic (on which I am no expert) must be applied in light of the new methodology of analysis Golitsyn taught.
I don’t see Trump as having done anything substantial against Russia or China. Is it not clear who really gains with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz? Even to an unlearned person like me, I knew that you can’t defeat another nation militarily without forces on the ground to take over. And why has Trump’s rhetoric changed from “we have taken out the leader, and the second leader”, to “we have taken out the first regime, then the second regime, and maybe the third?”
And why does he refuse to endorse and back Pahlavi, even though the diaspora was demanding him in weeks leading up to the war, and in footage shown when the bombing campaign started the people inside Iran were chanting his name? Why does he insist that the ones we are supposedly talking to now are much more reasonable, when they are part of the same regime?
If the Strait were to open up for some reason, I would think it was because Russia and China weren’t quite ready to attack America, and since sanctions are lifted on Russian oil anyway, they might decide to let us go completely back to sleep one more time as they move on Europe before coming for us, though with it closed, it is really very bad for Europe, so I don’t see why they would do that.
And, why does Trump keep saying we’re the strongest we’ve ever been, and are in a Golden Age, etc, when we know good and well that our industrial base is mostly gutted and hollowed out, the character and work ethic of our people must be rebuilt first, a lot of knowledge and experience is disappearing and lacking from years of decline, our military was not rebuilt in four years, etc, etc? And why does he damage the goodwill of our allies at such a time as this? We need their goodwill, but they are rather driven away from us, and into the arms of who? China?
Old friend,
I think that possibly you and Jimmy from Brooklyn are in the same situation:
They’ve attacked us through the Left for so long, that it’s difficult to imagine what an attack or “disinformation operation” through the Right could/would look like.
Yes.
There is a more nuanced way of seeing all of this, of course. The anticommunist things Trump has done may be listed with the anti-Russian measures of Obama and Biden. Some actions are obligatory in terms of projecting an image. We should not mistake optics for substance. How do we understand this? The West’s interests are not the same as China or Russia’s. But here a general confusion reigns in the West. Politicians cannot afford to seem like agents of a foreign power. Biden is in the Bukovsky files, so we know he is a fake enemy of the Kremlin. He helps Ukraine, though the help is limited. Trump is in the Epstein files. He helps Ukraine, but he does not like to help them. Of course, these sleazy politicians also have their own agendas. Russian intelligence uses them, but they also used Russian intelligence to get ahead. This seems to be a common thing. They do not do everything Russia asks. They want to be successful in their own right. The Russians know this. Intelligence chiefs are realists. The complexity here rules out simplistic notions of “they always help the communists,” which would never work for the perps. You have to construct an alibi. Corrupt people are invariably corrupt, but they worry about being exposed. They cannot be consistent in terms of ideological loyalty. Right? Zig zag is how you spot them. They zig zag.
Will the free world — or what’s left of it — survive this American presidency? And if so, what will come after it? People naively thought, back in 2016 and again in 2020 and 2024, that the “race to the bottom” would be reversed. Instead, it’s been massively accelerated. And no “off-ramp” or way out, at this point, in sight. Our world is already a world in shambles, spiritually speaking. Soon, it might lie in material shambles too. The man is a walking wrecking ball, and no accountability for any of the madnesses he commits …
Yes. The spiritual destruction happens first. Next comes the physical destruction. Stand by.
Thank you Jeff for another brilliant essay. You hit it out of the park! Another example of Trump failing to deliver on his promises is with his obsession with AGI and Data Centers. How is this helping the working people of America? Farmers and ranchers are going out of business as the tech giants are getting special government favors, when it is clear that AGI is not profitable now and may never be. He is actually a big spending liberal, though he says the right things to win the conservative vote. His failure to deal with inflation will mean even bigger GOP losses in November.
Yes. You may be right about Trump’s willingness to spend money. He is not too clear in his thinking either way.
Glad to see pt 4 of this series. The weeks since pt 3 was posted have been some of the worst in a long time and many people are completely blind to the devastation Trump is enacting. To name just a few, since Feb. 28 Trump has 1. repeatedly insulted our allies, including giving the “Zelensky treatment” to the Japanese Prime Minister (“they didn’t warn us when they attacked Pearl Harbor”) and insulting UK PM Starmer while the press was in the White House for his meeting with German PM Merz. 2. threatened to leave NATO, 3. given Iran control of the Strait of Trump (ahem…Hormuz), 4. Allowed China and Russia to continue trading with Iran, 5. allowed Russia & China to deliver oil and gas to supposedly sanctioned Cuba. 6. put at risk the lives of tens of millions of non-combatants who may soon be without petroleum products and needed fertilizer. 7. virtually guaranteed Democrats taking over the House and possibly the Senate in the coming elections. The list goes on and on. He is either the greatest buffoon to ever occupy the Oval Office or he is an agent of foreign enemies.
Fantastic list of Trump’s achievements during the last 31 days! Now he gives his speech! What further menace could there be?
18 minutes of superb gaslighting! He’s achieved it all! In other words, he might as well step down as President, leaving behind the most successful presidency “the world has ever seen” …
Yes. I saw Trump’s speech tonight. He said that the Strait of Hormuz was not his problem. Let those that get oil from that region deal with it. This is the kind of irresponsible statement that I have come to expect from him. He is saying that he will walk away from the problem, which he created. And he blames others for it, or denies there is a problem at all. There is going to be panic in Japan’s markets and in Europe, and on Wall Street. They are all interconnected. Does the lout know this? Does he realize what he has done?
The upcoming 250th anniversary of American Independence most likely will not be a happy occasion, whether for America herself or for America’s allies. It’ll be instead a dreadful moment of grief, sorrow, and embarrassment.
I am afraid you are right.
I think he does kind of realize what he has done, and he doesn’t care. Trump showed with the attack on Iran that he has an appetite for destruction.
I think his long phone conversations with Putin are one of his primary ways of getting “instructions” on what to do on the international stage.
Excellent summary of how much Trump has done to benefit America’s enemies and alienate its allies in just 4 weeks. It’s nearly impossible, or at the very least a nagging and inadequate explanation, to maintain that Trump is just a thoughtless buffoon who doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he was merely a blunderer you would expect some of his mistakes to go our way. But everything of consequence that he’s done so far has ended up advancing Russia and China’s long-term strategy. One would think, given his venality and the shameless grift of some of his appointees, that at least he would refrain from messing around with the petrodollar system. But he went straight for the jugular with his unprovoked attack on Iran. Rubio said recently that the US would be okay with Iran charging illegal tolls for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and that it’s up to other countries to go in and seize control of the waterway. Trump has mostly been bashing the Europeans for not having the ‘courage’ to go in and do what the US Navy couldn’t do. But what if it’s really an invitation for China to step in as a ‘great mediator’ and reach a deal with Iran to keep the SoH open under Chinese management. Trump would declare China a great partner for ‘peace’ and again claim the Iran War was a total success. I’m sure it’s sheer coincidence that Tucker Carlson is now calling for the US to share power with communist China.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/mar/24/tucker-carlson-calls-us-share-power-communist-china/?bt_ee=Mgq%2Bx%2BZZ9NUXBpE0wxaErCPSPd%2BDQZSexckhGKCyfzS3Np2RhTu7EsOe0jc4Fur9&bt_ts=1774385475773
Trump is also doing his best to alienate Saudi Arabia by, among other things, inviting Iran to strike their desalination plants and telling the Saudi King that he should kiss Trump’s a**. Remember when we called Biden a Russian asset for (temporarily) alienating Saudi Arabia over the Kashoggi business? Well, the clown shoe definitely fits Trump.
In his rambling speech on the Iran War tonight, Trump didn’t touch on anything resembling a plan or clear objective. He said the US has pretty much achieved all its objectives, but also that it would bomb Iran into the stone age if the regime doesn’t accept his peace plan. Well which is it? He made no mention of going in with ground troops and said the war would be over in a couple of weeks, but then also reminded people that previous wars that the US was involved in lasted much longer than 5 weeks. Incoherent much? My gut tells me he doesn’t have the stomach for any kind of boots on the ground, long drawn out (or even short but messy) conflict with Iran.
And what of Trump’s oft-repeated justification for attacking Iran, that Israel was in grave danger if the Iranian regime got nuclear weapons? As Jeff said in a recent podcast, the headline “Iran is two weeks away from having nuclear weapons!!” has been with us for 1.5 decades now. It’s inconceivable that Iran doesn’t already have the bomb by now. But more interestingly, Jeff said that Israel pretty much knows that Russia is really behind Iran’s nuclear program and that they have the final say on Iran launching nuclear strikes. Hence Israel’s doctrine that if Israel gets hit by an Iranian nuclear missile, the retaliatory strike would be against Moscow. But if Israel knows this, then the US knows it too. So then why the sudden urgency to destroy Iran’s nuclear program (which was supposedly obliterated last year)? What was different in February 2026 that the only option was all out war against Iran? Is it too much to expect some evidence for Trump’s hyperbolic claims that Iran would have obliterated the whole Middle East if the US and Israel hadn’t struck first? By making it seem like the war is about Israel, Trump is giving grist to anti-Semitic mill and fanning the flames of anti-Semitism within MAGA.
I wonder about Israel’s role in all this. In recent years Israel came to be on semi-friendly terms with the Arab states because of their shared fear of Iran, but this war which ironically gives Iran more power over the Middle East risks undoing all that. Does the Iran war really advance Israel’s security? The country has been deeply penetrated by Russian intelligence, even more than the rest of the West, and Netanyahu is on very friendly terms with Putin. He is also the subject of yet another criminal investigation in Israel and, if the rumors are to be believed, is quite corrupt. So with Trump and Netanyahu we have two unethical leaders with long-time connections to Russia, who together started a war that ultimately benefits Russia (and China). Did they think this up on their own or were they following the advice of their Russian friends?
Excellent comments! As bad as anti-semitism already is, one of the outcomes of this war is likely to be an exponential explosion of hatred for Jews and particularly the nation of Israel. What does Trump think (if he does) the dozens of countries that are about to be starved of both petroleum products and fertilizer are going to do? It is very clear they will turn all of their ire and hatred at the countries that created the situation by starting this war.
America’s reputation in the world has been seriously damaged by Trump’s speech last night. The markets have lost half a trillion in wealth so far. The damage will mount higher and higher in the coming days.
Yes. This is where “corrupt” signifies “on the hook to Moscow.” Trump just rescued the Russian and Chinese leaders who were ahead in the “race to the bottom.” Trump put America first in that race. We hit the pavement at 300 miles per hour before they do. Maybe he gave them parachutes.
Jeff, why do you think Israel decided to decapitate the Iranian regime now? You recently said that Israel is well aware that Russia is responsible for Iran’s nuclear program and that the permission launch codes come from Moscow. If Iran is just the attack dog, what is the point of going after the regime? Israel is better served by staying on Russia’s good side while making sure Moscow knows there will be hell to pay if Iran attacks Israel with nukes. So again, why the urgency to attack now? Israel can still go after Hezbollah and other proxy groups without starting an all out war that ultimately hurts its position in the Middle East. Really curious to hear your thoughts.
Why did Israel go after Iran and try to decapitate the Iranian leadership? As you know, Israel is in a precarious long-term position. They have only one potential ally in the region. The Jewish people and the Persian people have been allies with mutual regard and friendship for thousands of years. If the Israelis could change the regime in Tehran, they could have a powerful regional ally and a better long-term position. This is especially desirable when you realize that the United States may not always be in a position to help Israel. The United States has obligations around the globe, and our true interest in the Middle East is in keeping the oil flowing. Israel is not America’s vital interest. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are vital to us. So Israel very much needs an ally closer at hand should the Arabs unite against Israel in the future because of the Palestinians.
There is a second point to consider: The Israelis wage war differently, and conduct espionage differently, than other Western nations. They are closer to the Soviets in their ruthless willingness to use assassination as a method. One always hears of how the Israelis have killed this terrorist leader, or that leader, and how they used the exploding pagers to wipe out a whole chain of terrorist commanders. The Jewish people were badly brutalized by the Nazis, and that leaves psychological marks on their character and the way they conduct their defense. A Mossad operative once said to me, “You are an honorable foe. But I prefer to leave my enemy with a bullet in the back of his skull.” This was a frank admission of the Israeli philosophy of war. The Israelis very much believe in assassination as a method. The Israeli generals may have imagined, against the facts of history, that they could cause a regime change in Iran if enough leaders were killed. Perhaps with the development of advanced surveillance tech, and drone weapons, and satellites, and other tracking methods, they believed they could exterminate the regime’s leaders at some point in the future. However, nobody has done this kind of regime change before. Assassination of leaders usually tends to make difficult situations more difficult. This is a general rule with a few exceptions. People thought killing Hitler, for example, would have ended World War II earlier, and that might have worked under certain circumstances. But the Iranian regime is not a Fuhrer regime like the Third Reich. It is a Republic with collegial institutions. All the same, the Israelis apparently think there is a golden number of assassinations which, if accomplished, will unravel the regime. It is very intriguing, of course, to postulate such a theory. My judgment is that it is impractical, that it won’t work. I could be wrong, of course; but knowing how that regime is organized, plus its religious orientation, suggests the regime has more durability than the Israelis imagine. By now the regime leaders have gone deep underground, and they have doubled up on readying their subordinates. After five weeks of intensive attacks, I doubt they will do much decapitating as happened on the first day. From now on killing Iranian leaders will be difficult. The Israelis are in a difficult position if they fail to follow through, and I am afraid the best they can achieve is a civil war in Iran. But even this appears unlikely so far. Iran’s leaders will organize some kind of counterattack on Israel one day. The hatred between the two sides is now at a very high level. Blood will have blood.
That’s a fascinating analysis, thank you. It sounds like Israel thought they could secure their strategic position by liberating Iran (with airpower alone) and gaining a powerful new ally. But instead they ended up in an even more precarious situation, and now both the Arab states and the Iranian regime have a reason for launching an all-out attack on Israel.
Every country in the Gulf and the USA are in trouble. It is difficult to get out of this situation.
More thoughts on Trump and the Iran War.
John Bolton is a long-time proponent of regime change in Tehran, and according to him Trump wasn’t interested in that at all in his first term. Back then Trump was certainly told of the risks of going to war with Iran and of the danger of closing the Strait of Hormuz. So why is Trump so bothered about Iran now? The risk of Iran having nuclear weapons isn’t any different than North Korea having the same weapons and threatening South Korea with them. And since when does Trump care about the fate of any allies? As soon as he came back into office in 2025 Trump started blaming and badmouthing NATO allies for everything. In the midst of a war he didn’t even consult with them about, Trump is going out of his way to blame and ridicule NATO allies (and Japan) and make clear that the trans-Atlantic alliance is functionally over. Is that what the point of the war really was, to fracture the Western alliance and indirectly hand over Europe to Russia by giving Iran and/or China control over Middle Eastern oil? The US didn’t even try to control the Strait of Hormuz and sent away its minesweeper ship from the ME to Southeast Asia on the first day of the war. And Trump still refuses assistance from Ukraine, the only country with the technology to effectively counter Iranian drones, and who might have a chance of keeping the Strait open. Why? Because Trump considers Zelensky, the enemy of his friend (Putin), to be his enemy? Because the real goal of this war was to close the Strait and cause an economic crisis for Europe, just in time for Russia’s attack on the Baltics? Or because the Russian economy is in trouble and Putin’s regime needs high oil prices to survive? Probably all three and more. In the middle of the Iran War crisis the Trump Admin still took time to stump for Orban’s reelection in Hungary and to pressure Ukraine to surrender all of Donetsk to Russia. Trump definitely has his priorities.
Looking at the big picture, Trump’s blunders are not random. Everyone describes his policies as transactional, as if he has no convictions and no fixed ideology. But clearly that’s not true. Inasmuch as Trump has any ideology beyond his personal self-aggrandizement, it’s that the path to Trump’s greatness lies through Russia. Also, it’s fair to say that in his 40-year relationship with Russia Trump has internalized certain elements of Soviet propaganda. In 1987 he came back from the USSR and took out an ad in a New York City newspaper saying that the US didn’t need to be in NATO, and decades later he’s doubled and tripled down on this idea and actually trying to make it happen. If that’s not a sign of deeply held conviction, then what is? Certainly he has a very Russian-like hatred of Europe, a very odd quality for an American president to have. And if he’s faking it, well then clearly he’s playing the part the Russian scriptwriters wrote for him with relish, so either way he’s still working for Russia.
Yes. Trump is clearly serving Moscow. And the Epstein files gave us a glimpse at the strings Moscow has to yank him puppet-like across the world stage.
And indeed, it is very erratic and puppet-like. He does something they want, and then has to bluster and send conflicting messages until they give him further instructions. At least, that’s what it looks like to me.
Trump’s strategy appears less inspired by Carl von Clausewitz than by video games: https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2032115039985881556?lang=en
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2029953667600646655
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVejgkGkUPU/
I can picture the guy, red‑faced, controller in hand: “How come I didn’t win the war? I just OBLITERATED the final boss!”
It is difficult to envision the sheer size of the Iranian military and the size of their society. It is larger in population than the Third Reich. And they are wealthier than the Third Reich. The Western allies dropped the equivalent of 600 atomic bombs on German cities during the war and the place did not stop fighting until Hitler was literally surrounded and forced out of his bunker. Has Trump actually done more damage than that to Iran? Really?
I can only imagine what the kid Donald Trump would have done with that hatchet and the cherry tree – and his father.
Trump’s emerging “happy isolation”, having been worked towards by Moscow & Beijing for so many decades:
NO friendly relations or even basic civilised diplomacy with any of America’s allies. NO trade relations with the rest of the world the way it has been the norm for a long time. And NO safety any longer for U.S. citizens anywhere outside America (or even inside America, for that matter).
In line with a century of Soviet propaganda, he is turning the United States into the prime pariah of the world. He doesn’t care, of course, and the rest can go bite the dust. What the anyway-shrinking crowd of faithful MAGAites cannot see is that he has taken the U.S. hostage pretty much the same way the mullahs took Iran hostage 47 years ago. And God knows what else he will do in the remaining 33 months of his second term (unless he gets thrown out of office before that).
Oh, he will be thrown out of office.
In the article you predict that the Senate Republicans will vote to impeach Trump next year. Why are you so sure they’ll do that if the Democrats win the House in November? So far the Republicans are sticking by Trump, not daring to criticize the Iran War and actually blocking a vote on congressional approval of the war. Why are they not politically distancing themselves from Trump, especially in light of his falling approval ratings? Is it because Trump and Musk threatened to primary any Republicans who are against him? Are they waiting for more conservatives to turn against Trump? What is it?
Trump’s primary threats are now empty. Candidates are already distancing themselves from him. Nobody will want his endorsement. He is toxic. If Republicans are smart they will remove Trump for medical/insanity reasons before June. The earlier they remove him the better. He has destroyed himself. He is finished. There is no coming back from this. He is bugs-platted on the political windshield of our national life.
Because approval ratings are fickle and there is a lot of time left before November. If he wraps it up in a month or so, that leaves 6 months of other news and people will have forgotten Iran. As it is, it has cost 14 soldiers, several billion, and weapons. And gas prices elevated for about a month. It all depends on how this thing turns out. There’s a lot that Trump could do to try to break the back of the regime. I think NATO withdrawal is just a threat. I think the desalination attack is just a threat. I can’t imagine he would touch desalination plants. He throws a lot of threats out there to muddy the waters. It is better to talk about things he has actually done than things he’s threatening to do. And what he has done so far has not cost the US that much, aside from interceptors maybe, and those need to be replenished. The true cost will not be known until we see how Hormuz plays out. If it stays like this he definitely takes damage. But I am not so sure it does. Once again we are panicking here about things that might happen or that he’s threatening to do. Letting Russia make money was not great but he had to do it to keep political support both here and at home. I’m not even sure what I’m listening to here sometimes. Were we supposed to allow them to build up thousands of ballistic missiles? And then once they were impregnable, what would the narrative have been? That Trump is an agent because he allowed Russia’s client state to become untouchable, no doubt. Is it a bad thing that he attacked Iran? Leftists believe so. It seems some here think so. My opinion only depends on how it affects our missile defenses in a future war with Russia China. He has been smart to keep casualties very low and has avoided the quagmire trap so far. Let’s see how it plays out.
His words are an action all in themselves.
—————-
From the Bible: Pro 26:18 As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death,
Pro 26:19 So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?
——————
From my grandfather’s old Blue Jacket Manual that he got when he entered the Navy:
“Loose lips sink ships ”
—————-
From Aesop’s Fables:
The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.
——————
His words matter. A lot. And please tell me how his words and actions have helped Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, our allies, or us? But they have definitely helped Russia and China.
That’s fine, but you would essentially be admitting that you are not judging him by his actual actions. The Bible says to be wise as serpents, no? Did not King David pretend to be crazy when he was captured by the Philistines?
I judge him by his character -his words, actionions, and results.
The Bible says to be wise *as* serpents, but it doesn’t say to actually*be* a serpent, a snake in the grass. I haven’t seen any wisdom in Trump anyhow. Ever.
King David acted crazy for a short time in desperation for his life after being on the run from King Saul for years.
When the Phillistine ruler gave him Ziklag, he attacked Israel’s enemies from there. He didn’t hurt their friends. And he kept his integrity, which I say Trump has never had.
I wouldn’t compare Trump to King David. Even when David committed grave sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, he humbled himself and repented when confronted. Trump has said he’s never had anything to ask forgiveness for.
David was also a true “war hero.” He didn’t boast, but rather wrote Psalms of praise, worship, and gratitude to God. Trump claimed he was a war hero on Mark Levin’s show, and constantly boasts about everything.
There are light years’ of distance between the character, abilities, and accomplishments of the two.
As a youth, David was eager to face down an enemy that had the entire Israeli army cowed. Trump had five draft deferments.
Also, once David was King, he did not ever flatter or pretend to flatter Israel’s enemies.
Trump says Putin is a good guy. Has our military roll out the red carpet for him. Puts a picture of the two of them together and in the White House. Berates Zelenskey, and insults Europe even as much of Europe understands Russia is preparing to attack them.
Pro 24:24 He that saith unto the wicked, Thou are righteous; him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him:
Pro 24:25 But to them that rebuke him shall be delight, and a good blessing shall come upon them.
Actions, not actionions, lol.
Also, it is not wisdom for Trump to speak to and about our allies as he does.
Pro 26:18 As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death,
Pro 26:19 So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?
What leader and representative of a nation of people could rightly put up with that for very long?
I don’t think Trump is pretending in that sense. Do you?
Historian, it doesn’t follow that the only option of dealing with Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles is all out war on the regime. The US already tried pre-emptive war and regime change to stop a murderous dictator from getting weapons of mass destruction with Iraq in 2003, and look how that turned out. The US went in with ground troops and in the end still didn’t recover the weapons, at a cost of trillions of dollars and a strategic victory for Iran. And moreover, Iran is not an isolated pariah state. It’s the largest state in the Middle East and an important ally of Russia and China. As we speak the latter two are supplying Iran with drones and tech components to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to Western ships. Instead of getting caught in strategic traps trying to fight satellites of Russia and China, isn’t it better to go after the source of the trouble? But instead Trump wants to do business with China and have a strategic partnership with Russia.
China and especially Russia were on the verge of economic disaster over one month ago, and all Trump had to do was ramp up the pressure and cause the Russian regime to collapse. Without Russia’s assistance there would be no Iranian nuclear weapons program. Cuba and Venezuela’s regimes would also be in deep trouble if Russia and China could no longer sustain them. America’s strategic objectives could have been more easily achieved without starting a war in the world’s most sensitive waterway. But what does Trump do instead? He bails out Russia from certain economic disaster, and by an ingenious switcheroo inflicts a worse economic disaster on America and the West. Not only that, but by removing the oil sanctions Trump is actually rewarding Russia for supplying Iran with drones and targeting data against American military assets in the region. It’s a rather anti-American move by the supposed MAGA president. The excuse that they need to remove sanctions to keep the oil prices down is very convenient, and in the end how long did it suppress oil prices for? A few days? Prices still rose and they will rise again because Trump has no way of stopping the Iranian regime’s closure of the Strait.
You write as if the Iran War and closure of the Strait will be resolved in a few weeks (can the US master drone interceptor technology in that short a time?), and that everything will go back to normal and people will forget about Trump’s irresponsible war. But the trust that was lost by America’s allies can’t just bounce back like the stock market, assuming that the latter eventually rebounds. And Trump hasn’t actually laid out any plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, he basically said that the current situation will be the status quo until *somebody else* intervenes to change it. I wonder who that somebody else will be, maybe China? Trump has abdicated all responsibility for the war that he started, and light of that it’s only reasonable to wonder if his stated reasons for going to war were genuine or just a cover for an end result that only Russia and China could have wished for.
Laura: To add to your analysis, there is a story out of China that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is prepared to send 100,000 troops to Iran to defend the place against a U.S. invasion. So what you are saying has a lot of validity. Iran is not alone, and a widened war would almost certainly follow. Escalation to an invasion seems to be a logical path, but if China also escalates, the situation becomes very difficult. But the main thing is that the American people will not support such a war long-term. At least they will not do so yet.
So just to understand your point, you’re saying all Trump should have done was continue his economic pressure and the Russian regime would have collapsed? Not attack Iran at all, but just maintain the sanctions. Of course China and Russia are the source but he can’t touch them. I am not sure if Russia would have “collapsed” in the 2 years remaining in Trump’s term, I don’t know enough about their internal finances, but I am rather skeptical. Maybe Jeff can chime in on the financial windfall gained by Russia in this past month vs where they were, to place it in context. Of course Jeff says now that Trump is “definitely serving Russia”.
I will say it is rather odd that I could easily accuse the Europeans far more easily of serving Russia. Keir Starmer might as well work for the Communists. No one is helping target Iran. Spain, France. I haven’t heard too much criticism of them here. I am personally more concerned with the interceptors and missile defenses. Every casualty is bad, but casualties have been relatively low in historical context. The cost has probably been several hundred billions. And the ultimate cost vis a vis global energy markets and the Strait has yet to play out. The cost in regards to financially helping Russia I would love to know from more knowledgeable people than me, placed within context of where they were at. If Trump does not solve it, then quite obviously it will be his political downfall. You said it yourself, he didn’t have to do this. So why did he? The leftist consensus is because he’s a warmonger, the consensus here is because he’s a Russian agent. Do we think a savvy political animal like him did not know the risks? I think he did it because he has a short time left and thought it imperative to try and set them back decades before he left office.
Then you accept what Trump says at face value, in spite of his many inconsistencies and contradictions. That’s fine if you want to do that.
I watched a talk Putin gave in which he had convened government officials and heads of their petroleum industry, and was saying that they had a tremendous opportunity to increase oil revenue and must do everything they could to capitalize on it.
When I say “Trump is serving Russia,” this is not to say that he knows what he is doing. It is hard to guess what this poor man “knows.” He may have been guided to this, or provoked, blackmailed or flattered into it. He is so disintegrated, and so disintegrating, he probably cannot do otherwise. It is his instinct. Epstein called him the most evil of men. It takes one to know one, right? One cannot know the all details, or the exceptions to the rule. But the moves and the outcomes here are definitely favorable to Russia and China. Too steadily favorable. Someone has guided him to this. But he decided. Evil is a kind of blindness. So he walks blindly. He likes darkness. Will he continue to serve Russia’s interests? Or is it madness? You see, one cannot be sure. One must not be sure. But one sees and feels moments of sureness.
I am afraid Trump is in a quagmire. His foot is in the bear trap and he cannot get free. Why would the Iranians let him out of this trap? This is a strategic situation that does not go away so easily.
Historian: I should add that you have raised a number of strategic questions that there are no easy answers for. We let Russia and China build thousands of missiles. Why did we do that? Because we really had no choice. Our policy should be deterrence, and to keep our strength, build our alliance, and we need to cut them out of the global trading. It may have been a fatal move to let them into that system, and to have allowed the European colonial empires to fall into communist hands. But that is water under the bridge. One is more undone by mistakes than by simple defensive preparations. Machiavelli said that in complex situation the best thing is usually to do nothing and react to the enemy’s mistakes. He also said that one must no abuse the policy of “doing nothing.”
I think it is a strong argument that mistakes can sometimes be more deadly than doing nothing. I was also wondering, Jeff, do you think the US is gaining any valuable military experience from this? It seems to me yes, in regards to handling these drone swarms, developing cheap counter measures, etc.. it also seems they are gaining some experience in missile defense and also in these initial strikes targeting Chinese and Russian missile defense systems.
Another thing I thought recently was that Trump was essentially “stress testing” the global system and exposing cracks. The Europeans and Australia are exposed as being completely weak in regards to energy pain points. The US gains valuable experience in seeing how Iran responds, I am sure there was a cyber component to this that they must have neutralized as well. By and large, the US has “absorbed” the economic blow better than most, due to the energy policies and some other things. It would be better to have more shale oil refineries and one was announced recently, although it will take a while. But in general it did strike me that this was a “stress test” of sorts, and both the US and Israel are gaining valuable military experience in how to handle some of these drone swarms and missile attacks. Do you think there is any validity to this at all, or do you think this “gain” in knowledge is offset by the cost in defending, vis a vis loss of interceptors, etc..
The global economic system is not a crash dummy, lol.
Historian, nothing is a guarantee, but now was the best opportunity to try to push for the collapse of the Russian regime. Russia is massively dislocating its own economy by pushing ahead with mobilization, and now they are conscripting professionals and workers in small and medium businesses, not just convicts and the dregs of society. Russia also just cut off the internet and basically killed all economic activity in its two largest cities. Before and during the Iran War, Russia’s oil depots were getting hit massively and Ukraine was able to reduce their oil exports by 40%. So at the very least, just don’t do anything in the Middle East to cause oil prices to shoot up, and place the toughest possible sanctions on Russia. Speaking of sanctions, Trump didn’t do anything more than Biden. As soon as put some limited sanctions on Russia, he took them off again to keep the oil prices down. According to Jeff, Russia is getting at least $6 billion more per week then they were getting before thanks to Trump. Jeff said recently that Trump’s loophole-laden sanctions on a few specific Russian oil companies before the war made little difference, it just caused Russia to reshuffle its oil exports through other state-backed companies.
As for Europe being too soft on Russia, they made the big mistake years ago of becoming dependent on Russian oil. The US made itself dependent on China for manufacturing. It’s not an easy thing to fix and it took years for Europe to move away from Russian oil. It’s not an excuse for Trump to unilaterally cut off their best alternative source of energy.
Re the “stress test” theory. Starting an economically disastrous war in the world’s most sensitive waterway just to get some tactical experience is not a good idea. The US military could have just done more training exercises with the Ukrainians and learned everything they needed to know about drone warfare with much less risk.
Excellent point.
I get a sinking feeling he may try to plunge us into civil war.
He couldn’t be bothered to really go after Antifa in his first term. Why are they suddenly such a priority now? It was very laughable how Bondi said we are going to tear them down “just as we did with the cartels”, brick by brick from top to bottom. We’ve done no such thing to the cartels, lol.
But, it seems Trump’s and his administration’s claims of accomplishments grow with each rehearsal thereof.
He has gone from saying he took out the Ayatollah and next leader of Iran, to saying we have taken out two and maybe three*regimes.*
He said we sank their navy in the first week, but the ship toll continues to climb. At first, it was 48. Then 52 next time he spoke. Then, I think 144 or so. Last I listened to him, it was 150 or 152, something like that.
I get the feeling those brave people who Trump had at the event last night were just being used. I’m not familiar with most of them, but one of those guys seemed to be trying to hold Trump’s feet to the fire on following through with destroying Antifa. And I think Trump felt it, because he pivoted to speak about himow he cleaned up Washington DC in 12 days, then started speaking about Memphis, etc
Will he really follow through on dismantling Antifa? I mean, there need to be executions of some of them. Will he do what really needs to be done? They said they’re going to go to the top. Don’t they realize Russia and China are at the top of the structure, just as they are at the top of the cartel structure?
Or will we just get maybe two or three leaders arrested or killed, and a couple big funders arrested, while the money flow continues via a myriad of other means.
I notice Fox News really went in depth on this Neville Roy Singham as a big funder revolutionary activity in America. So, maybe he’s an “acceptable target.”
Maybe he’ll be the one they take down in order to promote the image of destroying our domestic Communist enemies.
Maybe George Soros is an “acceptable target” as a funder of revolutionary activity in America, since he’s at death’s door anyway, and I’m sure he is not necessary for his structures to continue functioning.
One thing I don’t believe is that Trump will do anything to truly help America in any substantial, deep, lasting way…it’s not in accordance with Russia/China’s wishes.
The Iranian coast hides hundreds of strike boats with drones, missiles, and mines.
Except for the hardcore MAGA faithful, the Republican Party leadership is going to turn against Trump. The more kooky MAGA faithful could act out, but people have instincts. They get scared. Trump has defeated himself. They must remove him for mental health reasons. The sooner the better.
I don’t know how good most people’s instincts are anymore. I just saw a Facebook post by a local lawyer/cattleman and all around pretty good guy, in which he shared a meme asking how much do folks still trust the Trump Administration: 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%.
The vast majority are enthusiastically saying 100%.
One of them is a now-retired former History teacher of mine, who definitely should know better if she actually knew anything from history. And she was Leftist leaning, which makes her 100% statement even more surprising.
From what I see, he still has a solid base among the average people. Maybe they’re just tired of being jerked every which way, and throwing all judgement and instinct out the window and staying with him all the way… wherever that leads.
If he is impeached, there is no good person to take his place, imo, and I think he would plunge us into civil war. We know he has no regard for human life.
Are you seeing something different among everyday Americans? You have a lot more access to a lot of information and input. I will say that many are pretty quiet on their opinions, and they make up a sizeable number, so I’m hoping their overall silence is an indication of mistrust. But, I just don’t know. I think many people at least where I live are prepared and willing to face hard times, but I sure hate to see them continue to think this man is our best or only hope.
I could be wrong, but I do not see a civil war. I see the right losing credibility and losing its voice in the country. People who like Trump, when Trump is destroying the country, will be disregarded. If they use illegal methods in protest, they will be crushed and the majority will applaud.
🙏🏻
There are at least 27.6 million reasons why Russia would NOT want a man like Trump in as President and hand on the nuclear trigger
What does that mean? Is that a population number?
A friend shared this with me:
https://youtu.be/vLVSB5fqgdE?si=QJ0nJ1swhOIJNbhP
I encourage everyone to look at 46:40 to 47:43.
This redactions of the names and personal information of 40 of the *victims* had to have been purposefully done. It feels like a Mafia-style threat towards the victims to me. Maybe that’s the warning to any of them who could speak out about Trump.
This *redaction*, I meant.
Just so I can understand things a little more clearly, let’s say we had the perfect candidate who came into office when Trump did in Jan 2024. What would he do, in your opinion, Jeff?
He would be crucified.
I understand, but if you are going to criticize Trump, who has done a lot of good anti-communist things in my opinion, it only seems reasonable to put forth the list of things that your ideal candidate would do, so that people like me could compare and see what you hold up as a viable alternative.
If they are completely politically unrealistic, then you are criticizing Trump from a position of hypothetical idealism, which is fine, but it’s also very easy to do.
He has sealed up the border, deported many foreign national criminals, invested more money in the military, into missile defense, put more sanctions on Russia than Biden did, reinvigorated America’s national energy security, is attacking Russian proxies in Venezuela, their drug proxies in Latin America, etc..
So that is why I ask because it seems odd to me to say that Trump is “serving Russia” because I would like to know what you see the ideal candidate as doing so that we can compare. If they would be “crucified”, as you say, and wouldn’t even get anything done realistically, then the entire point is moot in my opinion, because anyone could compare anyone to a hypothetical, unrealistic ideal, and they would always fall short. We have to deal in what is politically realistic, and I am totally open to criticisms of Trump, but it helps to know what he is being compared to to see where his actual realistic political shortcomings are. If by definition you are saying his alternative would not even get things done in the real world, then you are essentially admitting he is the best that current political realism can do.
Strategically, will you take this deal from me? I will give you everything for three weeks. Name anything and you will have it. After three weeks, you give me your soul. Do you like this deal. Do you think I am a politician you will vote for, or a devil sent from Hell?
Good way to put it.
If the Republicans removed Trump for mental health reasons by June it would be ideal. But he’s currently doing such an amazing job of destroying the Republican Party, dividing NATO, and driving up oil prices to fund Russia’s war, that I can’t imagine the Russians ever allowing this to happen. I think they’ll keep him in there as long as possible, just like they did with Biden.
Notice that women on his Cabinet who have been fired or are about to be fired. All of them have to do with intelligence and/or security. Pam Bondi has the FBI under her and is receiving reports about the Iranian terror threat. A week into the war, Kristi Noem started talking about domestic terror threats and was axed. And now DNI Tulsi Gabbard is on the chopping block. All pretty faces the president loves. But they are women, likely afraid of what is coming, and offering sober assessments. Or perhaps they all decided Trump has lost his mind and whispers of the 25th Amendment, Article 4, reached Trump. So he is preemptively preventing anyone from organizing his removal. My thought on this is speculative but informed. There are psychological markers. Trump wants no bad news. The bad news girls are the leading edge of his internal troubles. He fires them. Whatever this is there will be more to come.
Bad news girls!! So funny! That being said, Tulsi was the only one to voice any polite disagreement with Trump’s policies. I don’t think Bondi and Noem had the fortitude to even contemplate going after Trump like that, so more likely they were removed for failing to make the boss look good on their respective issues (deportations and Epstein).
As for domestic terror threats, an attack is certainly possible, but if the Iranians were smart they would hold off on that. Right now the American public is against the war and does not want a long-drawn out campaign with boots on the ground. But that could change if Iran tries to do a 9/11 style attack. Like you said, Iran has Trump caught in a bear trap. So why would it give him a way out? Strategically Russia and China are the big winners of this war, so they will want to keep Iran from retaliating with direct terrorist attacks on America. But maybe I’m missing something here?
Yes, that is a good point, and Iran has been quite restrained so far. Cutting the strait is a decisive strategy, and they are winning because of it. At least for now.
I have heard it said that the US could decide to simply stop all oil exports and they would be fine. Do you know if this is true, Jeff? I was under the impression we have to first send our oil somewhere else to be refined first. Of course we now get the Venezuelan crude which we can refine. Do you know, if the US decided, could they simply ban exports and be fine with oil domestically?
Stop all oil exports? The United States cannot presently survive as an autarchy. We cannot cut ourselves from the world and prosper. It would take a decade of suffering and belt-tightening before we could attempt it, and we’d be divided-and-conquered long before the decade was out if we tried. Or they would simply nuke the poor isolated America — friendless as the last capitalist dinosaur in a socialist world. Lenin described us that way. The last capitalist dinosaur would be surrounded and isolated, he allegedly predicted.
PS- Oil prices are global. Buy cheap, sell dear.
I think he fired Bondi because of Epstein and Noem because allegedly she blamed him in a Senate hearing for approving her multi-million dollar ad campaign. The Bondi one is really more inexcusable to me if there is any truth to the rumor that he was displeased with her pace of prosecutions. That would be almost unforgivable to me, to be making that kind of mistake at this stage of his presidency. He has to be putting people in there who will absolutely be prosecuting the communists. Now his personal attorney is elevated to the position, which might have been his plan all along, and also gives him leverage over the Senate to approve his replacement. But I am not pleased with the lack of prosecutions of the foreign communist network and the financing networks.
There is no comprehensive action that seems effective here. It is always half-measures that help to mobilize the left.
Interesting theory. Yes I had thought it odd that all the women were being shown the door. It was also recently announced that Susie Wiles has cancer and is undergoing treatment. Might leave room for a graceful exit.
Trump would be a fool to fire her, though. She’s been the key to all his success. She might also be the only one who can get him out of the mess he’s in.
I’ve also been wondering if the Russians would try to prevent Trump from being removed from office. He’s been such a good boy for them. Vance might still do the job, but on the other hand he young, ambitious, and not a raging narcissist so there’s a chance he might be able to see reason and realize that Russia’s advancement means not only the destruction of America but also of his own presidential ambitions. He’s half Trump’s age, so surely he wouldn’t want to live in a diminished America that’s at the mercy of her enemies, and would not want that for his children either. But that’s assuming he would at least be willing to listen to the right people.
Back to Trump. If he’s working for Russia then it’s not wrong to think the had help from them in the 2016 election. Not just the leaked DNI emails, social media bots and conspiracy narratives that became part of the Trump phenomenon, but also the backroom political wheeling and dealing. Russia probably cashed a lot of political chips to grease the way for Trump to become the top dog in the Republican Party. They’ve been infiltrating American Christian and conservative groups since the 90’s, so in hindsight maybe it should not be such a surprise that Evangelicals as a block chose Trump over more socially conservative primary candidates in 2016. So yeah, the Russians might try to keep Trump in office to the end of his term. We might see a lot of sordid leaks and scandals involving the politicians who would try to push for Trump’s impeachment.
Vance is a monster and would be just as bad, if not worse, than Trump.
He would act out of self-interest, because that is the explanation for all his actions, but his interests are not aligned with the well being of the United States. They are aligned with our red robber barons, Peter Thiel and his anti-American/anti-republican (in the sense of our governmental system) cabal.
There’s more. I cannot prove this, but based on rumors and tidbits such as the connection between alt-right hackers like Weev and Peter Thiel apparently being in that same orbit–along with his known connections to Curtis Yarvin, I suspect Thiel and his cabal helped fund and create the alt-right Neo-Nazi scourge that took over the dark corners of the internet just in time to promote Donald Trump. Former associates of Weev have claimed Weev was hired by Peter Thiel to blackmail/attack various enemies of Thiel. Weev is also a major figure in the alt-right and helped setup the online infrastructure of such websites as the Daily Stormer, which organized troll raids against innocent people, organized the Charlottsville riots, and have spread anti-American and anti-freedom propaganda. These alt-right creeps were also from the start Pro-Russian and Pro-China. The most notorious of them all have direct ties to Moscow. Both Andrew Anglin of Daily Stormer infamy and Weev — who were deeply involved in promoting 4chan Nazi culture– actually live in Russia today.
Note also that anti-semitism is now mainstream with the Pro-Russian right. Tucker Carlson is essentially your typical Russian style antisemite, promoting the same conspiracy theories that flood out of the dark corners of the Russian internet. He interviewed Nick Fuentes. Nick Shirley, that barely literate cretin who went to expose alleged fraud in Minnesota from Somalians, was previously in Ukraine promoting Russian propaganda. He also has retweeted anti-semitic material. This is common amongst anti-Ukraine MAGA influencers.
It’s clear that antisemitic ideology and conspiracy theory culture is used as a pipeline to turn people towards Russia and China.
Returning to Vance, he is a creature of Thiel and thus serves this same anti-American ideology. Vance has no morals whatsoever. Any study of his career shows this. He is an opportunist, without an ideology, other than that he is obedient to the people who pull his strings and who made his career.
A Vance presidency perhaps would behave more rationally, but it would behave in service of increasing the power of our red robber barons and, through them, the interests of Moscow.
Very good comment, Ricardo. You have outlined the situation there exactly.
jeffrey nyquist do you have clear signs that with all this Moscow and Beijing can anticipate the attack? Have your contacts and studies noticed any major movement? Can the attack on your vision be anticipated?
Attack on my vision? Yes. From day one. Can Moscow anticipate what?
Jeffrey Nyquist, with all these events in Iran, do you think that Moscow and Beijing’s attack on the USA can be anticipated since the USA is weaker? What do your sources and experience say? or can ukraine get in the way?
As the U.S. economy and alliances are broken down, the way is opened for Russia and China’s attack directly on the USA. Their mobilization is cunning for its gradualism. Their timetable has a lot of built-in patience.
jeffrey nyquist is it true that moscow has a bunker on mount yamantau for 60 thousand people?
Yes. It is an underground city, actually.
Jeffrey Nyquist What are the titles of all your books?
“Origins of the Fourth World War,” which is out in Portuguese for Brazilian readers. Check Amazon; “The Fool and His Enemy,” also out in Brazil. “The Lies We Believe In.” Then there are books I co-authored with other people: “The New Tactics of Global War,” “Back From the Dead: Return of the Evil Empire,” and “Red Jihad.”
Jeff, what do you think about the military campaign in general? 13,000 targets seems like an immense amount.
This CNN article says 50% of Iran’s missile launchers and 50% of drones still remain.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/02/politics/iran-missiles-us-military-strikes-trump
Do you think this is true? Why have they had such difficulty eliminating them, in your opinion?
Also, do you think they have accomplished some good things from this campaign? Have the US been using missiles that they have a lot of. Curious to hear your thoughts on the actual military campaign.
Have they accomplished “some good things”? War is about victory, and the battle is to achieve victory; that is, to make your enemy do your will. If the enemy closes the strait and you walk away and admit you cannot open the straight, what will any “good thing” matter? You have done the enemy’s will. They have not done yours. You walk away from the Middle East. You wipe your hands of it. You have been decisively defeated. America must find a way to open the strait and bring down the regime. If there is no way to do this, then we lose. We must find a way. Is that understood? It must be understood. If we began this war without having a way to win, then we began it badly.
It has been announced today that Iran downed an F-35 and that the crew is still missing. Being able to down our most sophisticated fighter does not sound like something that a ‘completely decimated’ enemy would still be capable of doing. Unlike Trump’s speech the other night, Iran does still ‘hold some cards’ apparently. Trump has embraced a tar-baby in this situation and it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the US, Israel, and the western world to come out of this mess in better shape than we started. Also, if my understanding is correct, the downing of an F-35 means no further use of B-52’s which are slow and can only be used when we have total control of the skies.
retraction: apparently the downed plane is now identified as an F-15E. Still, a serious setback to US control of the skies in Iran.
Do we know how they downed the plane?
This was not unforeseeable. But I doubt Iran will let the Gulf states have it both ways, make a deal with Iran to open the Strait while still staying under the US security umbrella. The Satterfield quote below is where we are now.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/gulf-states-may-seek-de-risk-deal-with-iran-while-retaining-us-security-umbrella-panel-6004459?est=gzgcFgqwkA4tnB5wkyR8XwCnWzkbVEZAaHPYu%2B%2BgMx2fGvCXQGntXCz5nnDXdB%2BR
The “second worry,” said Satterfield, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey in the first Trump administration and a senior Iraq adviser during the Bush administration, “is it does end … in a declaration of victory by [President Donald Trump] that isn’t a victory at all and Iran now has a dominant hand” in the Persian Gulf.
The latest episode Live with Jeff, Johnny and Lee. It came out after Trump’s Apr 1 speech, and Jeff didn’t hold back in this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY6Wg0TPpCc
The saddest part is the brief comment about the Polish President’s speech at CPAC. He was warning American conservatives that Russia is not a conservative bastion, nor their friend, and in fact is coming for Europe and America soon. Only four people in the entire audience clapped. Conservatives so thoroughly infected by the Russia virus they will not hear the truth.
A question. Couldn’t Europe still get oil from Saudi Arabia through the Suez Canal? Could that be enough for Europe?
Also, could a long-term solution to the Strait of Hormuz problem be to build pipelines from Saudi and the Gulf states that go directly to the Arabian Sea? They could bypass Hormuz and the Gulf of Aden (where the Houthis are) all together.
Don’t forget the communist tribes in Yemen. The Strait of Hormuz carries 20 percent of the world’s oil supply through it. There is no other practical way to get the oil out. Tanker trucks sufficient do not exist and I do not think there are sufficient roads fifties anyway. And that would be highly inefficient even if there were. Pipelines take years to build and drones can destroy pipelines as easily as tankers.
Jeff, I’m in the middle of watching the latest episode of your guys’ show, but do you think Russia got Trump to start this conflict directly, or do you think they worked through Israel? I know the US military had been discussing a campaign like this for a while. I read that Rubio was in favor of it. Do we really know anything else about how it all unfolded?
Rubio is a smart guy. This seems like a huge error in judgment. Do you think there’s something they know that we don’t, that’s going to bring a resolution quickly? Or was this a total miscalculation?
I’ll keep watching. Maybe you answer some of these questions later in the video, but wanted to get in in case the comments close.
US military has been smug and know it all. Trump tricked Israel, imo. Why do we do onky 1/3rd of the bombing effort to tiny Israel’s 2/3rds? Israel has a 65% success rate to our 45%. Their beads on the Basij thugs and IRGC on the ground is 90% of the intel work. We do not know what is going on and have been dragging feet in this.
I will not even talk about snobbing drones and Ukrainian know how, it is even worse than US commanders being ridiculed by Israeli ones, but not so obviously as Israeli officers have been diplomatic about the inane incompetence. Heck, the woke officer corp even snobs it when an NCO mentions the usage of 60s radar technology and methods in a modern 21st century drone warfare require special radars and software which had been promised for the past 20 years but never came out. As for contractors, they dont want NCOs to fix things and frown at survival solutions. They all are incompetent anyways, only there for the bureaucracy territorial check.
I am not liking what I see. There are so many safety and combat issues but the very people in charge of it dont want to be lectured by Ukrainians, Israelis or their own subbordinates. It really is stupid. The schizophrenia is “damn if you fix it without letting your superiors know, damn the pilot if you do”. And if you have a solution, unless the upper up understands it and imposes it, your coworkers will not even look at it.
When because of lack of funds you have maintenance people do operations things and cyber people rule maintenance in an operational enviroment, it just cannot work. Maintenance does not know what a pilot needs in operations, and cyber has no underatanding of air war and of the maintainers and their jobs they supervise. And so they all confuse maintenance from operations.
CENTCOM is a effin mess.
“ “or damn the pilot if you do not fix it” that is.
It is a terrible thing to start a war that you cannot seem to finish successfully, and the enemy is emboldened by your mistake and develops a stronger strategic position as a result. In the first instance, it was impolitic to kill Iran’s leaders; in the second instance, I do not think it’s good to hit Iranian civilian infrastructure as it brings suffering on the civilian population. If you have precision weapons, use the weapons to hit weapons. Use the weapons to gain enough control that you can bring in troops, advance and liberate people. But then, because of drones, how to you protect your supply ships for the troops? The navy must solve the drone problem or the campaign cannot make headway.
These are interesting comments. I have heard that certain things were not being done right at CENTCOM from Army officers in the past. This could be a problem. I pray our people will do everything as they should.
Rubio certainly should have known better. We are told by many sources that Trump makes his own decisions, but someone must have encouraged him to do this. Who exactly? I don’t know.
I just looked it up & it jogged my memory: Steve Witikoff went over to Iran to try to cut a deal, and came back saying that the Iranians were bragging about having enriched enough uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs. And apparently that was what Trump reacted to. I hadn’t really put all of that together.
It sounds like Elbridge Colby is of course involved in all the planning. All the usual suspects!
*Witkoff
The Iranian regime has used the threat of developing their enriched uranium into weapons for a long time. The problem, of course, is that we do not trust them. But now we begin to realize that maybe they did not make a nuclear bomb when Obama lifted sanctions and returned their frozen assets. Maybe they were never intending to cheat. After all, what good would nuclear weapons be for them? Israel would nuke them if they tried anything. So they use the enriched uranium as a bargaining tool. It makes sense. Maybe the whole thing about having enough uranium for 11 warheads was to scare us into making a deal, into lifting sanctions. But this backfired. The Iranian leaders did not remember what happened with North Korea. In 1994 we negotiated a deal. North Korea would get, if memory serves, $10 billion in food aid if they abandoned their nuclear weapons project. But then, in April 2001, the Pentagon announced that North Korea had two nuclear weapons. In other words, the Clinton administration was cheated. And now, because of this, many in Washington think Iran will play the same game. If we lift sanctions or give them money they will build nuclear weapons anyway. We have been in this position before.
The Iranians evidently did not realize how crazy all this made the Israelis and the Americans. They literally pushed their bargaining position to the point that Israel and America launched a preemptive attack. It was an ill-advised attack, as it turns out; that is, unless some American military genius figures out how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In that case the U.S. could recover the initiative.
That’s very interesting. Usually the tendency is for the US to underestimate an adversary (eg. Russia, China, Al Qaeda etc.) In this case the US was too paranoid and jumped the gun.
My only question is how does Russia factor in? You’ve hypothesized before that Iran was getting all the expertise on how to build a nuclear weapon from Russia, and that they either already built a bomb or Russia could supply them with one at any time. I just saw a headline saying that Russia ordered an evacuation of all its personnel at an Iranian nuclear facility, so Russia is definitely involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Do you think Russia set up Iran’s nuclear program as a provocation, to bait the US into attacking the regime so that Iran could then escalate by closing the Strait of Hormuz? Or do you think the program was mainly Iran’s idea, with the intention being to extort money from the West rather than actually building nuclear weapons? On that point, surely a country as large as Iran has its own spies and agents in the US who would have correctly gauged the mood in Washington concerning Iran’s nuclear program. These agents would have warned the regime that the American leadership was very distrustful of the regime’s willingness to honor the deal. We already saw last June that the US was willing to go to war to ensure Iran’s nuclear facilities were destroyed. And Trump himself had already showed his duplicity and willingness to resort to assassination by killing General Soleimani on the way to a parlay during his first term. By bragging that they had enough enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs the ayatollahs must have known they were playing with fire. Did they really miscalculate or was it a provocation? They probably didn’t expect that they themselves would be wiped out on the first day. But maybe they intended to start a wider war?
Almost all of Iran’s nuclear engineers were trained were trained by the Russians. This is not speculation. And yes, Russia has been helping Iran with nuclear power. Putin has said that Iran has the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. As for Iran’s leadership being naive about Trump’s willingness to murder them, they did allow themselves to believe America would restrain Israel until the March 1, deadline. We must remember that Trump constantly makes deadlines and suddenly extends them. In their cynicism they were thinking of Trump as TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. He forced Israel to back off on regime change last June. You can see why they would underestimate the danger of a surprise attack. They arrived at an optimistic assessment, and Moscow may have misled them in this as well — though this is purely speculative. The Iranian government also had the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. Surely they thought the Americans understood that it was a Mexican stand-off. Tehran was sure Washington knew this, and Washington held Israel’s leash. This was proven in June. Israel is too dependent on America to risk our wrath. They would not dare violate Trump’s deadline. What Iran failed to consider was Trump’s arrogance and stupidity. Surely this American president would not commit suicide by an act that would force Tehran to close the Strait of Hormuz. Every American president had backed off, had refused to attack. They all understood the catastrophic consequences. Here is where the Iranians miscalculated. Trump did not understand what he was doing. Trump committed suicide and attacked anyway. Many supposed experts have said that the strait could be cleared, but these TV experts did not think it through. The chief lesson of the Ukrainian war is that you cannot stop drones when it comes to ships. The Russian Black Sea fleet has been reduced by one third. Drones can drive ships off the sea. Tankers catch fire when drones hit them. It’s that simple. The Iranians did not underestimate Trump. They overrated him. They thought he understood the cards they were holding.
Laura, I was just coming here to say this very thing. You said it much more eloquently than I ever could. That is exactly what this looks like– perhaps Witkoff came back from Iran and said, “The Iranians are bragging that they have 11 nuclear weapons. They’re going to nuke Tel Aviv.” Or something like that. And Trump took the bait! And now “we’re winning more than ever before” because Trump, the Savior of humanity, thinks he prevented a nuclear holocaust! And no one will be able to convince him that this was a mistake.
If this is what happened, it also will probably affect his judgment going forward, because he thinks he has inside knowledge that no one else had. If the American people condemn him, well, he knows he was right to save all those people’s lives.
This has Russia written all over it. This was way too good of a plan to just have been devised by Iran. Russia benefits over and over. It was executed perfectly, too. Russia’s making money hand over fist on oil. Trump has his excuse to withdraw from NATO. Weapons are being diverted from Ukraine to the Middle East. Europe’s economies are in trouble, on the verge of rationing oil. Our allies in the Far East are buying oil from our enemies, and doubting whether we have their backs. The rest of the world is watching in horror, understanding for the first time how right they were to oppose the American conservatives. The Republican Party, at both the national and state levels, is looking at terrible losses in November. This is Russia’s plan. And all the blame is at the feet of the MAGA president!
Russia had hoped Trump would fall into this trap last June, but Trump fell into the trap at the end of February. In what way was he encouraged to do this? Blind error? Faulty advice? Trump does not like advice. He likes to decide in his own. But a little flattery could not have hurt.
Great summary!
Yes, it looks like both Trump and Rubio fell into it. Rubio had better distance himself from Trump fast if he wants any chance at the presidency in 2028.
Another way that Russia benefits is that we’re using up all of our Tomahawk missiles, much faster than we can replenish them. I just saw that we had to delay a shipment of Tomahawks to Japan, because they’re all being used in Iran right now. Also, India has been allowed to purchase oil from Russia again for at least a month, but that will probably be extended. The largest democracy in the world is being pushed back into the arms of Russia.
I’ve probably read 20 ways total that Russia and China benefit from this strategically over the past few weeks.
The worst part is, we have no way out of this mess. Russia and Iran can use this conflict indefinitely to inflict damage on Western economies. How will Europe be able to prepare for war with Russia if their economies are crashing? The answer is, they won’t. And Trump will probably blame them for that, too, even though it’s his fault!
If the Iranians had closed the strait without being attacked, the whole Western world would have united behind America to reopen the straits. Regime change would have been on everyone’s agenda. The political will would have been there. Buy now it is a time for mutual recriminations, disunity and disarray. It is the specific way things have been done. Very suspicious.
In tribal relations peace or accords often happen between different groups of different interests through the usage of “false solutions”, also called “weakenings”. Once that mask falls off, it is either parting way in 2 different directions or conflict.
Trump seem to urge the falling of the mask between the US and Europe. The UN is a false solution and NATO is a false solution, but European do not see it that way, but Trump seem to be highly intent on making them realize it. Also the EU is now switching from national and NaTO armies to European Union army, pretty much an orientation toward Russia and further from the US, ie the same set up Hitler sought with the Soviets originally.
Meanwhile his deal making with Venezuelan thugs is not juch different than Obama’s “rapprochement” so called with Iran and Russia. These were outright submissive incorporation attempts of the US into this third world structure dominated by Russia and China, a form of ethnic cannibalism.
Open border is also a process of cannibalism but from the inside. Leftists chant “from the belly of the beast”, which is a South American Indian mantra where the mythical monkey king asked the threatening jaguar to open his mouth wide open in a false incorporation without chewing. The monkey king swallowed whole then cut the jaguar from inside its belly.
Of note is that Romulus promoted open borders and ambiguous jurisdictions of Rome extending beyond Roman territory when in an expanding phase. Human rights and international law are all ambiguous jurisdicition making systems based in false solution contracts. Once Rome ascertained itself and felt safe, the peaceful reign of Terminus followed that of Romulus which imposed strict jurisdictions and borders because “good borders make good friends” and peace.
In short, Trump’s deal making in guise of wins for America from past exploitation by lazy Europe or aggressive China are only temporary and false solutions, ie they are prelude to war once these masks fall off precipitated by economic troubles occur or if America looks weak and can be intimidated. Already there are words out there that Canada with its oil and other rare earth has leverage on US economy and Trump backtracked, and you could see blood fire in liberal eyes when they ascertained that. This is not good.
MAGA never sees it when Trump backs down in a corner or ushers toward a structurailty of war through temporary deals and weaknenings, dealing with thugs, all the while undermining the strong alliances and masks that were shared with Europe. You can scare Europe for a time and twist arms, but at one point resentment builds up, movements are created and political animus is motivated. Already the German AfD party is anti American in great part , if not , to the tilt.
Why is NATO a false solution. I don’t understand. Please explain.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/iran-reportedly-recovering-bombed-missile-bunkers-within-hours-after-being-struck/
This is an interesting report, and for those of us who have read a lot of military history, it is not surprising. American air strikes against Iran not only hit the wrong targets, as when we tragically dropped several precision bombs on a school for girls (which was held in buildings that used to house military personnel), we also hit decoys. Bunkers thought to be destroyed sometimes are not. In war nothing is easy. The assumption that we just flip a button and it happens is usually wrong. This is not to say that the United States cannot do more damage to Iran’s capabilities, but how much time do we have, and how do we reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Airpower is always more effective when used in conjunction with ground forces that are nearby and also engaging the enemy. Combined arms is better than using one type of arm. The air is one type. Ground and air is two. Naval and air and ground together. But here you have to coordinate different branches, and you have greater complexity, and it requires more brain power. We could do this, and there are probably techniques. But I am not liking the top leadership we have at the moment. They should have had all this figured out BEFORE they went in. And I also wish we had not participated in the killing of civilian leaders. We pushed these people to take the most harsh and desperate measures, and their military machine is apparently equal to the task.
jeffrey nyquist what is your opinion on Yuan Hongbing? Is he a trustworthy person?
Is he a member of the Chinese Communist Party?
Jeffrey Nyquist I saw a previous article in which you commented that if Russia were defeated would China intervene? Do you think Russia would lose sovereignty and be dominated by China? Is there such a possibility?
If the communists in Russia lost power the communists in China would intervene in some way. Of course. Salvage is a word, right?
I’ll tell you what, if Steve Witkoff or whoever else is pulling the strings is able to goad Trump into bombing those desalination plants in Iran, and give Russia/Iran an excuse to bomb the ones in Saudi Arabia, the Republican Party is going to literally be thrown into the trash bin of history. They will become a pariah to the rest of the world. It is estimated that between one and four million people would die over the next several years if this happened. This would of course be a war crime. The Russians have managed to make the leader of the free world, and head of the Republican Party, threaten to commit a war crime on the national stage. It really does boggle the mind!
Yes. This whole disaster boggles the mind. And the decapitation strike already is a war crime. And Trump enabled it. He talks openly about committing war crimes. Yes. Trump has already destroyed himself.
On the world stage!
Historian…what do you think of this article posted on the Russian propaganda-spewing, “conservative”, Gateway Pundit?
Is it not clear that Trump is delivering Europe into Russia’s hands, and gaslighting the American people? I mean, who is really gaining here?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/04/european-weaklings-just-handed-trump-perfect-excuse-blow/