MAGA? You’ve been conned.
An old Soviet-era joke goes “There is no truth in Pravda, and no news in Izvestia”.
Pravda (Truth) was the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party. It now publishes three times per week, mostly online (Wikipedia). Izvestia (News) was the mouthpiece of the government and published by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Izvestia is now Russia’s national newspaper. The wry joke Soviet citizens told acknowledged that theirs was a country awash in official propaganda.
Here in the U.S., Republicans in leadership are also propagandists and lead by a pathological liar at best averse to truth in advertising. Daily Beast’s Michael Daly sees the irony:
What better dodge is there for draft-dodger Donald Trump than to get elected as the “peace president,” promise an end to forever foreign wars, then hype the founding of a “Board of Peace” while contriving to slap his name on the United States Institute of Peace.
The president delivered the opening address at the renamed The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on Feb. 22.
“What we’re doing is very simple,” Trump said. “Peace. It’s called the Board of Peace, and it’s all about an easy word to say but a hard word to produce. Peace. But we’re going to produce it, and we’ve been doing a really good job.”
Six days later, barely two months since removing the leader of Venezuela in an unsanctioned military strike (leaving the rest of the Nicolás Maduro government in place), the peace president started an illegal war with Iran aided by Israel. Someone with comedy chops needs to write Americans a Pravda/Izvestia joke about that. Watch Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert on Monday night. Maybe one of theirs will catch on.
Peter Baker at the New York Times writes:
When he first ran for president in 2016, Donald J. Trump disavowed the military adventurism of recent years, declaring that “regime change is a proven, absolute failure.” He promised to “stop racing to topple foreign regimes.”
When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2024, he boasted of starting “no new wars,” and asserted that if Kamala Harris won, “she would get us into a World War III guaranteed,” and send the “sons and daughters” of Americans “to go fight for a war in a country that you’ve never heard of.”
Barely a year later, Mr. Trump is racing to topple foreign regimes, and is sending American sons and daughters to wage another war in the Middle East. The self-declared “president of PEACE” has chosen to become the president of war after all, unleashing the full power of the U.S. military on Iran with the explicit goal of toppling its government.
Baker sees no explanation in Trump’s statements to date for why Iran and why now the peace president is suddenly the regime-change president.
“One way or the other, his allies were already talking about it being a legacy moment for Mr. Trump,” Baker concludes. “What kind of legacy is not yet clear. But it will not be the one that he originally promised.”
The “truth in advertising president” Trump is not and has never been. He still means to have his Nobel Peace Prize if he has to kill, maim, and destroy his way to one. If the imperial monster has other reasons for starting a war with Iran, he’s not telling. But as always with Donald Trump, follow the money. Who stands to gain?
The Iran attack is a helluva distraction from Epstein files revelations that keep leading to Trump’s doorstep and, when he leaves office, potentially to jail. His mind is an open tweet. The “projection president” has a history of accusing enemies of what’s swirling in his fetid brain.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff believes Trump may not himself grasp where his recent paroxysms of violence lead, except to scratch an immediate itch. He discussed the Iran action on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
Co-host, Joanna Coles reflected on Trump’s early morning video announcing “major combat operations in Iran.”
“He basically gives a potted history of Iran,” Coles noted. “It’s almost as if he’s giving it to himself as much as to anybody else—but reminding people of the American hostages, which is such a Boomer moment. It’s probably perhaps the moment most seared in Boomers’ memories in terms of foreign policy. Jimmy Carter tried to release them, absolute disaster. Reagan swings into power and immediately they’re released.”
She added, “I wonder if that’s at the back of Donald Trump’s head, too.”
“There’s always a mishmash of factual, semi-factual, and historical references that he doesn’t quite understand and that he skimmed over,” Wolff said.
But Epic Fury, amirite? How big-swinging-dick is that? Made for TV by a made-for-TV president.
The familiar pool of Trump critics are aghast: “former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, far-right figure Alex Jones,” manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, Sen. Rand Paul, and Rep. Thomas Massie.
Trump’s base voters have a history of saying, “Yes, sir, how high?” when Trump demands that they pivot like a windsock to his whims. Will they this time? Have they finally realized that they’ve been conned? Pray that this action will blow up in Trump’s face (with as few casualties as possible) by November and not in ours.