I remember every detail
Not one week after launching a war with Iran unsanctioned by Congress, Donald Trump next hopes to annex the Sudetenland (Politico):
President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military into Ecuador this week to strike drug cartels, and now he’s poised to do the same in more than a dozen other Latin American countries under a new proclamation he signed Saturday.
In remarks before the signing ceremony, flanked by the leaders of many of those countries, Trump described the proclamation as “a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks.” He touted the U.S. military’s “amazing weaponry” — and said all the other Latin American countries need to do is identify the location of cartel operatives.
You don’t have to be Dennis Hartley to spot the foreshadowing:
“We need your help,” Trump said at the Shield of the Americas Summit. “You have to just tell us where they are.”
Our power-mad, hairsprayed protector keeps a red button on his desk for ordering a Diet Coke. He thinks ordering the killing of thousands of people and winning wars of choice is just as simple. Trump has so neutered the U.S. Congress that it might simply spend days like he does: playing golf.
Last week, Trump again threatened Cuba’s government, suggesting it will fall next after Iran (CNBC):
“We think that we want to fix — finish this one first, but that will be just a question of time before you and a lot of unbelievable people are going to be going back to Cuba, hopefully not to stay,” Trump said to the Miami-heavy audience that included people of Cuban heritage.
He’ll “fix” Cuba without congressional approval too. If all of this has an ominous (if greasy) feel to it, that’s because Trump’s biggest distraction yet from the Epstein scandals is not making the world safer. Or the U.S.
A report from the Daily Mail (unconfirmed for now by other sources) claims that the White House is blocking release of a joint intelligence statement from the FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center on the heightened threat of foreign terrorism against Americans, including inside the United States:
The bulletin, which was reviewed by the Daily Mail, details ‘elevated threats by the government of Iran to US military and government personnel and facilities, Jewish and Israeli institutions and their perceived supporters, and Iranian dissidents and other anti-regime activists in the United States.’
Asked whether Americans should be worried about foreign terrorism on our soil, Trump said, “I guess.” He added, “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
The war that’s not a war will get some people killed, maybe even here at home. Just not the better half. It is of no consequence to Donald Trump so long as the war dead don’t make him look bad. So don’t advertise the risk is the White House approach.
Are the attacks on Iran (in coordination with Israel’s Banjamin Netanyahu) prompted by Trump’s need for another Epstein distraction? Or by the declining geriatric’s increased susceptibility to suggestion and his own megalomania? Yes.
Administration claims that Iran posed some nonspecific imminent threat appear predictably specious unsupported by evidence the Trump administration won’t present. Will Saletan of The Bulwark deconstructs the mercurial meanings of “imminent threat” offered by administration flacks. “Imminent” can mean anything from someday to “nuclear ambitions” to threats Trump divined through intuition.
Chaos is Trump’s calling card. Chaos is what he’s delivered. But it wasn’t chaos voters were looking for in November 2024. Vote for the black-Asian woman and you’d see World War III, Trump warned supporters in 2024.
“With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness and chaos will be over,” Trump promised. “I don’t have wars.”
See? Whatever is happening in the Middle East? Not a war.
View on Threads
Trump’s imperialist designs and his thirst for blood elicit what Rick Blaine said recalling the day the Nazis marched into Paris: “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”
The MAGAs wear red.
Over the last year, everyday Americans rose up to oppose Trump’s mass deportation project. The cruelty. The violence. The violation of human and constitutional rights and basic human decency. But it took time for people to organize and get traction. Meanwhile, those in Congress who didn’t kowtow dithered.
The question now is whether Americans have it within themselves to rise up and stop an American megalomaniac. Military adventurism from the self-declared peace president threatens to spawn the World War III he promised his base his election would prevent. Even if Americans do, will it be in time? Is it already too late?
Our enemies have red buttons too.