Iran has posed an imminent risk to the United States for 47 years as they’ve maimed and killed thousands of Americans without that vast missile arsenal. The president was right to act when he did.
I don’t think the word “imminent” means what he thinks it does.
imminent
American
[im–uh-nuhnt]/ ˈɪm ə nənt /
adjective
likely to occur at any moment; impending.Her death is imminent.
He’s supposed to be one of the smart ones.
Update —
welp:
Lindsey Graham: "The whole idea is for it to not be imminent, dumbass. You want it prevent it from being imminent." pic.twitter.com/5qYDpnouQu
That’s called “preventive war” and it’s illegal. I mean, you could justify attacking anyone on the basis of the idea that they might launch an attack on you some day. At this point that could apply to every country in the world.
The U.S. joined Israel in striking Iran early Saturday morning. By Monday evening, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, was “inundated” with complaints, receiving more than 110 grievances from U.S. military personnel stationed at dozens of sites across the Middle East, reported independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.
One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
The NCO’s complaint was lodged on behalf of 15 troops, including 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew, according to Larsen. The officer stated that such remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”
“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be ‘afraid’ as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now,” the NCO wrote.“ He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,’” the NCO continued. “He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to blame some of the blatant constitutional violations on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has repeatedly evoked God and Christian nationalism in his time fronting the Pentagon. Hegseth has parroted the views of Douglas Wilson, a conservative theologian who advocated for Christian dominance over government and society. He has followed through in practice, instating regular prayer services at America’s military headquarters. He also entered office with several Christian symbols already emblazoned on his skin—a Jerusalem cross and the phrase “Deus vult”—in what Hegseth has described as emblems of the “modern-day American Christian crusade.”
The government is now full of these weirdos in high places since this administration has chased out so many experienced military leaders.
Normally, I’d be the most afraid of the Buck Turgidson types getting excited. But I think these people might just be more dangerous.
Tillis to Noem: "A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you hadn't invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices! … Those… pic.twitter.com/NxqajEZdQl
“A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you hadn’t invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices! … Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened in Minneapolis.”
Ouch. That was a deep cut. And a well deserved one.
WELCH: Mr. Yoho is also the husband of your former spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin?
NOEM: Yes
WELCH: So your former assistant and her husband are the ones that got the DHS no bid contract for $143m. Any dispute about that?
after absolutely eviscerating Kristi Noem and calling for her resignation, Tillis is applauded. He thens threatens to hold up nominees if she doesn't stop stonewalling him. My God. pic.twitter.com/k2EFbmtoik
The whole hearing with Noem today was brutal. I think she is a dead puppy walking. At some point Trump’s going to have to sacrifice someone and she’s the most likely choice. Her failure is monumental.
“I’ve got serious doubts about what we are doing…”@megynkelly on why she's skeptical and concerned about Trump's Iran war in collaboration with Israel.
— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) March 2, 2026
Appearing on Kelly’s show, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested Trump has gone insane—adding that Trump’s oft-repeated statement about not knowing if he’ll get into heaven raises questions about his state of mind and competency.
“We need to have a serious conversation about what the fuck is happening to this country, and who in the hell are these decisions being made for, and who is making these decisions,” Greene said.
BANNON: A new NYT poll is brutal. Only 40% of Rs support this. Just 21% of Americans overall. Lincoln said with public opinion behind you, you can accomplish anything. Does the president need to clearly define the objectives and what Americans are being asked to sacrifice?… https://t.co/Fg5p3CM8Jrpic.twitter.com/HCsygnomuu
“I think that MAGA is Trump — MAGA’s not the other two,” Trump said, adding of Kelly specifically that “she was critical of me for years and I didn’t lose. I won all three times by a lot.”
“MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe,” he continued. “And MAGA loves what I’m doing — every aspect of it. … This is a detour that we have to take in order to keep our country safe and keep other countries safe, frankly.”
Most Republicans are instinctive warmongers and will back him. But after a decade of pretending to be peaceniks, some of the MAGA true believers are having some cognitive dissonance. And that hurts their little brains. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Donald Trump’s national security strategy, which was given the moniker the “Donroe Doctrine,” was supposed to be the new blueprint for America’s role in the world. Actions such as Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico, trying to take over or buy Greenland, threatening Canada and Panama, as well as his military incursion into Venezuela all fall into his updated version of the Monroe Doctrine, which his administration views as stating America’s divine right to rule the Western hemisphere. When considering his outright hostility toward our traditional allies in Europe and Asia, which he is apparently happy to leave to Russia and China, Trump’s vaunted America First movement becomes more sharply defined as a focus on the United States’ own neighborhood and a retreat from larger global concerns.
But as is so often true with the president’s policies, that awful vision has proved too incoherent to be an actual blueprint. Trump is just as invested in the Middle East as any president before him, a fact he proved by launching air strikes on Iran on Saturday for reasons that change from day to day. The Islamic Republic is far from the Western hemisphere, so whatever the Donroe Doctrine is in practice goes beyond a mere desire to withdraw the United States from global commitments outside of its own region. Something else is at play.
Trump has now used the U.S. military twice since the first of the year — a mere 59 days — to topple heads of state. In early January, he staged a successful military incursion into Venezuela and abducted the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and first lady to bring them back to the U.S. to stand trial. Most observers assumed that America had deposed Maduro as a means of toppling Venezuela’s corrupt government and paving the way for elections and a restoration of democracy. There was even a shadow government waiting in the wings that had been legitimately elected two years before. Led by opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism, it was ready to take the helm.
But no: Trump had apparently made a deal with what remained of the Maduro regime. He would leave them in power to do as they wished in exchange for opening up Venezuela’s oil fields to American companies. Since America’s incursion, Trump has shown no interest in the democratization of the country or accountability for anyone but the former president. What will happen to Venezuela is anyone’s guess. But it appears that as long as they agree to hand over billions in oil revenue to the U.S. under threat of military action, they will have a free hand.
Then there is Iran. This past weekend, the United States, in partnership with Israel, bombed the Islamic Republic for the second time in less than a year. In June 2025, the U.S. military deployed its most powerful non-nuclear weapon to destroy underground bunkers used by the Iranian government to house their nuclear program. At the time Trump said the facilities had been completely obliterated, but no proof was ever offered of that claim. Now he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are bombing the country again, ostensibly because they still need to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Or is it that they want to help the protesters? Or do they want regime change? The answer keeps changing.
The administration didn’t bother with the usual constitutional and statutory niceties, and as Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye explained, Trump has felt little need to explain his actions to the American people. He believes he has an unfettered right to use American power, whether economic or military, at his total discretion without any consultation or approval from Congress. The administration had been having talks with the Iranian government which, by all accounts, had agreed to nearly all their demands, but Trump decided to bomb anyway, proving that he had always intended to do it and the talks were just a delaying tactic. (On Sunday, the president told The Atlantic in a short interview that he had agreed to keep talking, even as the air strikes continue.)
As with Venezuela, the initial round of attacks on Iran successfully decapitated the government, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and many of his top lieutenants. But the Islamic Republic is a very different country than Venezuela, a full-blown authoritarian theocracy with a large and powerful military and plenty of high-tech armaments. With a population of 90 million, it is roughly three times larger than Iraq, and although the country is in bad economic straits, it is divided politically. There is a large anti-government resistance, but it is reportedly mostly unorganized, and the heavily-armed Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has tentacles extending deep into the country’s economic and industrial sectors, has shown no signs of splintering.
Nonetheless, Trump seems to think — likely at the behest of Netanyahu and people like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Iran hawk — that the country is so weak that the Revolutionary Guard will lay down their arms under his threats and agree to make one of his hallowed deals. Trump told the New York Times on Sunday night that despite his paeans to the Iranian protesters, he really has no problem with the regime staying in place. He said, “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario.” I’ll bet that comes as a surprise to Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, Vivian Salama at the Atlantic reported that the administration is so excited about their military “victories” that Cuba is next on the list. One official told Salama, “the president is feeling like, ‘I’m on a roll’; like, ‘This is working.’” One important goal of the Venezuelan operation was to halt oil shipments to Cuba, which has had the effect of leading the island’s economy closer to collapse. The Cuban people are suffering greatly, which seems to be part of the plan.
Trump is very excited at the prospect of a “friendly takeover” and has talked about the fact that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been in talks to “make a deal.” There’s no word on what that deal might be, whether he’s thinking of making them a colony with Rubio as its viceroy, or simply turning it over to Florida Republicans to do with as they please.
Salama reported that the president “sees himself as the first modern American leader with the guts to complete what others only flirted with: map-changing transformations across the world.” But if you look at the countries he’s chosen to target with military action so far, what you really see is that these are all countries that have defied U.S. power in one respect or another — and he’s decided to teach them a lesson.
What is happening is basically a gang war. Trump is taking over other gangsters’ turf and taking out their leaders. There’s no need to completely change their crews. After all, they’re in the same business. It just means that they now need to report to him — while showing loyalty and ensuring protection.
If you think that’s far-fetched, consider what Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl when the reporter asked him about Khamenei’s death. “I got him before he got me,” he said. “They tried twice. Well I got him first.”
There’s no “Donroe Doctrine” or some great global imperial strategy. Donald Trump is simply a mob boss who thinks he’s settling all the family business.
Rumsfeld: "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't gonna last any longer than that."
Hegseth: " It may or may not take four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up, it could move back." pic.twitter.com/xSLEbGaniZ
I never thought I would say this but I would feel safer with Don Rumsfeld in charge of the Pentagon. He was a neocon nutcase but he wasn’t dumb a a rock. That might not be preferable in all cases but I think it’s probably worse to be dumb as a rock in this particular job under this particular president.
With all these people we simply have to hope that we get lucky. They’re all clueless.
And by the way: fuck you Hegseth
To Hegseth and the MAGAs who have persistently denigrated female service members, this woman’s calm professionalism after the stressful event of ejecting from a jet traveling 600 mph proves their ignorance. What a champ.
The Trump administration plans to abandon its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department as soon as Monday was expected to drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey.
Trump issued a string of executive orders last year against several law firms and individual lawyers that would have stripped security clearances, restricted their access to federal buildings and directed agencies to end any federal contracts with the firms and their clients.
The White House campaign sent a chill through the industry. Fear of the orders also prompted other large firms to make deals with the president, promising nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for causes favored by the administration.
In targeting the firms, Trump cited their connections to his political rivals and criticized their diversity initiatives and pro bono work advocating for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections.
Let’s face it. While some of these firms may have been scared of Trump, it’s fair to assume that many of them were happy to comply with these “orders” because they agreed with them and wanted to do the “pro bono” work for the administration without having to take responsibility for it.
It’s a shameful chapter that reveals a whole lot about our elite institutions. We should not forget it.
It appears that Trump has Shingles which I’m sure is causing him quite a bit of pain. It probably explains why he’s been wearing his hat all the time — he can’t use his hairspray. easily — and why he hasn’t been in public much. But unless he’s on very strong pain meds, that doesn’t explain this:
Trump: "Finally, we honor one more American soldier, a fallen warria of world. Of wars. And really, terra.” pic.twitter.com/7Ih78Rwdcp
Remember, it was in the middle of a medal of honor ceremony as he has ordered the country to go to war with Iran:
Trump: "See that nice drape? When that comes down right now you see a very very deep hole, but in about a year and half you're gonna see a very very beautiful building. And there's your entrance to it right there. In fact, it looks so nice I think I'll leave it and save money on… pic.twitter.com/jZXTQ02lib
Trump on the Medal of Honor: "I tried for myself. I've tried numerous times to get one by myself. I keep getting shut down." pic.twitter.com/zxILTle7oO
His doctor just said he was using a cream on his neck without announcing that he has shingles. But that’s almost certainly what he has. I had them in the same place. Combined with the stress and his age, he’s not feeling well at all. That can’t be good for the world.
What we’re seeing is Pete Hegseth out there saying insane nonsense while Rubio is very carefully suggesting that they decided to move because they knew that Israel was going in and that Iran would strike U.S. bases in reaction. He didn’t mention the nuclear rationale or regime change. He said it was about destroying their military capability, period.
I guess that’s the Iran version of the Venezuela plan. “We’re going to wreck the place and if you’re good boys and agree to do our bidding (read: oil) we’ll let you do whatever you want to your own people. We’ll even help by encouraging them to protest and try to overthrow the government so you’ll know who they are and can kill them later. ” (That’s what Bush Sr. did at the end of the first Gulf War which is known as the betrayal of the Shiites and the Kurds.)
I look forward to hearing the Jake Tappers of the world condemn the betrayal of the Iranian people as energetically as they condemned Biden for fulfilling his (and Trumps!) promise to leave Afghanistan after 20 years of war.
“MAGA loves it,” Trump said after the United States invaded Venezuela and seized its leader Nicolas Maduro, sparking outrage among the more anti-intervention factions of his base. “MAGA loves what I’m doing. MAGA loves everything I do. MAGA is me. MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too.”
Do they? I would guess he’s mostly right. But it won’t take too many staying home next November to hand the Democrats the Senate.
After the Supreme Court recently took a carving knife to Donald Trump’s claim of emergency powers to justify much of his tariff agenda, one could easily think he and his associates might reconsider their view that he needn’t follow the plain language of the Constitution. No such luck. The president is making it clear that he plans to ignore the Court’s decision that found imposing tariffs required congressional approval, and that he will find other ways to check off the remainder of his dictatorial wish list.
Trump has only a few real priorities in his second term: tariffs, revenge, money and legacy. His continuing obsession with the 2020 presidential election falls under the revenge category, and instead of it waning as an active concern, it actually seems to be gaining steam. The recent FBI raid of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize the stored ballots from that race looks to be just the opening salvo in a much larger strategy to interfere in the 2026 midterms. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump is contemplating an executive order declaring a national voting emergency, citing the same law the Supreme Court just declared he could not use when it came to imposing tariffs.
Trump has been hinting around at this, posting on Truth Social a couple of weeks ago, “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”
Since the president’s inability to accept his loss has made all of us experts on what the Constitution says about elections, this bleat was rightfully dismissed as yet another asinine rant. Article I of the Constitution makes it clear that the states are charged with the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives… but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” It says nothing about the president taking over the voting system because he thinks there’s an “emergency.” In fact, it says nothing about the executive at all.
If you’re wondering where Trump got such a ridiculous notion, look no further than the usual suspects, some of whom have been around for decades, pushing insane conspiracy theories and assassinating the characters of Democratic candidates around election time. It’s long been a GOP cottage industry, and a lucrative one.
According to the New York Times, Trump’s director of “election security and integrity” is a lawyer named Kurt Olsen, one of the most relentless 2020 election deniers who was considered to be a “fringe menace” in the first Trump administration. He was involved in the attempts to overturn the election and has continued to pursue the case ever since. Olsen has been given the power to criminally refer cases to the Justice Department, and he was revealed to have instigated the search warrant for the Fulton County raid. But he is one of many 2020 denialists working throughout the administration in jobs related to elections.
The Times’ reporting focuses on two outside activists who are pushing Trump to sign this executive order, which is being touted as a “17 page draft” that explains the legal rationale for using the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, neither of which confer any executive jurisdiction over voting. The main instigator is a newer name in GOP dirty-tricks circles. Peter Ticktin is a lawyer and former New York Military Academy schoolmate of Trump’s who worked on the attempted coup in 2020. The other is a much more familiar and shady name in GOP politics: Jerome Corsi, the man who made “swift boating” a household term.
Corsi first made his name over 20 years ago when he wrote “Unfit for Command,” the book that smeared then-Massachusetts senator and Democratic nominee John Kerry in his 2004 presidential bid against George W. Bush. Corsi’s book was a patented right-wing hit job, dishonestly targeting Kerry as nothing more than a rich boy liar who faked his heroic war record. But his approach was particularly cunning: The accusation he leveled at Kerry mirrored the real story of Bush’s National Guard service.
Corsi’s next projects were aimed at Barack Obama, starting in 2008 with his book “The Obama Nation.” He followed that in 2011 with “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”, a smear that Trump had taken to the top of the charts. Corsi was also alleged to have worked with one of the original dirty tricksters — and long-time Trump friend and mentor — Roger Stone on the Wikileaks campaign against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.
One of the great ironies of this latest round of underhanded campaign tactics — and yet another example of Corsi’s old “I know you are but what am I” strategy — is that this proposed emergency executive order is based on thoroughly debunked accusations of foreign interference in the 2020 election involving China. The story goes that the Chinese government manufactured phony identification cards to help people vote for Joe Biden — and that former FBI Director Christopher Wray covered it up. This wild theory, which was based on some 20,000 fake drivers’ licenses being seized in Chicago, most of which were intended for college students to get into bars, recalled the ridiculous audit of ballots in Arizona, in which conspiracy theorists were looking for the presence of bamboo in the paper’s composition. (And there are about half a dozen more conspiracy theories about foreign interference.)
Since multiple investigations found Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump and his accomplices naturally said that China interfered in 2020 — and now they are using it as an excuse to sow doubt about and hijack the 2026 midterms. And Corsi, the man who was involved in some of the back-channel work to disseminate the Russian hacks of Clinton’s emails in 2016, had the chutzpah to say, “Here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes. That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”
You cannot make this stuff up.
Election denialism is Trump’s personal contribution to the degradation of our political culture. When all is said and done, it will remain his most enduring legacy. No president before him has ever been so willing to create mistrust in the electoral system to cover for his own failures. Remember: This is someone who said before any votes were cast in 2016 that he would only accept the election results if he won.
But the work of smearing Democrats and causing havoc in elections is a Republican specialty, and some of the people who’ve been making a tidy living at it for decades are on board for one more ride.
