Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Wall St. Journal (gift link) takes a look at the state of America’s alliances in the wake of this latest trainwreck. If it was bad before it’s terrible today:

Crowning a year of disputes with the Trump administration over trade tariffs, support for Ukraine and the future of Greenland, the Iran war has placed America’s friends in Europe, Asia and the Middle East in front of an uneasy dilemma.

Their most important ally is acting in ways that they see as erratic and that have already caused hardship and uncertainty. The war has sapped their economies and even bigger shocks loom if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, deepening the worldwide energy crisis.

Many—on both sides of the Atlantic—wonder if they are even allies anymore. Angered by the refusal of European nations to join the war alongside the U.S. and Israel, President Trump has called European countries cowards, and threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization altogether.

“The United States is unpredictable,” said Roderich Kiesewetter, a lawmaker from Germany’s ruling party, echoing a widespread sentiment in Europe. “It’s not a reliable partner anymore for the Western world.”

The threats to take Greenland were the tipping point:

“This will never be forgotten,” said retired French Lt. Gen. Michel Yakovleff. “Psychologically, Trump talking about taking Greenland was the equivalent of a father talking, jokingly, of raping one of his daughters. Obviously, it’s a new world in the family after that.”

Well.

The problem is that until they can all arm up and retool, the US is still the only option:

“If you insult your allies and push them to the brink in every negotiation, if you present your ugliest face to the world, then this consent will evaporate,” Fullilove said. “But what is the alternative to the U.S.-led alliance system? The U.S. is the only country that can project power anywhere on Earth. Who else will lead the West, if not Washington?”

This Catch-22 is acutely felt by U.S. partners and allies in the Persian Gulf. With their cities subjected to daily Iranian missile and drone barrages, the Gulf states are most affected by the Iranian retaliation for a war that they didn’t start and whose course they cannot control.

We’ve closely watched the destruction of the NATO alliance for the past year but the big strain on the relationship with the Gulf states is more recent:

Gulf officials have grown frustrated with Trump—who, among other undiplomatic moves, publicly insulted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by saying last month, at a Saudi-sponsored investment conference, that the kingdom’s de-facto ruler “didn’t think he’d be kissing my ass.” Yet, these Gulf states also know that only Washington can provide them with crucial weapons, particularly air defenses, and offer protection from future Iranian attempts to dominate the region. 

One can only assume that Trump’s TACO yesterday has caused even more consternation. Reportedly, Saudi Arabia was begging Trump to continue the war. Today, they’re still being targeted by Iran while Trump is talking about doing a deal to split the “fees” Iran is going to be charging to use the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, he’s blown up the Asian alliances as well:

South Korea, facing a threat from North Korea and an emboldened China, watched with dismay as the U.S. redeployed vital air-defense resources to the Middle East last month. “The action that the U.S. is engaged in in Iran not only reveals the U.S. as a rogue actor whose political values at home and internationally are no longer in accordance with South Korea’s professed values, but also one whose actions will have huge economic consequences,” said Mason Richey, a professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. “Yet, South Korea also needs to stay on the right side of the Trump administration for its own security purposes.”

[…]

At Monday’s news conference, Trump touted his good relationship with North Korea’s leader as he complained about South Korea’s refusal to join the war on Iran, and said that he still wants Greenland.

He’s nuts.

“Everyone is confused. Nobody can understand what America actually is today. It seems governed by some kind of mad emperor who keeps saying whatever comes to his mind, something we haven’t witnessed since Caligula or Nero,” said Carlo Calenda, an Italian senator and former economic development minister. “The one thing the Europeans have understood is that we are dealing with a bully. You can give him everything he wants, you can pretend you don’t hear his insults, but he will keep trying to bully us, and so at a certain point we must stop him.”

If only the Republican Party would have such an epiphany we might be able to save our country. I’m not holding my breath.

Iran’s terms:

The consequences by John Gray

Donald Trump’s self-described “little excursion” in Iran has proved to be a march to disaster. His “major combat operation” has shifted from aiming to block Iran achieving a nuclear capability that was supposedly “obliterated” last June to unblocking the Strait of Hormuz and restoring the situation that existed before the operation began. Whatever the objective may be, the pre-war status quo is irretrievable.

Trump cannot declare victory and walk away without surrendering the vital shipping conduit to Iran. With its proven capacity to wreak havoc on the world economy, a bombed-out military-theocratic dictatorship has begun the final unravelling of US imperial power.

In the Middle East, the war has undercut the financial foundations of US hegemony. However the war ends, the result will be the re-emergence of Iran as a major power. As the arbiter of passage through Hormuz, Iran has become the deciding force in the global oil economy. If Trump opts to “finish the job” and launches a ground operation, the US will be dragged into a debacle larger than Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

While Nato may linger on in name, the transatlantic alliance is operationally defunct. America is returning to its pre-1914 trajectory as a civilisation separate from Europe. In the UK, the default position is to wait out the storm until sanity returns to Washington.

Why Putin or Xi Jinping should exhibit similar patience is not explained. Could there be a better time for them to act? Ramping up hybrid warfare in under-defended Europe will give Putin leverage in any peace deal in Ukraine. With Trump having shifted military assets from the Asia-Pacific to the Middle East and running down munitions, Xi may be able to absorb Taiwan without firing a shot.

This is not simply a case of the lessons of history being ignored. Trump’s war looks more like an example of what Sigmund Freud described as repetition compulsion – an unconscious process in which the mind acts out what it cannot properly remember. A creature of the moment as he may be, Trump seems driven by an impulse to reimagine the past and reassert American – and his own – greatness. When an infantile fantasy of omnipotence comes up against unyielding realities, the response is inchoate rage.

Psychopathology may be more illuminating than geopolitics at this point. In a more profound sense than is commonly recognised, Donald Trump does not know what he is doing.

His little excursion is a point of no return in America’s retreat as a global power.

Psychopathology?

Meanwhile on Cult TV:

Ingraham: It looks like Trump ultimately hits the home run here, takes it to the brink. Iran blinks.

Towery: When will the Democrats and some Republicans ever learn that the rhetoric he uses is done for a reason. And it works pic.twitter.com/a8xFv07W0B

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 7, 2026

Devious “defenders” of election integrity

JV Last summarized last night’s Iran debacle in a Bulwark livestream: “This entire thing was avoidable and predictable. Donald Trump made America walk into the diner to eat the shit sandwich.”

Republicans are on track for more at the polls this fall. They ate another last night in Wisconsin (Politico):

In Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, the Democratic-backed candidate sailed to a nearly 20-point landslide victory Tuesday in a battleground Trump carried less than two years ago. Meanwhile, a Georgia Democrat slashed Trump’s margin of victory by two thirds in the state’s reddest district despite losing the election — the most significant overperformance the party has seen across all seven House special elections so far this cycle.

Meaning Democrat Shawn Harris will not replace Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in the U.S. House. But political winds are not blowing in Republicans’ favor. Judge Chris Taylor, a Wisconsin liberal, won a seat on the state Supreme Court by 20 points over her Republican rival. Democrats will hold a 5-to-2 majority on the Wisconsin high court once she’s sworn in.

“It’s a wow moment in Wisconsin politics,” said former Republican strategist Brandon Scholz, who left the party in 2021. “Republicans ought to be sitting down tonight and going, ‘Okay, we just screwed up another race. What are we going to do in November?’”

Lose. And lose badly. Depending on what the lunatic in the Oval Office does between now and then to sabotage fall elections.

Republicans Politico quotes dismissed the losses as not indicative of what happens in November.

“Everyone involved should be doxxed, tarred and feathered and run out of Wisconsin politics,” the strategist said while dismissing the idea that the race result matters ahead of November.

“The electorate is so different now. GOP voters don’t show up for spring [elections] like they used to,” they said.

[…]

“Democrats threw everything they had at this race,” said Georgia Republican Party chair Josh McKoon. “They made this the Super Bowl and they lost.”

Anyway, Georgia Republicans have tricks up their sleeves for November. One county chair called last night seeking someone in North Carolina with experience running elections with hand-marked paper ballots. Georgia Republicans are still worked up over Dominion, Venezuela, pillow guy, Sydney Powell, and 11,780 votes, etc. Democracy Docket explained on April 3 what they mean to do about it:

Georgia election officials have less than three months to convert the state’s entire voting system from touchscreen machines to paper ballots, after the state Senate failed to vote Friday on legislation that would have delayed the conversion until 2028. 

[…]

Georgia’s current touchscreen system generates QR codes for ballot counting. But in 2024 GOP state lawmakers voted to sunset these machines by July 1 of this year, making it illegal to use them beyond that. Last week, the state Senate passed a bill to change over to a completely hand-marked ballot system. 

However, local election officials urged lawmakers to delay that switch until 2028 so that they would have time to put the new system in place, which would include pre-printing millions of ballots and re-training election workers.

Georgia state senators did not listen:

The state House passed a bipartisan bill this morning that would’ve allowed for that two-year grace period. But the Senate – led by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R), who is running for the GOP nomination for governor – declined to bring it forward for a vote Friday, the final day of this year’s legislative session. 

Now comes the scramble. And likely court challenges. Georgia’s given boards of elections no time or funds to buy, validate/certify, train staff and implement a replacement hand-market ballot system before the fall. Chaos is legislated in:

Election officials also warn that the law’s new reporting requirements will cause delays in ballot counting and in delivering timely results. Those problems often trigger chaos, controversy and conspiracy theories, as seen in the fallout over Fulton County’s 2020 election ballot count, which is still being probed today. 

North Carolina Republicans are not slackers on the chaos (“election integrity”) front, as Asheville Watchdog’s Tom Fiedler explains this morning.

HB 127, “camouflaged under the title ‘Voter Registration Drive Form’, ” means to prohibit voter registration form handling by anyone except county elections officials or the Division of Motor Vehicles. Fiedler explains, “Anybody else who provides voter-registration forms may as well be trafficking in illicit drugs as they face criminal prosecution.”

That would be un-American enterprises such as “the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, and such civil-rights groups as the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the youth-oriented Rock the Vote.” Fielder explains:

Jennifer Rubin, president of the North Carolina League of Voters, told an NCNews reporter that civic organizations like hers “are all for election security and for holding elections with integrity.” But what the Republicans are doing is “throwing up roadblocks to limit voting.

“It’s like a game of whack-a-mole,” Rubin said. “One thing happens and another pops up just to discourage people from voting.”

Conveniently, Republicans are running the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sarah Stevens, for state Supreme Court against incumbent Democrat Anita Earls. With the six-month effort by Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin to steal the 2024 election he lost to Justice Allison Riggs fresh in voters’ minds — Earls called the attempt “a bloodless coup” — we’ll expect Stevens to have her face rubbed in her attempt to quash voter registration every week between now and November.

Watch this space and watch Georgia’s election struggles.

And what about those unreleased Epstein files?

You can stop ducking and covering for now. Politico’s landing page this morning announces “World exhales — a little — as US, Iran agree to ceasefire.” It’s a two-week ceasefire in the illegal war Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to turn into civilizational genocide. Two weeks? That’s enough time to roll out the “terrific,” “phenomenal” and “fantastic” new health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act he’s been promising in two weeks since taking office in January 2017.

It’s also enough time for Trump’s accelerating mental decline to worsen. Or for him to attack Cuba.

The New York Times summarizes the latest:

The United States and Iran announced a two-week cease-fire and plans to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday evening, hours before a deadline set by President Trump, who had threatened to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” unless it allowed free transit through the vital waterway.

The agreement, brokered by Pakistan, was hailed as a victory by both sides. Mr. Trump said a 10-point plan from Iran was a “workable basis on which to negotiate” a lasting end to the war, after demanding Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” for weeks. Iranian officials were triumphant, with Mohammad Reza Aref, the country’s first vice president, saying on social media that “the era of Iran” had begun after Trump failed to destroy the Islamic Republic’s government. Iran also said the Strait of Hormuz would remain open while negotiations took place.

As for Europeans giving the United States of Trump serious side-eye, Politico quotes an unnamed official who referenced Trump Always Chickens Out:

“Better TACO Tuesday than World War III,” said one European official, nodding to Trump backing off his threats to wipe out Iran’s civilization if it didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, hoped the pause could allow for an eventual negotiated end to the war.

It’s a carnival of chaos this morning, and too much to summarize.

Secretary of WAR! Pete Hegseth just completed a press conference focused heavily on how many bombs the U.S. dropped and on a partial list of targets hit with no clearer definition of U.S. strategic aims:

“You’re trying to define victory by how many people you killed,” said Vali Nasr, an Iranian expert at Johns Hopkins University. “Its [sic] like a doctor who says, ‘I have a really sharp scalpel.’”

Why are we bombing Iran exactly? We still don’t know. But “Hegseth just called President Trump ‘a president of peace.’”

The question remains: What will Trump do when in the interim demands renew for a full release of the Epstein files? He’ll need another flashy distraction.

Also, “Gas prices could take months to fall significantly,” reports The Washington Post. So plan now for that $5/gallon staycation.

No need to be concerned about any conflicts of interest. The Trump family is as honest as the day is long:

A drone maker backed by President Donald Trump’s two oldest sons is trying to sell to Gulf countries while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.

The sales drive by Florida-based Powerus – which announced a deal last month to bring aboard Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. – positions the company to potentially benefit from a war that their father began.

“These countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the president so he will do what they want,” said Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. “This is going to be the first family of a president to make a lot of money off war — a war he didn’t get the consent of Congress for.”

[…]

The Trump brothers’ deal with Powerus could give them sizable equity stakes. Their father, as commander in chief, launched the strikes with Israel against Iran over a month ago that began the war, the impetus for why these Gulf countries now need protection.

The Trump brothers are known experts in the field of drone warfare so it’s perfectly understandable that they would be involved with this company. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that their father has started a war for no reason that will boost the value of this company tremendously.

We can take heart that at least it isn’t as corrupt as the Biden Crime Family’s reign of terror:

Will President Ripper order Wing Attack Plan R?

Unconfirmed reports are coming in that Iranians are forming human chains (human shields) around some of the power plants Donald “whole civilization will die tonight” Trump threatens to destroy beginning at 8 p.m. tonight. Already Tuesday, he’s launched over 90 strikes against Iran’s oil export hub at Kharg Island. Tehran’s calls for “young people to form human chains around power plants and other potential targets” have been supported by videos. One depicts

Iranians standing in a chain in front of the Kazeroon power plant, waving the Iranian flag. Fortune could not independently verify the videos. Independent news website DropSite News also reported that protestors were standing in front of Ahvaz and Dezful bridges and the Rajaee, Bisotun, and Tabriz power plants.

But no video or photos of the latter.

💢 THREAD: Iranians form human chains around power plants and bridges as Donald Trump warns “a whole civilization will die tonight”

As Trump issued his most explicit threat yet, videos circulating online show civilians gathering around power stations and key infrastructure… pic.twitter.com/xHnuDV8usw

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) April 7, 2026

Ali Ghamsari, a widely respected independent Iranian composer and musician known for blending traditional Persian music with contemporary expression, has consistently used his art and platform to stand with the people of Iran. He has shown up during natural disasters, supported… pic.twitter.com/gIH3istUbb

— Farhad 🇮🇷🇮🇷 (@Farhadgol60) April 6, 2026

The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is still too polite in speaking about Trump’s “mental instability.” But he’s concerned enough to suggest top military brass consider how to respond to a madman’s order to deploy nukes(?). He suggests that cabinet members be prepared to invoke the 25th Amendment before Trump issues that directive. (They won’t, before or after, but it’s that bad.)

View on Threads

Trump is in madman territory. Even if he relishes playing reality TV host, hyping tonight’s episode, and keeping the entire world in suspense. Alternatively, writes David Frum, these are the kind of escalatory threats Trump issues even as he’s losing his nerve: “The more brutally Trump speaks, the more frantic he looks.” But then by definition, frantic madmen are not thinking clearly and can do incredibly stupid things.

Last night, U.S. forces launched one-way attack drones into Iran during Operation Epic Fury. CENTCOM made history a month ago when it began using low-cost aerial attack drones in combat for the first time.

“Today, hundreds of U.S. drones are fully integrated into offensive and… pic.twitter.com/yxsAf8pTAH

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 7, 2026

Pariah States of America

Less noticed as Trump’s 8 p.m. ET “eve of destruction” deadline looms is the fact that he’s already destroyed the reputation of the United States of America.

This clip from a speech by U.S. Ambassador to UN Mike Waltz is Exhibit A. Observers begin shouting “WAR CRIMINAL” and “WHAT PEACE?” and (mockingly) “Is the Dow above 50,000?”

'WHAT PEACE?' — US Ambassador to UN Mike Waltz booed as he mentions 'Trump's peacemaking' pic.twitter.com/Qv8g5qhSXg

— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) April 7, 2026

Meanwhile in Hungary

“Trump is threatening war crimes in Iran, and Vance is in Hungary campaigning with a wannabe dictator,” tweets Mike Nellis. “These people are insane. Remove them both.”

JD Vance doubles down on Trump’s new post threatening “a whole civilization will die tonight” and implies Trump might use nuclear weapons pic.twitter.com/GbxU602u6n

— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) April 7, 2026

“We want a world,” Vance told a Viktor Orbán campaign rally, “where oil and gas is flowing freely, where people can afford to heat their homes and cool their homes, where they can afford to transport themselves to work.”

In essence, Trump and Vance want the world that existed before Trump attacked Iran on Feb. 28 and in response Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Orbán’s authoritarian-friendly audience did not mock Vance like Waltz’s did. A pity.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tells MS Now regarding Trump’s increasingly frequent use of the U.S. military, “His appetite grew with his eating.”

Absolute bombshell. Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan completely exposes Donald Trump. He confirms Trump ignored all intelligence professionals and Pentagon warnings, acting with total impunity. Now the entire world is paying the price for his disastrous war. pic.twitter.com/c88V06sINI

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 7, 2026

God help us all.

Likely a statement drafted in the Kremlin, JD Vance says almighty "Ukrainian intelligence" is rigging elections in both the US and Hungary. pic.twitter.com/XFK1fm6ppE

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) April 7, 2026

Vance on Tuesday said that “elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services” were trying “to put their thumb on the ⁠scale” of ​U.S. and Hungarian elections, without providing evidence. He also claimed the EU is interfering on behalf of the opposition. And yet he is the Vice President of the United States openly backing one candidate in a foreign election. Trump called in to the rally where JD was speaking to push for Orban’s campaign as well. It was as embarrassing as you might imagine.

Who’s putting their thumb on the scale?

The weirdest aspect of this is that Russia is now simultaneously allied with both the Iranian Ayatollah and the American tyrant, even as they fight each other. WTF???

God help us:

Trump made it clear how much he is developing the roadmap hour-by-hour.

“To be a good president, I believe you have to have good instincts. And a lot of this is instinct,” he said. (So much for the the traditional national security process.)

His instincts are telling him to do this:

Just Security writes about the consequences to such rhetorical atrocities. You would think that this would be of concern to the Republican Party, the erstwhile loyal defenders of the military:

While our Commander-in-Chief threatens to “obliterate” “each and every one of their electric generating plants,” U.S. military commanders have been approving strike packages, wrestling with how to transform Trump’s dangerous bombast into lawful targets. 

Asking our military professionals—lawyers and commanders alike—to grapple with the president’s erratic behavior is enormously consequential.  U.S. military commanders have sworn to obey the Constitution and only those orders from their superiors that are lawful.  Threats to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and to show “no quarter, no mercy” are plainly illegal.  Trump’s outrageous statements gravely threaten our military professionals’ bedrock moral and legal principles, ones enshrined in the law of war that they’ve been trained to follow their entire careers.  

We write to highlight that the Commander-in-Chief’s dangerous rhetoric  places our service members in an intolerable position in several respects.  

• First, such threats undermine U.S. legitimacy and global standing, as they demonstrate a rejection of binding international agreements and core commitments to the laws of war. Indeed, the U.S. military doubled down on its commitment to the law of war following Vietnam War-era atrocities, requiring our Armed Forces to follow the law regardless how any conflict is characterized. An operation that followed through on Trump’s rhetoric would be one of infamy in the history of modern warfare. 
• Second, they pose a significant risk of moral and psychic injury for servicemembers.  National soul-searching regarding how Americans fight followed the long U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which both civilian casualties and detainee abuse undermined strategic objectives and weighed heavily on soldiers’ consciences long after the fighting stopped.  This reflection led to initiatives such as the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation program and new laws regarding detention and interrogation practices, strengthening U.S. commitment to fighting honorably and effectively through adherence to the law.   
• Finally, the public record of intent to commit war crimes puts soldiers at risk of later liability. In any future war crimes or U.C.M.J. investigation—for which there may be no statute of limitations—their actions will be judged based on the reasonably available information at the time of the strikes.  See, e.g., Executive Summary of the Investigation of the Alleged Civilian Casualty Incident in the al Jadidah District, Mosul, May 8, 2017.  Long after the Secretary of Defense receives his anticipated pardon from the president, it is not unlikely that both his and Trump’s expressly stated intent to commit acts that amount to clear war crimes and to dispense with “stupid rules of engagement” may be considered evidence of notice and scienter on the part of servicemembers’ during any future congressional or criminal investigations.  

The U.S. military trains to fight with precision and lethality according to the law of war – precision meaning attacking only lawful military objectives while doing our utmost to protect innocent civilians caught up in the fight. The legal hurdle to convert a civilian object such as a power plant into a lawful military objective is a high one because the United States and its allies vigorously rejected “total war” after the massive suffering endured by millions during World War II.  What President Trump threatens is exactly that, from a civilian targeting perspective – total war against Iran, a complete rejection of the legal limits the United States has incorporated into the law governing U.S. military operations for both pragmatic and moral reasons.

Trump does not care about civilians, no matter how much he brays about “peace.” He is a sadist. All you have to do is read that post to know that.

And, by the way:

By all accounts then, the law of war prohibits “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.” It is difficult to read President Trump’s egregious threats of great destruction as anything but intending to spread terror, making it even more incumbent on U.S. military professionals to ensure strikes are limited in their impact on the Iranian people.To be sure, as stated above, individual components of Iranian civilian infrastructure may indeed constitute lawful military targets under specific circumstances in which they contribute to the enemy’s military action and their destruction would provide a definite military advantage.

That said, the damning public rhetoric surrounding these planned strikes against all power plants in an undifferentiated manner casts the legitimacy and legality of such an operation in serious doubt, to say the least.  We urge military decisionmakers within the chain of command to think long-term, trust their training, and remember their oaths. American military professionals must remind their chain of command that the United States is not like Iran or Russia: our country is great because it adheres to the law of war and emerges victorious because of such adherence, not in spite of it. That might be said of all sorts of operations. Surely, here, the mass devastation on a civilian population makes where to draw the line excruciatingly clear.

Yeah, I don’t think the Trump administration is concerned with all that folderol:

REPORTER: ‘How would it not be a war crime to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants?’

TRUMP: ‘They’re animals.’

The arrogant hubris behind the US’ foreign policy is to dehumanise their enemies, as they always have done…

And then to be utterly shocked when their enemies are… https://t.co/YLf5vYVoHa pic.twitter.com/UuuEVv4ljZ

— Going Underground (@GUnderground_TV) April 6, 2026

REPORTER: ‘How would it not be a war crime to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants?’

TRUMP: ‘They’re animals.’

Update —

Behind the scenes: Trump might be the most hawkish person in the top echelons of his administration on Iran, according to a U.S. source who spoke to him several times in recent days.

• “The president is the most bloodthirsty, like a mad dog,” another U.S. administration official said, downplaying stories that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Secretary of State Marco Rubio were egging him on. “Those guys sound like the doves compared to the president.”
• Trump has started sounding out advisers and confidants about the plan to strike power plants and bridges by asking them, “What do you think of Infrastructure Day?”

Breaking it down: Trump’s negotiating team —Vice President JD Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — thinks he should try to get a deal now if possible.

• Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and political allies like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are urging Trump not to agree to a ceasefire unless Iran makes concessions that currently appear unlikely, like reopening the Strait of Hormuz or relinquishing all highly enriched uranium.

Oy.

Came across this on social media and it’s very well done. I have no idea who wrote it, unfortunately. And while I might quibble with the characterization of some of the progressive politics, it’s mostly on the money:

I don’t want to hear any more bullshit about “both parties are the same.” No, they absolutely are not.

I’m not here to say Democrats are perfect — far from it — but they are not the same. Last I checked, in my lifetime, no Democratic president has started a large-scale war in the Middle East like George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump all have. Sure, Democrats have ordered military strikes and other operations — but nothing on the scale of what Republicans have done when controlling the White House.

Name the last Republican who inherited a sinking economy or a recession from their Democratic predecessor. On the flip side, name the last Democrat who inherited a strong, growing economy from a Republican predecessor.

Clinton inherited a weak economy from George H. W. Bush.
Obama inherited the worst economic crash since the Great Depression from George W. Bush.
Biden inherited a pandemic that had been botched as horribly as a president could botch it from Trump.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush inherited a historically strong economy and a balanced budget from Clinton.
From Obama, Trump inherited a strong economy in the midst of a historic streak of private-sector job growth.
And from Biden, he inherited a growing (though still fragile) economy that, a year later, is worse by nearly every major economic metric than it was when he took office.

In my lifetime, not once has a Democrat entered the White House without a massive mess to clean up from the Republican who occupied the office before them.

Was Obamacare perfect? No — and it was never meant to be. It was a stepping stone to be built upon and improved. But guess what, it’s a hell of a lot better than anything Republicans have ever proposed to provide more Americans with better and more affordable health care — because they’ve never introduced anything. Meanwhile, Democrats dating back to the 1990s have been trying to make health care better for all Americans, including conservatives, whether or not MAGA wants to believe that.

I dare any Republican voter to tell me any major policy or platform their party has backed in the past 20–30 years that has made Americans’ lives better. What policy proposals — other than “get a job and stop doing drugs” — have Republicans put forth to help end the homelessness crisis, fight drug addiction, or help the most vulnerable among us live better lives?

True, Biden was bad on the border and border security — but at least Democrats don’t vilify human beings as “animals” and “monsters” like Republicans do. We can have discussions about how best to secure our border and manage immigration without dehumanizing people — most of whom are just poor individuals trying to make a better life for themselves and their families.

On guns: Most Democrats want sensible reforms aimed at reducing gun violence. It’s not an effort to remove someone’s “right to bear arms” — it’s about addressing the epidemic of mass shootings and overall gun violence. Yet, to Republicans, guns have nothing to do with gun violence. Nothing at all. It’s just “mental health,” of which they’ve also done absolutely nothing to combat.

Name a Democrat who came into office and immediately started a crypto business auctioning private dinners with undisclosed guest lists to their largest investors. Well, Trump did that. His family’s net worth has grown by over $2 billion since he came into office. By comparison, if you combined the total net worth of the Obamas and Bidens, it’s about 2–3% of just the net gains Trump has seen since returning to the White House.

Even if you want to go to the “extremes” of Bernie Sanders or AOC on the left, what do they really want? Combat climate change because it’s real, whether or not Republicans want to believe it. Tax the richest among us so they pay their fair share, reducing the burden on the poor and middle class — which includes tens of millions of conservative voters. They want universal health care, which every other major nation on Earth already has. That’s largely their platform. Some of their ideas I don’t fully agree with, but the intentions are rooted in real issues we need to solve; it’s just a matter of pragmatic implementation on how to tackle these challenges. On the other hand, Republicans openly deny science, have no health care plan, and keep giving the richest more tax breaks — adding trillions to the national debt that the poor and middle class will ultimately pay.

Even on religious rights: Democrats want everyone in this country to have as much — or as little — religion in their lives as they choose. Want to go to church seven days a week? Go for it. Don’t want to believe in anything? That’s fine too. Republicans, on the other hand, want to shove their religion down everyone’s throat — not just any religion — their religion. They want it in government, in schools, and to allow businesses to discriminate based on religious beliefs — as long as it’s against anyone but Christians. They want laws that force religious views into private businesses. They want to force their religion into everyone’s lives. One party wants people to live as they choose privately. The other wants to force its warped theocratic views on the entire country. That is not the same.

Last I checked, Hillary Clinton conceded the 2016 election, and Kamala Harris admitted she lost her 2024 campaign. Yet in 2026, Trump still refuses to admit he lost the 2020 election. More and more Republicans claim “it was rigged” anytime they lose. One party concedes when they lose — the other doesn’t. Also, name one thing Republicans have pushed for to make voting easier for Americans. They’ve passed strict new voting laws, closed polling locations on Election Day, and shortened early voting windows.

Democrats, meanwhile, want automatic voter registration, longer early voting periods, and better access to polling locations to reduce wait times. One party makes it harder to vote — the other tries to make it easier for all voters — Democrats and Republicans alike. The list goes on and on. I could write a whole book on this.

At the end of the day, the idea that “both parties are the same” is complete bullshit. Democrats aren’t perfect — but Republicans operate on a whole other level of corruption, unethical behavior, anti-science rhetoric, religious fanaticism, and hypocrisy that doesn’t exist among the vast majority of Democrats.

Democrats have never elected a batshit crazy, imbecilic huckster who fomented a coup and treats all racial and ethnic minorities like second class cities and women like prey. That should count for something too.

I agree that the Democrats are intensely frustrating when they miss opportunities to issue the coup the grace when it’s offered and too often fail to understand how to speak to the average citizen in ways they can understand. There’s plenty to criticize. But the idea that they are no better than Republicans is completely absurd. The GOP isn’t even a political party anymore. It is an unreconstructed Christo-fascist cult. There is literally no choice between them if you are even slightly living in reality.

Harry Enten had this yesterday that has the wing nuts all experiencing thrills up the leg.

Unlike in 2006 & 2018 cycles, the GOP actually leads the Dems on net favorability at this point!

The national environment suggests GOP holding the Senate.

Why? Generic ballot (Dems in a weaker position than 2006 or 2018), Senate map (Dems need pickups in red states) & history. pic.twitter.com/zqtfAs4arP

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 6, 2026

Ok. Maybe this will turn out to be a banner year for the GOP because Democrats don’t like their own party. At this point nothing would surprise me. But Democrats have been winning everything in the off year and special elections and all the individual candidates are doing better than their GOP rivals in the polls. Independents are breaking heavily for the Democrats across the board.

Democrats are not cultists who love their party no matter what and they’re frustrated that they were unable to hang on to power in 2024. But those same polls show that Democratic voters are highly motivated to vote (much more than Republicans) and are outraged by the GOP and Trump.

Enten needs to be reminded of something called negative partisanship, when partisans are more motivated by their antipathy to the other party than by loyalty to their own. Right now that’s outweighing everything.

And yes, voters do need to be reminded that the Democrats actually aren’t all bad and tend to deliver far more than the Republicans ever could. They will always do a much better job for average people even if they are imperfect and fall short of our expectations.

Much has been said over the past few weeks about what motivated Donald Trump to go to war with Iran. Since he has given more than half a dozen different explanations, and sometimes in the same day, there’s no way of knowing for sure. With few restraints on his ambitions in his second term, the president has seemingly become convinced of his own omnipotence.

He has also thrown in his lot with Israel and certain Gulf states for ideological and financial reasons. (In the case of Israel, there are also theological considerations at play.) But Trump has another motive that he’s never tried to hide. In fact, he’s been saying it explicitly for the better part of 40 years: “We should take the oil.” 

Like his devotion to tariffs, Trump latched onto the notion when he was first creating his image as a brilliant businessman with political opinions that, for some reason, journalists thought the public would be interested in hearing. They were all shallow, guy-at-the-end-of-the-bar observations that generally reflected very little knowledge of the complexity of the issues and the potential ramifications. One of them was the idea that the United States should seize the world’s oil for itself.

Trump himself has been circulating a 1987 interview he did with Barbara Walters. He had given a speech before a rotary club in New Hampshire in which he posed the question, “Why couldn’t we go in and take over some of [Iran’s] oil?” When Walters asked how he thought such a thing could be done — “Would you send in the Marines, start a war?” — he replied, “Let ‘em have Iran, you take their oil.” And when she pressed him further, he made a recommendation. “The next time Iran attacks this country, go in and grab one of their big oil installations and keep it.”

He offered the same argument during an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley in 2011. After Trump claimed the U.S. could determine the oil prices set by OPEC — “We need one thing: brain power,” he explained — he used Libya as an example in an exchange with Crowley that’s worth looking at in full:  

Trump: You know, if somebody said, ‘What would be your theory or what would you do in terms of Libya,’ I’d do one thing, Trump said. Either I go in and take the oil or I don’t go in at all. We can’t be the policeman for the world.

Crowley: You’d just take their oil? 

Trump: Absolutely. I’d take the oil. I’d give them plenty so they can live very happily. I would take the oil. You know, in the old days —

Crowley: Well, wait. We can’t go —

Trump: Candy — Candy, in the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation’s yours. [America] is a laughingstock throughout the world. It’s being ripped off by every country.

That same year he released another of his ghostwritten books called “Time to Get Tough,” which had, you guessed it, a chapter called “Take The Oil.”

Over the years Trump has said the same thing about Syria and Venezuela, while touting the fact that the United States itself has recently once again achieved oil and gas independence. His threats to annex Canada and Mexico are at least partially informed by the fact that they are oil rich nations as well. (Interestingly, he has not been quite as aggressive about seizing the fields of oil powerhouses Russia and Saudi Arabia.) Just last week the president told the Financial Times, “to be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.” 

To the extent he has ever had any ideology other than “strength” and “tariffs,” Donald Trump has believed that the U.S. should use the global energy supply as leverage to dominate the rest of the planet. It sounds like something a James Bond — or cartoon — villain would come up with, but there it is. 

Trump, though, isn’t the only problem here. As Iran created nearly five decades of hostility following the 1979-81 hostage crisis and threatened Israel and other nations in the Middle East, much of conservative Washington became enamored with the idea that with the U.S. as the world’s largest oil and gas producer, it would be immune from the disruption of global energy supplies. More recently, many Republicans have assumed that since the markets were only temporarily rocked by Trump’s Venezuelan operation and the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, they could be managed. This was a huge mistake. 

As Brahma Chellaney pointed out in The Hill, “this logic rested on a profound miscalculation that energy systems are linear, predictable and ultimately subordinate to American power. They are not.” The consequences of Trump and Netanyahu’s war of choice in Iran, he pointed out, have been enormous.

“Energy is not just another commodity,” Chellaney wrote. “It is the foundation of modern economic life. When energy prices rise sharply, food prices follow. Natural gas is essential for fertilizer production, while oil powers agricultural machinery, irrigation and transport. The result is a cascading effect: an energy shock becomes a food shock and, for many societies, a political shock, hitting the most vulnerable countries hardest.”

Trump’s idea was that if the U.S could simply “take the oil” of Venezuela and Iran — which alone account for a significant percentage of the world’s oil reserves — without disrupting the global economy, the U.S. could dominate the world by leveraging the global energy markets. It has not worked. 

The result of this miscalculation may very well be catastrophic. As the consequences of his actions become increasingly clear, Donald Trump seems to be losing his grip. Just as his decades-long belief in the efficacy of coercive tariffs have proven to be illusory, so has his naive theory about seizing the oil. Iran is not rolling over as the president assumed it would, and the economic fallout that every previous administration understood was likely from such an undertaking is already happening. 

“Just take the oil” was an insane idea to begin with, and it’s why you don’t make that guy at the end of the bar the president of the most powerful country in the world. And maybe it’s also why the media shouldn’t elevate loud-mouthed hype artists like Trump in the first place.