Josh Marshall brings up another dimension to the Iran horror that isn’t getting enough attention:
On March 24th The New York Times published an article which reported that the Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has told President Trump that he needs to finish the job, overthrow the Iranian regime or render it so feeble that it cannot threaten anyone – the second condition likely being impossible without achieving the first. As the Times put it (emphasis added), “Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government.”
[…]
The common thinking in the US is that President Trump either blundered his way into this mess or was goaded into it by Benjamin Netanyahu. There’s a bit of truth to the second idea and a lot to the first. But it’s MBS and the leader of the UAE along with other gulf princes who are really Trump’s guys, much more than Benjamin Netanyahu. The way the Trump White House has interwoven US security, money and geopolitics with them runs much deeper. And, critically and relatedly, the Trump family’s business ties with them are infinitely deeper.
As Josh says, MBS leaked this to the NY Times for a reason: Trump is on notice.
Trump whacked a hornets nest and MBS says now Trump needs to remove the nest. It can’t be left in place. He needs to overthrow or defang the Iranian regime. The status quo is unacceptable, whatever nonsense of the day Trump may be saying about the Strait not being his problem.
He is rapidly decompensating, knowing that Israel AND the Gulf states have him in a corner, committed to something he now can’t get out of and desperately wants to.
Trump has long believed that he can change reality just by lying about it repeatedly until people believe it’s true. This is different. Reality is not bending to him and he doesn’t know what to do. Right now he’s just desperately dancing as fast as he can, hoping for a miracle.
The fact that this isn’t the ONLY story right now with blaring sirens says everything. He has completely lost his mind, we are at war and he has the nuclear codes.
On Easter, the president threatened war crimes, cursed and insulted and said “praise be to Allah.”
Axios reports:
President Trump claimed in an interview with Axios that the U.S. is “in deep negotiations” with Iran and that a deal can be reached before his deadline expires on Tuesday.
“There is a good chance, but if they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there,” he said.
he mediators are less optimistic that a deal is close but say they will work to the last minute to reach at least a partial agreement to delay Trump’s ultimatum. Trump has threatened to destroy infrastructure that is vital to Iranian civilians if he is unable to reach a deal with their leaders.
Tehran has accused Trump of planning to commit war crimes and threatened to retaliate with similar attacks against infrastructure in Israel and the Gulf states.
Asked by Axios whether he worried he would be harming innocent Iranian civilians, Trump said he thinks civilians who oppose their government would support such strikes to weaken the regime. “They are living in fear. They are afraid we are gonna leave in the middle of the war, but we are not going to leave,” Trump said.
He’s fine. It’s all fine. Never mind.
Again, I don’t see how you can read this as anything other than Trump trying to normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons
This is a farewell letter from the Army Chief of Staff Hegseth fired last week, Gen. Randy George:
Most people are interpreting this as a slight criticism of Hegseth with his reference to “needing courageous leaders of character” but that comes as a surprise to Republicans who saw him as being a true blue Trumper:
“I’ve never heard him say anything contrary to what the president’s trying to achieve,” McCormick said. “I thought he’s done a really good job getting the Army ready for war. So, I’d like to hear more because that’s concerning to me.”
It’s reported that he was fired because he balked at refusing to promote some officers who happen to be Black and female. Hegseth, as we know, is a bigoted piece of work who doesn’t think anyone but white, Christian men should run the world. I don’t know if that’s true and this letter certainly doesn’t shine any light on that question.
Hegseth is remaking the officer corps in the image of a war criminal junior officer, which is basically what he is. If one didn’t know better one might start to believe that all this is in preparation for a coup.
Thursday marked an important anniversary: It was one year since Donald Trump summoned the press corps to the White House Rose Garden — before its destruction — to declare “Liberation Day.” That afternoon in 2025, with his shellacked coif flapping against his bronzed forehead in the wind, the president held up hastily-assembled poster boards bearing the names of the world’s countries and territories.
Trump announced he was imposing “reciprocal” tariffs on all of them, even the ones with which the U.S. had a trade surplus — America’s trading partners, its adversaries, tiny countries that are basically subsistence economies and even small islands inhabited only by penguins which, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, are not involved in foreign trade. The tariffs were large and had no legitimate rationale, the numbers seemingly drawn at random. When asked for the formula that was used to determine how each country would be charged, the White House provided this:
This “formula,” it was quickly discovered, actually just represented the trade deficit with each country. It didn’t capture trade in services — only goods, skewing the numbers substantially. (The U.S. leads the world in exporting services.) There was no deep analysis performed by the Treasury or Commerce departments. They simply plugged in the numbers they could easily find, fudged the rest and threw it on a poster board.
The effects of Trump’s tariff agenda are evident. One year later, inflation is up, the American economy is weakening and his poll numbers are in the basement.
The effects of Trump’s tariff agenda are evident. One year later, inflation is up, the American economy is weakening and his poll numbers are in the basement.
According to the most recent CNN poll, his approval rating stands at 35%. But it’s his numbers on the economy, which has always been his strongest issue, that are the most significant. Sixty-five percent of Americans surveyed said that his policies are making the economy worse. More surprisingly, his economic approval rating among Republicans has dropped 14% since January.
On Feb. 20, the Supreme Court found many of the president’s tariffs unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision. Trump called the ruling a “disgrace” and attacked the Court, saying it “has been swayed by foreign interests.” He reserved particular ire for Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom he had appointed. He promised to slap 10% and 15% tariffs on every country, and he has since balked at refunding the money that American companies have paid to the government as a result of the tariffs over the past year. (That too is being litigated.)
Despite his anger, Trump doesn’t seem to care about the immediate. As I recently wrote, he is only concerned with how he will be memorialized. He made this even more clear when, on the April 2 anniversary of Liberation Day, he announced a new round of tariffs — some that reached 100% — on name-brand pharmaceuticals, along with making adjustments to tariffs on steel and aluminum products.
Trump’s understanding of trade deficits is poor; he equates them to the budget deficit, and he has never understood that you don’t trade equal amounts of the same things to each country. He believes that if a nation exports cars to the U.S., they should be obligated to import the same number of cars, or pay a huge tariff to make up for it. This is something he’s believed for over 40 years, and there’s no talking him out of it.
The announcement immediately triggered a global stock market panic, resulting in the largest decline since 2020, when the stock market crashed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the next two days the Dow fell 9.48%, the S&P 500 dropped 10% and the Nasdaq declined 11%. Everything fell: oil prices, the dollar, even gold, because investors were shocked by how unsophisticated and draconian the policy was. Trump had only been in office a little over two months.
Seven days later, just hours after urging Americans to “Be Cool” and musing that he might make the tariffs permanent in a Truth Social post, he “paused” most of them for 90 days, saying that everybody was getting a bit “yippy.” The markets were thrilled at the unexpected news, and what became known as the TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) reaction began.
His impulsive use of tariffs to punish anyone who looks at him sideways and to reward friends who, say, gift him with gold bars and expensive airplanes, became a game of expectations and market manipulations that continues to this day. People are openly trading on what can only be inside information about the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, and it appears that nothing will be done about it. The well connected are now making big bank on the TACO dynamic.
The immediate consequence of the tariff regime put the American economy into suspended animation. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist, dubbed this period the “Trump freeze” as the job market abruptly seized up. Businesses were unable to anticipate what the president might do from day to day, and hiring almost came to a standstill. “Trump may claim that we are economically ‘the hottest country in the world,’” Krugman wrote, “but the truth is that we last had a hot labor market back in 2023-4.” This has been instrumental in creating the infamous “K shaped economy,” where the rich get richer while the middle-class and the poor find themselves in a downward spiral.
The president’s recent military actions in Venezuela and Iran — and his threats against countries including Cuba and Mexico — have spooked the markets again, raising gas prices as well as the specter of recession, stagflation and worse.
The promised manufacturing boom that was supposed to happen as a result of the tariffs hasn’t arrived, and despite Trump’s wildly inflated lies about increased foreign investment, in reality it simply hasn’t happened. According to NPR, “official government tallies show that foreign direct investment last year was $288 billion — slightly less than the previous year and below average for the last 10 years.”
Inflation, which had already come down sharply under Joe Biden — yet nonetheless spelled doom for Kamala Harris and Democrats in 2024 — is higher today than it was the day Biden left office. With the energy spike from Trump’s misguided war in Iran, it will almost certainly continue to increase. And in the “You can’t make this stuff up” category, NPR reported that “imports seesawed last year as U.S. businesses tried to stockpile goods before tariffs took effect or whenever the import tax rate was temporarily reduced but over the course of 2025, Americans actually imported slightly more goods than they did the previous year, before Trump’s tariffs took effect.”
A year on, it’s obvious this has been a completely pointless, unconstitutional, counterproductive policy that has dragged down the American economy, which was just emerging from the crisis caused by Covid-19.
Calling such presidential debacles someone’s “Katrina” has been overdone. But in this case, it’s apt. Trump already had one during his first term, when he fumbled the response to the pandemic. Apparently that wasn’t enough for him — or us. Today he’s juggling an ailing economy, domestic unrest and a big war in the Middle East, and it’s all of his own doing.
In a follow-up post on Truth Social, Trump has used abusive language to call on Iran to let ships through the Strait of Hormuz, and threatened to further attack Iranian energy and transport infrastructure. He said:
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Who exactly is the crazy bastard?
Paul Krugman posted an unusual Saturday video comment about a Saturday Truth Social post (below). Trump in his Wednesday address may have sounded like his usual disconnected-from-reality self, albeit lower-energy. But Krugman found the “Glory be to GOD!” signoff in the post unnerving. Trump sounds even less like his usually unstable self.
Donald J. Trump Truth Social 04:04.26 10:05 AM EST
Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD! President DONALD J. TRUMP
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) April 4, 2026
Today Trump put up a Truth Social post, which said that if Iran doesn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, “all hell will reign down on them.” That was how he put it. All hell will rain down. Misspelled rain, but OK. And then finished it up with glory be to God. GOD in caps.
Wow. So first of all, this is a completely different picture suddenly. Aside from the Strait of Hormuz not being our problem to we will commit massive war crimes, presumably. That’s the only thing that makes sense here, unless they open it up, which is pretty bad.
And also… I don’t think Trump has ever said “glory be to God.” That doesn’t sound like him. That sounds almost as if Pete Hegseth wrote this post, which maybe in some sense he did. The misspellings and all do look like Trump in his own hand, but it feels like this is the influence of our religious fanatic Secretary of War, or as people in the Pentagon apparently call him the Secretary of War Crimes.
This is really bad. It’s hard to see what happens in 48 hours. It’s clear that Trump, for all his pretense of, “I’m always winning,” is aware of how completely he screwed things up, that he’s aware that he has basically led America into an epic strategic defeat. I don’t think he cares about that from the point of view of America, but he is realizing what this has done to him — that he will probably quite rapidly lose his grip on U.S., politics, and certainly to the extent that he cares about his legacy, it’s not going to be his wonderful ballroom. It’s going to be that he’s the man who single-handedly led America to one of its greatest defeats ever. But now what?
QUADRUPLE DOWN! What else? Which is what Trump did this morning.
“If we had a functioning democracy, this would be 25th Amendment time,” Krugman said. But we don’t.
If we had a functioning Republican Party, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Senate Majority John Thune (R-S.D.), and perhaps Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) would trek down to the White House (a la Sen. Barry Goldwater, et al. to Richard Nixon in 1974) and tell Trump that’s it’s time to retire to Mar-a-Lago. Because there is no chance that Vice President JD Vance and a majority of Trump’s Cabinet of sychpohants will sign onto a 25th Amendment letter “to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives” stating that Trump is unfit. They’d be taking out death warrants on themselves, warrants to be eagerly carried out by MAGA cultists. They’d be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their short lives. But the trio of sitting GOP officials won’t challenge Trump either. Johnson is a true believer. Cornyn is in a runoff with Ken Paxton for the GOP nomination for Texas governor. Thune may be a pragmatist, but is he that much of a pragmatist?
Krugman finishes his thought:
Anyway, I’m scared. I wonder very much what the next few days will bring because this is looking like basically a president who is losing it and unfortunately losing it in a way that can really make the world a much worse place very fast.
Trump made that clear this morning.
UPDATE: Krugman just posted an update in reaction to Trump’s Sunday post, leading off with “America as we knew it may end Tuesday.”
… my God, if Trump gets his way, and if he doesn’t chicken out —and I think TACO is greatly overrated, I think all too often Trump actually does follow through on his insane stuff.
It’s entirely possible that basically by this time Tuesday, America will have established itself as one of the world’s great villains. I don’t want to be here, but, you know, be warned. This is happening. This is real.
It’s the most astonishing, awful thing that I’ve ever seen, and we’ve all seen a lot of awful things. Take care, I guess.
Sepahnews (the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s official website) via AP: As the United States on Sunday said it rescued a service member missing behind enemy lines since Iran downed a fighter jet, Iran’s state TV aired a video showing what it claimed were parts of American aircraft that were part of the rescue operation that the country’s military had shot down. A regional intelligence official briefed on the mission told The Associated Press that the U.S. military blew up two transport planes due to a technical malfunction.
The Pentagon reports that in an operation involving hundreds of special operations troops, the U.S. successfully rescued the missing weapons officer from the F-15E shot down on Friday by Iran over Isfahan province. It was the second U.S. plane shot down last week despite Donald Trump’s claims that the U.S. has “overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies.”
A senior U.S. military official described the mission to rescue the airman as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. special operations given the mountainous terrain, the airman’s injuries and Iranian forces rushing to the location.
In a final twist after the weapons officer was rescued, two transport planes that would carry the commandos and the airmen to safety got stuck at a remote base in Iran. Commanders decided to fly in three new planes to extract all the U.S. military personnel and the airman, and they blew up the two disabled planes rather than have them fall into Iranian hands
It’s great that Pete Hegseth’s “warfighters” don’t just kill but rescue as well. The family of the crewman got its Easter miracle.
Still, that photo at the top looks eerily familiar. Those of a certain age will recall the fate of President Carter’s failed attempt in April 1980 to rescue 53 American hostages held by Iran since November 1979. Operation Eagle Claw ended in failure before the rescue. Mechanical problems en route and dust storms at the staging site named Desert One turned to calamity. The Air Force Historical Division notes that at the time “the United States had few bases or resources” to support such a mission:
Once at Desert One, the RH-53 with hydraulic problems could not be repaired, which left the team with one less helicopter than was required to carry the assault team and hostages. With just five helicopters available, the on-scene commander aborted the mission. The plan then shifted to getting the assault team back on the MC-130s while the helicopters refueled and returned to the Nimitz. At that point, tragedy struck. One of the helicopter’s rotor blades inadvertently collided with a fuel-laden EC-130. Both aircraft exploded, killing five airmen on the EC-130 and three marines on the RH-53. The team commanders ordered the remaining helicopters abandoned and everyone to board the EC-130s, which soon departed for Masirah Island. With that, Operation Eagle Claw came to an end. President Carter was notified of the mission’s failure, and the wreckage at Desert One was broadcast to the world by the Iranian government. In the remaining months of his presidency President Carter continued to work toward the hostages’ release, although the government of Iran did not do so until the day of President Ronald W. Reagan’s inauguration on January 20, 1981.
Desert One wreckage.
Carter lost his reelection. Reagan won in a landslide. The greed-is-good 1980s followed. Wealth did not “trickle down.” Anger bubbled up instead, especially after the election of the first Black president and fallout from the Great Recession. Then came Donald Trump.
It isn’t tied directly to the debacle in the desert under Carter. But then everything is connected to everything else, isn’t it?
Earth from space, photographed by an Artemis II crew member
For those of us of “a certain age”, that is to say, old enough to have actually witnessed the moon landing live on TV… the fact that “we” were even able to achieve this feat “by the end of the decade” (as President Kennedy projected in 1961) still feels like a pretty big deal to me.
Of course, there are still big unanswered questions out there about Life, the Universe, and Everything, but I’ll leave that to future generations. I feel that I’ve done my part…spending my formative years plunked in front of a B&W TV in my PJs eating Sugar Smacks and watching Walter Cronkite reporting live from the Cape.
Those particular memories resurfaced recently as I watched Richard Linklater’s charming 2022 animated memoir Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, which I stumbled across on Netflix:
Of course, 10 year-old Linklater didn’t land on the moon and return safely to the Earth just ahead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin; that’s the fantasy part of his tale. It was the earthbound elements of his narrative that triggered an emotional sense memory of being a kid again, living in suburbia in 1969 (and watching the moon landing on a boxy black and white television set).
This past Wednesday, those memories came flooding back to me like a hot flash from the end of a Saturn V rocket:
One “teeny, tiny curb” for a human…one giant leap for humankind. Flick my pocket protector and call me a space geek, but we seem to have lost that collective feeling of wonder and curiosity about the cosmos (people are too busy doom scrolling to look up and stargaze anymore). As far as I’m concerned, the Artemis II mission is a good thing.
With the madness and mayhem dominating the current news cycle, the timing of NASA’s first manned lunar mission since 1972 couldn’t be better. Frankly, it’s been a minute since I’ve had a reason to feel pride in being an American. Surely, this is a galvanizing moment for our politically fractured country; something we can all get behind, yes?
President Donald Trump released a budget blueprint on Friday calling for a 23 percent cut to NASA’s budget, two days after the agency launched four astronauts on the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years.
The spending proposal for fiscal year 2027 is the opening salvo in a multi-month budget process. Both houses of Congress must pass their own appropriations bills, reconcile any differences between the two, and then send the final budget to the White House for President Trump’s signature. Fiscal year 2027 begins on October 1.
The White House requested a similar cut to NASA last year. The Republican-led Congress resoundingly rejected the proposal and kept NASA’s budget close to its level in the final year of the Biden administration. Like last year’s budget, the proposal from the Trump administration will undergo major changes as Congress weighs in over the coming months.
In a document explaining the NASA cuts, the Trump administration said it seeks to slash funding for “unnecessary and overpriced activities.” Under the White House plan, NASA will focus on the administration’s priority of landing humans on the Moon before the end of Trump’s term in office, then building a Moon base.ch was already effectively canceled last year due to cost overruns. […]
The most severe cuts are aimed at NASA’s science programs. The Trump administration proposes reducing science funding by nearly half, a $3.4 billion reduction compared to fiscal year 2026. The budget would cancel more than 40 “low-priority missions.” The budget overview released by the White House on Friday does not identify which missions would be terminated, other than Mars Sample Return, which was already effectively canceled last year due to cost overruns.
The White House asked for a cut to NASA’s science budget of a similar magnitude for fiscal year 2026, but Congress balked.
The Planetary Society decried the cuts as “draconian” in a press release on Friday.
And yes, I’ve seen the friendly fire on social media regarding the cost of the Artemis II mission. I “get” what some of my fellow well-meaning social progressives are saying, but here’s a little perspective. The 2026 fiscal budget for NASA was $24.44 billion. Granted, that is a hefty chunk of change, but a mere pittance, compared to this:
President Donald Trump has proposed boosting defense spending to $1.5 trillion in his 2027 budget released Friday, the largest such request in decades, reflecting his emphasis on U.S. military investments over domestic programs.
The sizable increase for the Pentagon, some 44%, had been telegraphed by the Republican president even before the U.S.-led war against Iran. The president’s plan would also reduce spending on non-defense programs by 10%.
“President Trump promised to reinvest in America’s national security infrastructure, to make sure our nation is safe in a dangerous world,” wrote Budget Director Russell Vought.
The president’s annual budget is considered a reflection of the administration’s values and does not carry the force of law. The massive document typically highlights an administration’s priorities, but Congress, which handles federal spending issues, is free to reject it and often does.
Trump, speaking ahead of an address to the nation this week about the Iran war, signaled the military is his priority, setting up a clash ahead in Congress.
I don’t know about you, but I would much rather see my hard-earned tax dollars go toward exploring strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before…as opposed to empowering the baser instincts of an earthbound species that has been hell-bent on self destruction since Day 1.
Back to the mission at hand-a musical voyage to the far side of the moon, and returning you safely back to the Earth. Take your protein pills and put your headphones on:
Frank Sinatra – “Fly Me to the Moon”
Moxy Früvous – “You Will Go to the Moon”
Jonathan King – “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”
Rush – “Countdown”
David Bowie – “Space Oddity”
Elton John – “Rocket Man”
Harry Nilsson – “Spaceman”
Deep Purple – “Space Truckin”
Montrose – “Space Station #5”
Kate Bush – “The Big Sky”
Prism – “Spaceship Superstar”
Yes – “Starship Trooper”
Moody Blues – “Floating”
The Rolling Stones – “2000 Light Years From Home”
The Orb – “Backside of the Moon”
The Police – “Walking on the Moon”
Ian Gillan Band – “Five Moons”
King Crimson – “Moonchild”
Nick Drake – “Pink Moon”
Paul McCartney & Wings – “Venus and Mars”
Jefferson Starship – “Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?”
The Church – “Under the Milky Way”
Gamma – “Voyager”
Peter Schilling – “Major Tom”
The Stories – “Earthbound/Freefall”
One more thing…
You can track the Artemis II mission in real time here:
The two were arrested on Friday after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended their permanent residency status, according to the State Department.
“Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the State Department said in a statement.
Rubio was only following orders from his boss — Laura Loomer.
Trump: “Over 3,000 years ago, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob delivered the ancient Israelites out of slavery and brought them into the promised land. It was an amazing period of time, just like today we have an amazing period of time.” pic.twitter.com/ark4DtDe7S
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 4, 2026
He wanted it big. He wanted lots of gold, lots of marble. He wanted visitors awestruck by his architectural expansion of the country’s symbolic seat of power. “They should sense the strength and grandeur of the German Reich as they walk from the entrance to the reception hall,” Adolf Hitler told his chief architect, Albert Speer, outlining his plans for an extension to the old Reich chancellery, at Wilhelmstrasse 77 in Berlin.
The new annex, connected to the chancellery by a marble corridor hung with crystal chandeliers, was part of Hitler’s ambitious plans to align the Berlin cityscape with his vision for the future of the country. Hitler wanted a Triumphbogen, a triumphal arch, twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He wanted an “Avenue of Splendor” for military parades. “The Champs-Élysées is a hundred meters wide,” Hitler told Speer. “We will make our avenue twenty meters wider.” A planned Volkshalle was to accommodate 180,000. The Eiffel Tower could fit beneath its cupola. This “Hall of the People” was to be topped by the largest swastika on Earth. Berlin itself was to be rechristened as Weltstadt Germania, “Capital of the World.”
