When Trump was quoted in his recent TIME magazine interview saying “I guess” when asked if Americans should fear terrorist retribution for this war, I thought to myself, “Oh boy. There’s no way that even his miscreant incompetents haven’t discussed that possibility. He’s hoping for it.”
A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.
Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses.
Trump has already telegraphed the move. We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions. In a social post right after starting the war, he claimed (wrongly) that Iran had tried to hurt his cause in past elections.
We lack any other explanation for the war, at least from the American side. Trump is incoherent, and his administration is inconsistent. Much of what has been said about Iran is not true. The propaganda is contradictory. It is as though the war itself is not the main goal, but that it was simply important to somehow get the thing started.
War, famously, is the extension of politics by other means. But what are the politics? The president and especially the Secretary of Defense present the United States as a kind of war crimes central, a place where the rules do not apply. War crimes to do not win wars. Instead they provoke further war crimes and other retribution.
The Tehran regime is, so to speak, a convenient partner in the mutual provocation of terror. Iran is ruled by ruthless people with a record and a capacity for carrying out terrorist attacks beyond its borders. A terrorist attack on the territory of the United States might be a response by Iran or one of its proxies. Trump seems to have anticipated this, without seeming to care about loss of life: “Like I said, some people will die.” And if they do, he has his pretext.
I could easily see this happening. Yes, it would go to court and they would take their own sweet time and perhaps we would end up having the elections anyway, just postponed. Then they would just pull all the shenanigans they plan to pull anyway and who knows how that will all come out. But even in the best case scenario, tens of millions of people will see the election as illegitimate if Trump doesn’t win — and tens of millions of people will know the election is illegitimate if he does.
This piece in the Atlantic (gift link) discusses the potential for Iranian terrorist attacks and it is very high. They have done them for many years and even are known to have sleeper cells in the U.S.
Despite the successful record of U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in disrupting Iranian-backed plots on American soil, and even with a more feeble Iranian proxy network, there is good reason to be concerned today. Over the past several years, the U.S. government has shifted resources and personnel away from counterterrorism and toward other priorities, including China, Russia, and immigration. Because of this, the U.S. homeland is arguably more vulnerable than it has been in a long time.
And then there’s the question of Iran’s desire for retribution. Terrorists need both capabilities and intent to succeed. Even as the Iranians’ capabilities are being attenuated, their intent to attack, if anything, is growing stronger.
I came across this on social media and it spoke to me. I think it’s right:
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore.
I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy.
If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy. If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy.
If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy.
If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it. It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission.
He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress. Now the mask is off. Now we know. And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.
– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.
For the latest Timecover story titled “Trump’s War,” which was published on Thursday, March 5, correspondent Eric Cortellessa questioned Trump about the details of the unfolding war with Iran. In a pointed moment, he was asked whether it’s reasonable for Americans to have concerns about being attacked at home.
“I guess,” Trump, 79, responded. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things.”
“Like I said, some people will die,” the president added. “When you go to war, some people will die.”
Many of us sense that something is not quite right with the world. Like a tickling on the back of the neck. A kind of spider sense. That nagging itch. As Morpheus puts it in The Matrix, “You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
This is ground where conspiracy theories sprout, I’ve argued:
When life feels as if you have awakened locked in the trunk of a car careening down a rutted mountain road, you want to believe – you need to believe – that someone, anyone, is sitting behind the wheel. Even a diabolical someone is better than no one at all.
“Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity” by Paul Kingsnorth attempts to get at the root of it. (I’m partway through the audiobook.) Kingsnorth suggests that behind Man’s increasing alienation from nature and himself is a system, a technological-cultural matrix. Cultured in capitalism over centuries and fueled by money, always money, it is colonizing our own culture, reducing humans to inputs, and leaving people spiritually barren.
From a review last fall, “The Machine, he writes, is the sum of the forces ‘controlled by and for technology’ that have, since the inception of modernity, been ‘uprooting us from nature, culture and God.’ ” We have raised innovation to a secular faith, “a religious vision for an irreligious society.”
Kingsnorth resists categorization. “Some of Kingsnorth’s explanations align with Trumpism and the American Christian right,” reviewer Alexander Nazaryan notes. And yet he argues that left and right are both being subsumed by the Machine. A Machine in the latter stages of cultural collapse.
“I’m hopeful about the fact that the Machine can’t last,” he said. “I don’t think it is spiritually or ecologically or culturally sustainable.”
Over at Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink (subscription required), they’ve begun a series with an overlapping subject, only focused on contemporary issues of power. Downstream of the Epstein class, “millions simply sense that something is amiss, wonder how decisions are made, and grow alienated from the system. Life feels hard, but it’s even harder to see upstream through the fog and understand why.” The Epstein files provide clues to what’s happening, Giridharadas writes in the introduction. “But access does not equal understanding” the underlying operating system. And the network.
Giridharadas wrote on Monday, “When you live and die by the network, you never know whom you’re going to need, when, or how. Every friend is a potential steppingstone. Every phone number is a key. Every door must remain ajar, no matter what you might glimpse through its crack.”
Does it look suspiciously like child sex trafficking? Look the other way.
Another curiosity about now the network operates is women’s place in it. Or not in it. “What are seeing in the Epstein circle is a strange hybrid of patriarchies,” Giridharadas writes this morning (crediting contributor Kate Manne), “a new-world commodification and fungibility and trading of women and girls, on one hand; and, on the other, a persistent old-world sense of where women belong and don’t belong.”
“To understand the present, we must understand the machinery that produced it,” Giridharadas writes. And yet.
We, the disempowered, are still looking to “out” the men behind we perceive sit behind the wheel. Pursuing them gives us a false sense of agency. If we could just expose them and their schemes, we think, our lives would improve. In that pursuit, we don’t have to look at ourselves.
Not one week after launching a war with Iran unsanctioned by Congress, Donald Trump next hopes to annex the Sudetenland (Politico):
President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military into Ecuador this week to strike drug cartels, and now he’s poised to do the same in more than a dozen other Latin American countries under a new proclamation he signed Saturday.
In remarks before the signing ceremony, flanked by the leaders of many of those countries, Trump described the proclamation as “a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks.” He touted the U.S. military’s “amazing weaponry” — and said all the other Latin American countries need to do is identify the location of cartel operatives.
Private Vasquez: “I only need to know one thing: where they are.”
You don’t have to be Dennis Hartley to spot the foreshadowing:
“We need your help,” Trump said at the Shield of the Americas Summit. “You have to just tell us where they are.”
Our power-mad, hairsprayed protector keeps a red button on his desk for ordering a Diet Coke. He thinks ordering the killing of thousands of people and winning wars of choice is just as simple. Trump has so neutered the U.S. Congress that it might simply spend days like he does: playing golf.
Last week, Trump again threatened Cuba’s government, suggesting it will fall next after Iran (CNBC):
“We think that we want to fix — finish this one first, but that will be just a question of time before you and a lot of unbelievable people are going to be going back to Cuba, hopefully not to stay,” Trump said to the Miami-heavy audience that included people of Cuban heritage.
He’ll “fix” Cuba without congressional approval too. If all of this has an ominous (if greasy) feel to it, that’s because Trump’s biggest distraction yet from the Epstein scandals is not making the world safer. Or the U.S.
A report from the Daily Mail (unconfirmed for now by other sources) claims that the White House is blocking release of a joint intelligence statement from the FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center on the heightened threat of foreign terrorism against Americans, including inside the United States:
The bulletin, which was reviewed by the Daily Mail, details ‘elevated threats by the government of Iran to US military and government personnel and facilities, Jewish and Israeli institutions and their perceived supporters, and Iranian dissidents and other anti-regime activists in the United States.’
Asked whether Americans should be worried about foreign terrorism on our soil, Trump said, “I guess.” He added, “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
The war that’s not a war will get some people killed, maybe even here at home. Just not the better half. It is of no consequence to Donald Trump so long as the war dead don’t make him look bad. So don’t advertise the risk is the White House approach.
Are the attacks on Iran (in coordination with Israel’s Banjamin Netanyahu) prompted by Trump’s need for another Epstein distraction? Or by the declining geriatric’s increased susceptibility to suggestion and his own megalomania? Yes.
Administration claims that Iran posed some nonspecific imminent threat appear predictably specious unsupported by evidence the Trump administration won’t present. Will Saletan of The Bulwark deconstructs the mercurial meanings of “imminent threat” offered by administration flacks. “Imminent” can mean anything from someday to “nuclear ambitions” to threats Trump divined through intuition.
Chaos is Trump’s calling card. Chaos is what he’s delivered. But it wasn’t chaos voters were looking for in November 2024. Vote for the black-Asian woman and you’d see World War III, Trump warned supporters in 2024.
“With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness and chaos will be over,” Trump promised. “I don’t have wars.”
See? Whatever is happening in the Middle East? Not a war.
View on Threads
Trump’s imperialist designs and his thirst for blood elicit what Rick Blaine said recalling the day the Nazis marched into Paris: “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”
The MAGAs wear red.
Over the last year, everyday Americans rose up to oppose Trump’s mass deportation project. The cruelty. The violence. The violation of human and constitutional rights and basic human decency. But it took time for people to organize and get traction. Meanwhile, those in Congress who didn’t kowtow dithered.
The question now is whether Americans have it within themselves to rise up and stop an American megalomaniac. Military adventurism from the self-declared peace president threatens to spawn the World War III he promised his base his election would prevent. Even if Americans do, will it be in time? Is it already too late?
There’s just something about (Castro’s) Cuba that affects (U.S. presidential) administrations like the full moon affects a werewolf. There’s no real logic at work here.
-an interviewee from the documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro
If I could only live to see it, to be there with you. What I wouldn’t give for twenty more years! Here we are, protected, free to make our profits without Kefauver, the goddamn Justice Department and the F.B.I. ninety miles away, in partnership with a friendly government. Ninety miles! It’s nothing! Just one small step, looking for a man who wants to be President of the United States, and having the cash to make it possible. Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel. – From The Godfather, Pt. II, screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo
Which reminds me of a funny story…
Trump: "We're looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba is at the end of the line. They're very much at the end of the line."
“End of the line”? Would you care to…elaborate on that, Mr. Preznit?
Trump: "Cuba is in its last moments of life … but our focus right now is on Iran. Marco will take one hour off and finish up a deal on Cuba. That'll be an easy one."
Kinda like one-hour Martinizing? Bish, bash, bosh?
During his second term, President Donald Trump has authorized military action in a string of countries, including Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen. Now, he’s hinted that Cuba could be next, declaring that the Caribbean island nation is “in its last moments of life.”
Trump delivered his stark warning during a Saturday speech in Florida, where leaders from several Latin American nations were gathered at his Doral resort.
There, he unveiled a new coalition called “The Shield of the Americas,” aimed at bolstering security across the Western Hemisphere. Kristi Noem has been tapped as a special envoy for the initiative, following her dismissal as Homeland Security secretary.
Upon taking the podium, the president said he is “looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba.” He described the nation as “at the end of the line” and experiencing its “last moments of life.”
The country, which has been under communist rule since the 1959 Cuban revolution, has no money, no oil, and a “bad philosophy,” he continued.
While his administration is currently focused on Iran, Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will “take one hour off and finish up a deal on Cuba,” adding, “That’ll be an easy one.”
Since returning to office, Trump has taken an aggressive posture towards Cuba. He’s slapped steep tariffs on the island nation and threatened to impose duties on goods from countries that export oil to Cuba. He’s also urged the communist state to “make a deal” or face unspecified repercussions.
The country’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has frequently criticized the Trump administration’s hostile rhetoric.
“Cuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation. No one tells us what to do,” he wrote on X in January, adding that his government was “ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
For all you youngsters in the audience, the cigar-chomping dictator who once inspired a documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro (more on that below) was finally taken out in 2016 by method #639: Old age. Regardless of who is in charge of the island nation now, it’s been a long, strange trip for U.S.-Cuban relations since Castro seized power in 1959.
But I’m sure Secretary Rubio will get it straightened out in an hour or so.
While we’re holding our breath, here are 10 Cuba-themed films worth a peek:
Bananas– Yes, I know. This 1971 Woody Allen film takes place in the fictional banana republic of “San Marcos”, but the mise en scene is an obvious stand-in for Cuba. There are also numerous allusions to the Cuban revolution, not the least of which is the ridiculously fake beard donned at one point by hapless New Yawker Fielding Mellish (Allen) after he finds himself swept up in Third World revolutionary politics. Naturally, it all starts with Allen’s moon-eyed desire for a woman completely out of his league, an attractive activist (Louise Lasser). The whole setup is utterly absurd…and an absolute riot. This is pure comic genius at work. Howard Cosell’s (straight-faced) contribution is priceless. Allen co-wrote with his Take the Money and Run collaborator, Mickey Rose.
Buena Vista Social Club- This engaging 1999 music documentary was the brainchild of musician Ry Cooder, director Wim Wenders, and the film’s music producer Nick Gold. Guitarist/world music aficionado Cooder coaxes a number of venerable Cuban players out of retirement (most of whom had their careers rudely interrupted by the Revolution and its aftermath) to cut a collaborative album, and Wenders is there to capture what ensues (as well as ever-cinematic Havana) in his inimitable style. He weaves in footage of some of the artists as they make their belated return to the stage, playing to enthusiastic fans in Europe and the U.S.
Che– Let’s get this out of the way. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was no martyr. By the time he was captured and executed by CIA-directed Bolivian Special Forces in 1967, he had put his own fair share of people up against the wall in the name of the Revolution. Some historians have called him “Castro’s brain”.
That said, there is no denying that he was a complex, undeniably charismatic and fascinating individual. By no means your average revolutionary guerrilla leader, he was well-educated, a physician, a prolific writer (from speeches and essays on politics and social theory to articles, books and poetry), a shrewd diplomat and had a formidable intellect. He was also a brilliant military tactician.
Steven Soderbergh and his screenwriters (Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. Van Der Veen) adapted their 4 ½ hour opus from Guevara’s autobiographical accounts. Whereas Part 1 (aka The Argentine) is a fairly straightforward biopic, Part 2 (aka Guerilla) reminded me of two fictional films with an existential bent, both also set in torpid South American locales-Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and Herzog’s Aguirre, theWrath of God. Like the doomed protagonists in those films, Guevara is fully committed to his journey into the heart of darkness, and has no choice but to cast his fate to the wind and let it all play out. Benicio del Toro shines in the lead role. Full review
The Godfather, Part II– While Cuba may not be the primary setting for Francis Ford Coppola’s superb 1974 sequel to The Godfather, it is the location for a key section of the narrative where powerful mob boss Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) travels to pre-Castro Havana to consider a possible business investment. He has second thoughts after witnessing a disturbing incident involving an anti-Batista rebel. And don’t forget that the infamous “kiss of death” scene takes place at Batista’s opulent New Year’s Eve party…just as the guests learn Castro and his merry band of revolutionaries have reached the outskirts of the city and are duly informed by their host…that they are on their own! And remember, if you want to order a banana daiquiri in Spanish, it’s “banana daiquiri”.
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay– Picking up where they left off in their surprise stoner comedy hit Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, roomies Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) excitedly pack their bags for a dream European vacation in weed-friendly Amsterdam. Unbeknownst to Harold, Kumar has smuggled his new invention, a “smokeless” bong, on board.
When a “vigilant” passenger, already eyeballing Kumar with suspicion due to his ethnic appearance, catches a glimpse of him attempting to fire up his homemade contraption in the bathroom, all hell breaks loose. Before they know it, Harold and Kumar have been handcuffed by on-board air marshals, given the third degree back on the ground by a jingoistic government spook and issued orange jumpsuits, courtesy of the Gitmo quartermaster.
Through circumstances that could only occur in Harold and Kumar’s resin-encrusted alternate universe, they break out of Cuba, and hitch a boat ride to Florida. This sets off a series of cross-country misadventures. As in the first film, the more ridiculously over-the-top their predicament, the funnier it gets. It’s crass, even vulgar; but it’s somehow endearingly crass and vulgar, in a South Park kind of way (i.e. the goofiness is embedded with sharp political barbs). (Full review)
I Am Cuba – There is a tendency to dismiss this 1964 film about the Cuban revolution as Communist propaganda. Granted, it was produced with the full blessing of Castro’s regime, who partnered with the Soviet government to provide the funding for director Mikhail Kalatozov’s sprawling epic. Despite the dubious backers, the director was given a surprising amount of creative freedom.
On the surface, Kalatozov’s film is in point of fact a propagandist polemic; the narrative is divided into a quartet of rhetoric-infused vignettes about exploited workers, dirt-poor farmers, student activists, and rebel guerrilla fighters.
However it is also happens to be a visually intoxicating masterpiece that, despite accolades from critics over the decades, remains relatively obscure. The real stars of the film are the director and his technical crew, who will leave you pondering how they produced some of those jaw-dropping set pieces and logic-defying tracking shots.
The Mambo Kings– Arme Glimcher’s underrated 1992 melodrama concerns two musician brothers (Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas) who flee Cuba in the mid-1950s to seek fame and fortune in America. Hugely entertaining, with fiery performances by the two leads, great support from Cathy Moriarty and Maruschka Detmers, topped off by a fabulous soundtrack. Tito Puente gives a rousing cameo performance, and in a bit of stunt casting Desi Arnaz, Jr. is on hand to play (wait for it) Desi Arnaz, Sr. (who helps the brothers get their career going). Cynthia Cidre adapted her screenplay from Oscar Hijuelos’ novel.
Our Man in Havana– A decade after their collaboration on the 1949 classic, The Third Man, director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene reunited for this wonderfully droll 1960 screen adaptation of Greene’s seriocomic novel. Alec Guinness gives one of his more memorable performances as an English vacuum cleaner shop owner living in pre-revolution Havana. Strapped for cash, he accepts an offer from Her Majesty’s government to do a little moonlighting for the British Secret Service. Finding himself with nothing to report, he starts making things up so he can stay on the payroll. Naturally, this gets him into a pickle as he keeps digging himself into a deeper hole. Reed filmed on location, which provides an interesting snapshot of Havana on the cusp of the Castro era.
Scarface (1983)– Make way for the bad guy. Bad guy comin’ through. Tony Montana (Al Pacino) is a bad, bad, bad, bad man, a Cuban immigrant who comes to America as part of the 1980 Mariel boat lift. A self-proclaimed “political refugee”, Tony, like the millions of immigrants before him who made this country great, aims to secure his piece of the American Dream. However, he’s a bit impatient. He espies a lucrative shortcut via Miami’s thriving cocaine trade, which he proves very adept at (because he’s very ruthless). Everything about this film is waaay over the top; Pacino’s performance, Brian De Palma’s direction, Oliver Stone’s screenplay, the mountains of coke and the carnage. Yet…it remains a guilty pleasure.
638 Ways to Kill Castro- History buffs (and conspiracy-a-go-go enthusiasts) will definitely want a peek at British director Dolan Cannell’s documentary. Mixing archival footage with talking heads (including a surprising number of would-be assassins), Cannell highlights some of the attempts by the U.S. government to knock off Fidel over the years. The number (638) of “ways” is derived from a list compiled by former members of Castro’s security team.
Although Cannell initially plays for laughs (many of the schemes sound like they were hatched by Wile E. Coyote) the tone becomes more sobering. The most chilling revelation concerns the 1976 downing of a commercial Cuban airliner off Barbados (73 people killed). One of the alleged masterminds was Orlando Bosch, an anti-Castro Cuban exile living in Florida (he had participated in CIA-backed actions in the past).
When Bosch was threatened with deportation in the late 80s, many Republicans rallied to have him pardoned, including Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who used her involvement with the “Free Orlando Bosch” campaign as part of her running platform. Her campaign manager was a young up and coming politician named (wait for it) Jeb Bush. Long story short? Jeb’s Pappy then-president George Bush Sr. granted Bosch a pardon in 1990. Oh, what a tangled web, Jeb! BTW, Bosch was publicly referred to as an “unrepentant terrorist” by Richard Thornburgh, President Bush the First’s Attorney General. (Full review)
UPDATE: I dug up this pic from a 2011 post on then-Senator Rubio’s Facebook account :
“Sen. Marco Rubio, with Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, addressing the Bay of Pigs veterans.”
A tangled web, indeed.
Here are a few more recommendations:
Memories of Underdevelopment Honey for Oshun Chico and Rita The Perez Family Popi
The president speaking at his golf course to the leaders of Latin American nations at the “Shield of Americas.”
This guy is clinically demented. Try to read it. “I'd love to get to your countries at some point. Marco loves going to your countries. He's always at one of these… https://t.co/UER0oqPFyFpic.twitter.com/LHPoFvJe4z
— Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@jimstewartson) March 7, 2026
“I’d love to get to your countries at some point. Marco loves going to your countries. He’s always at one of these countries. He likes your countries the best, OK? You know, where are you? I mean, Chile, how good, how is Chile doing? Good. He likes it.
He feels very calm. We all like him, right? It helps. He’s got a language– he’s got a language advantage over me. Because I’m not learning your damn language. I don’t have time. I was OK with languages. But I’m not going to spend time learning your language. That much I want to. Just give me a good interpreter.
Interpreter? Very important. And I know if somebody’s good. I may not speak the language. But I know I had an interpreter recently that wasn’t good, talking to a very strong person from a different part of the world. And I could tell, even though I– even though I don’t speak the language, I could tell the interpreter was not good.
When you go, uh, uh, uh, when I give a long flowing, beautiful sentence, and in this case, it was a woman. And she gave it in about one fourth at the time. I said, well, their language may be efficient. But it’s not that efficient.
And I could also tell one half great interpreters. Interpreter is very important. You have a bad interpreter. You think you’re doing well? What did I do a good job talking to? This one of that was I great when I spoke to Putin today. Was I great when I spoke to President? And she was I great. But if the interpreter is speaking right or is weak or is ineffective or not good or not interpreting your words correctly, um, in one case we had an interpreter who once you disagreed with what we were saying, you actually changed it. We considered her a foreign minister, right?
But what no, the interpreter is– I talk about it all the time. Interpreters are really important. When you don’t speak the language, they don’t speak the language. It’s you people have no idea. People have no idea how valuable. And I’m on them all the time. People have no idea how valuable a good interpreter is.”
He was speaking before a group of South American leaders for the “Shield of the Americas” event whatever that looney tunes idea is.
He couldn’t order from a menu in a Mexican restaurant. But just as he says that everyone says everyone says he could have been a great musician and the scientists all tell him nobody understands it like he does, he’s “ok with languages.” He just doesn’t have time to learn their “damn language.”
There’s more. Here’s Trump at an interminable event about college sports yesterday:
DOOCY: It sounds like the Russians are helping Iran target and attack Americans–
TRUMP: That's an easy problem compared to what we're doing here. What a stupid question that is to be asking at this time. We're talking about something else. pic.twitter.com/OXlKlC3SQt
Trump: That was a bad question. I’ll give you one more question. Doocy: Can I ask one off topic? Trump: On topic Doocy: What’s motivating you to do this right now because there’s a lot going on? Trump: What’s happening in college sports and it doesn’t sound as important as what’s happening in other places but it’s very important to me.
This is literally crazy. He’s not only spending vast amounts of time at superfluous events, he’s refusing to answer questions about the war. Which he started. Just last week.
President Trump was asked on Thursday if Americans needed to worry about the possibility of terrorist reprisals by Iran inside the United States. He responded, not quite reassuringly, “I guess.”
His follow-up response was even colder comfort. “Some people will die,” he said.
His remarks did not go unnoticed inside the Justice Department and the F.B.I. — especially among agents and prosecutors who handle national security and terrorism cases. After a year of constant firings, resignations and other disruptive distractions, elite counterterrorism and counterintelligence units have been stretched thin and left short-handed, current and former officials say.
There is widespread concern about the capacity of these units to deal with threats unleashed by Iran in particular, an adversary known for its willingness to combine espionage, cyberwarfare and attacks in the real world in bringing the fight overseas.
Donald Trump’s White House is blocking top US intelligence agencies from warning law enforcement across the country about rising threats to the homeland tied to his war with Iran, the Daily Mail can reveal.
The FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center were preparing to put out a joint intelligence statement on Friday to state and local authorities alerting them of a heightened threat due to the ongoing war in Iran, a senior DHS official said. The bulletin, which was reviewed by the Daily Mail, details ‘elevated threats by the government of Iran to US military and government personnel and facilities, Jewish and Israeli institutions and their perceived supporters, and Iranian dissidents and other anti-regime activists in the United States.”Radicalized individuals with a variety of ideological backgrounds also may see this conflict or other geopolitical events as a justification for violence,’ the report continues.
The five-page bulletin blocked by the White House provides specific details on how Iranian proxies may carry out attacks across the country. One section explains how local law enforcement can respond to this type of violence.The official title is ‘A Public Safety Awareness Report: Elevated threat in the United States during US-Iran conflict’.
Homeland Security broke protocol and gave the White House a heads-up about the nationwide bulletin hours before it was set to be released. Top Trump officials ordered it placed on ‘hold’. The White House did not deny blocking the terror bulletin in a statement to the Daily Mail.
‘The White House is coordinating closely with all government agencies to ensure information being disseminated is accurate, up to date, and has been properly vetted — even if that means taking additional time to review to ensure nothing is done in a vacuum,’ said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.
Sure. What’s the harm in waiting?
We’re lucky that Trump is the luckiest man who ever lived but I don’t know how long his luck — or ours — is going to hold out.
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed a proposal from AG Pam Bondi for shielding Department of Justice lawyers from professional accountability for unethical behavior. A new rule would “block state bars from investigating and punishing DOJ lawyers accused of violating state ethics requirements.”
And it would do that in an oh-so-Trumpian manner. Through endless delay:
Under this rule, Attorney General Pam Bondi could freeze state bars’ probes until the department has undertaken its own independent review of any allegations—a black-box process that could stretch on extensively. Wielding this new power, Bondi could essentially quash any state investigations into ethics violations by DOJ lawyers, including accusations that these front-line attorneys lied in court, by allowing “reviews” that might last indefinitely. If upheld, the rule would bail out the many, many DOJ lawyers who allegedly breached their ethical obligations in defending the Trump administration.
And even better than Trump’s endless court appeals, no judges need be involved here.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the now-infamous Lindsey Halligan is under investigation by the Florida bar association and faces possible disbarment over alleged misconduct. The action in Florida, the Times suggests, “could serve as a check on administration lawyers who have been accused by judges of pushing the boundaries of the law or intentionally misleading the courts” as well as “deter attorneys considering working for the Justice Department.” After so many experienced DOJ lawyers quit or were fired soon after Trump regained the White House, Bondi finds herself shorthanded.
But Bondi is not being a good boss who backs up her team. If the Halligan matter goes forward, Bondi too could find herself at risk of disbarment in Florida.
Mark Joseph Stern: First, let me just remind you that there is no federal bar, which is an important background point to understand. State bars license and oversee the practice of law. So when lawyers violate ethics, it is the state bars that step in and impose punishments. The Justice Department has its own process for investigating and penalizing its lawyers accused of violating ethics, but that is not a substitute for state bar investigations and punishments. The DOJ cannot impose the same kinds of professional penalties, including disbarment.
Lithwick asks Stern the obvious: If this was legal, wouldn’t the DOJ have been doing this all along?
No, the government hasn’t been doing that, because it would be illegal. And let me tell you why: A federal statute known as the McDade Amendment says that DOJ attorneys “shall be subject to State laws and rules … to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.” So when a DOJ lawyer is licensed in Florida, like Halligan is, she must follow the ethical requirements of the Florida bar.
Yes, well, Bondi proposes a work-around that’s not legally workable. Not that she’s persnickety about following the law except to use it as a cudgel. Stern believes that’s the idea. Bondi likely would go to federal court to seek injunctions against a state bar’s investigation. But that runs afoul of Supreme Court precedent.
In Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Association, SCOTUS ruled unanimously in 1982 that federal courts not meddle in state bar disciplinary actions, because states have “an extremely important interest in maintaining and assuring the professional conduct of the attorneys it licenses.”
Stern is shocked that the DOJ did not mention “this insurmountable obstacle,” saying, “But I guess that’s just the kind of sloppy and dishonest lawyering that’s led to some of these ethics complaints in the first place.”
Given the sloppy and dishonest lawyering we’ve witnessed from the Roberts court, I’m not sure I’d be so confident that the court’s conservatives would defend that precedent from 1982.
