These blue states are a massive target — and Trump may let Iran pull the trigger

I’ll tell you what’s unsettling, ladies and gentlemen: waking up every morning in a country where we know the monster running things is lying to us about everything.

Trump says there have been “very good and productive conversations” with Iran about ending the war. Iran says no such talks have taken place and are a mere figment of his imagination. It should fill us with dread that it’s far easier to believe the enemy than our own president, because Trump lies as easily as he breathes.

Easier, actually.

If he says he had eggs for breakfast, you know it’s pancakes. If he claims the price of gas is beginning to drop, you know it’s skyrocketing. We can, in fact, reliably count on the precise opposite of what he declares to be true at every turn.

In fact, I invite you to print out the Wikipedia section labeled “False or misleading statements by Donald Trump (second term).” It stretches for 56 pages. And that’s only covering the past 14 months. By contrast, there are no such pages for Barack Obama or Joe Biden, or any other president, for that matter.

It emerged on Tuesday that Trump’s tall tale about talks (productive or otherwise) with Iran having taken place sent oil prices tumbling and the stock market briefly surging — with traders betting hundreds of millions on the spike in oil futures mere minutes before Trump’s announcement. Then, upon Iran’s quick denial of the talks, stocks sank again.

Insider trading, anyone? With any other president, he would be given the benefit of the doubt. With this one? Are you kidding?

Not that this should come as the remotest shock to any of you. Even the MAGA faithful seemingly understand that Trump fails all honesty checks. They simply don’t care as long as he’s owning and infuriating the libs.

Oh right, the libs, the group that’s come to be synonymous with the last vestige of sanity in the United States. I happen to live in Los Angeles, one of those sanctuary cities in California, a largely sanctuary state. We’re 40 million strong, and we loathe the air Trump breathes – which of course drives him crazy.

And please, for the love of God, don’t call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. There is no such thing. We hate him because he takes such pleasure in destroying the country and he’s such a lying sack of squirrel vomit.

Because Trump can’t handle the idea of someone despising him, he regularly threatens the stability of my state, as he can’t comprehend presiding over a unified nation. He needs to ration out his support so it goes only to those who voted for him and/or reliably kiss his shiny golden ring.

If you’ve been following the way he “governs,” you know that he’s threatened to cut off federal funding from states that don’t align with his unconscionable policies. He’s frozen billions in child care, social services and infrastructure funding, prompting lawsuits from Democratic-led states like mine. He attaches political conditions to all of it, like the requirement to withdraw support for DEI.

And Trump has again singled out blue states and cities explicitly for his focus of investigations and enforcement, because he doesn’t see himself as president of all the United States, but exclusively the red states. His response to the blue states is to wield financial leverage and deny support in emergencies.

With this in mind, I’d like you all to imagine a frightening but plausible scenario, one that has been bandied about since the launch of the Iran War.

Let’s say that Iran successfully launched retaliatory drone strikes from vessels off the U.S. coast that make it through our interception defenses sometime in the next few weeks. At the same time, envision that these drones are carrying sufficient explosive material to cause significant destruction in, say, Southern California.

If you’re Trump, given his penchant for pettiness and payback, his strategy is to stand down and not retaliate because, after all, we’re a state that collectively hates him. Since he has neither the desire nor the necessity in his mind to defend California, he decides it’s in his own best interests to force the state to manage this profound emergency without the U.S. military’s intervention.

Sound unbelievable? Think again, because this is precisely the kind of subhuman creature we are dealing with.

You know that Trump’s first instinct would be to leave California twisting in the wake of any attack, much as he left the U.S. Capitol Police to fend for themselves and the Capitol itself unsupported for hours on January 6, 2021. He thinks about retribution first and actual assistance never. The idea of doing the right or essential thing never even occurs to him.

What’s that I hear you saying? A deliberate refusal to defend any part of the homeland would trigger accusations of dereliction of duty and abuse of power?

Yes, it would.

But would that matter in the slightest to a man with no conscience whose power appears at the moment to be absolute?

No, it would not.

I can already see how this might play out. An emergency action demand from Democrats could be overruled by the Republican-controlled Congress, claiming that they “trust our president to do what’s right for our country.” What initially seems unfathomable could quickly make perfect sense to Trump’s sycophantic supporters, as this would merely be California, an area unworthy of defense.

The process of normalizing even a nuclear strike on the American mainland could happen quicker than you might imagine. The California National Guard would be deployed, possibly in defiance of the federal government. We would be left all alone to deal with unimaginable destruction and mass casualties.

Trump, you see, wouldn’t care. All he would see is that this is precisely the kind of attack that would afford him an easy opportunity to cancel the midterms. Plus, he achieves revenge on a despised foe. In this guy’s diseased mind, it’s win-win.

I’d be surprised if Trump and his team weren’t secretly hoping for something almost exactly like this to occur, as it perfectly aligns with their goals.

While I understand that this may sound too cynical and sinister even for a president and a party with absolutely no scruples, I say never underestimate their propensity for malice.

We are, after all, living in unprecedented times – a moment when our president is the biggest liar in the land, capable of any evil the mind can conjure.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.