April Fool’s Day, and the biggest fool in the U.S. - um, the world celebrated it in grand style...
In the morning, Donald Trump, cankles in tow, shuffled into the Supreme Court gallery like Tony Soprano checking on his crew at Satriale's Pork Store. Trump was convinced his lumbering physical presence would bully his own appointed justices into compliance.
Then, tonight, he capped “fools” day by wobbling to the cameras to deliver the old familiar lies, same contempt for our troops, our country and our allies.
Only a fool would believe Trump about the war he started, and take his word that all is good.
At the Court this morning, Trump watched Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, his justices, methodically dismantle his birthright citizenship case, barely disguising their skepticism in his presence. His hand-picked Solicitor General, doing his best RFK, Jr., gurgling through a series of weak arguments.
Trump fled after an hour and foolishly took to Truth Social to declare that America is “the only Country in the World STUPID enough” to allow birthright citizenship. Roughly 30 countries have it.
There is a through-line connecting this morning’s courtroom humiliation and tonight’s prime-time performance. And that is why? Why go to the court today and give the speech tonight?
Why this speech? And why now?
Prime-time presidential addresses about military action have a traditional purpose and timing. You give the speech before the war to build public support, to explain the mission, to lay out the strategy, to bring the country with you.
Trump gave no such speech on February 28th, just a video from ritzy Mar-a-Lago, when he launched this war. No Oval Office address. No coalition. No congressional authorization. No public mandate. He simply started a war and expected the American people to cheer him on.
They haven’t. His poll numbers are at record lows - across the board. And support is slipping quickly. And those numbers are going to drop even more after the baloney he served tonight.
Trump declared victory in Iran, insisting nuclear threats were eliminated and the war would end within weeks, while offering little evidence. He touted economic strength despite rising gas prices, contradicted himself on goals like regime change, blamed allies, and largely repeated familiar claims without answering key questions.
Rather than new information, the address recycled a stream of wild, rambling lies he’s been bombarding us with on Truth Social.
Thirty-three days in, public support is somewhere between thin and nonexistent. Tonight’s speech wasn’t a victory address. It was a desperate attempt to change a narrative that has already escaped him, and you cannot change a narrative without a strategy, and you cannot sell a strategy you don’t have, and you cannot build public support one month after the shooting starts.
Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. Over twenty percent of the world’s petroleum passes through that waterway. Trump threatened to bomb Iran into submission if they didn’t open it. They didn’t open it. He didn’t follow through. TACO II.
And now he’s telling European allies it’s their problem. Trump, a fool and a loser, is a man who embarrassingly picked a fight, lost the fight, and is loudly declaring victory.
Only a fool and a loser lifts sanctions against Iran. He started a war against Iran, and then surrendered the one non-military lever of economic pressure we had over Tehran. In return for what, exactly? Nothing. Iran got sanctions relief and kept the Strait.
Then there is NATO. Trump’s attacks on allies, calling them “cowards” for not joining a war they had no role in starting, are diplomatically crushing to us and alarmingly dangerous to the troops currently deployed in a region where America has never been more isolated.
When you are fighting a war, you do not simultaneously push off and upset your alliances.
You do not tell the people who might need to reinforce you, supply you, or extract you if things go bad to go to hell. Because our allies can tell him - and us - to go to hell, and all hell will break loose. Wait and see.
The American public is not fooled. They see the gas prices. They read and see more troops being deployed. They see the Strait still closed. They hear that the son of a murderous thug is a chip off the old block - and maybe even more brutal than his father.
Trump says regime change. But the reality is much, much, much worse.
Americans heard all of those contradictions tonight - the war is won, the war is still being fought; Iran is defeated, Iran still controls the waterway, and still firing rockets at its neighbors; we’re leaving in two weeks, we’re sending more forces.
Thirty-three days in, this president still has no coherent strategy, no public mandate, and no endgame. None.
Tonight he declared victory anyway. The war is “militarily won.” Troops home in two to three weeks. Gas prices dropping any minute now. Iran decimated. Regime changed. Greatest military triumph since Churchill.
It’s all lies upon lies upon falsehoods upon untruth, upon delusion.
Watching tonight, I couldn’t shake a grim and uncomfortable thought. Swap Trump’s setting for a checkered cloth and a different backdrop, and his speech tonight could have been broadcast from Tehran. A leader at a podium, assuring the faithful that the enemy has been defeated, that sacrifice was worth it, that the Supreme Leader’s wisdom carried the day, that glory is just around the corner.
And the audience comes away fearful and questioning the authenticity of what they just heard.
We were lied to tonight by a man who started a war without a plan, is prolonging it without a strategy, handing Iran sanctions relief while they kept the Strait, calls our allies cowards, and is now standing before the cameras on day 33 asking us to believe it all.
Folks, this is a war. A fatal one. An incomprehensibly dangerous one, with severe consequences. This isn’t some White House ballroom that needs to be redrawn, or used as a distraction. And only an unabated, unabashed fool would think and act otherwise.