Opinion
Trump has revealed himself as MAGA's darkest fear
After I read about Trump posting that literally God-awful image of him as Jesus Christ, I looked up the dictionary definition of the word Antichrist: "a particular personage or power, variously identified or explained, who is conceived of as appearing in the world as the principal antagonist of Christ.”
And in a biblical sense, it’s described as a personal opponent of Christ expected to appear before the end of the world.
I stopped cold when I read it. Because if there is one human being — or demonic individual — walking the earth right now who fits that description, it is Donald J. Trump. Not metaphorically or as exaggeration. It is what I consider to be a studied and well-documented observation.
In Genesis 3:4-5 the devil says, “You will not surely die... For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” This represents the “father of lies,” undermining trust in God and tempting humanity with divine power while concealing catastrophic consequences.
Does this sound like Donald Trump or what?
This past Holy Week, Trump got into a war of words with his holiness, Pope Leo XIV who, since his election in May 2025, has spoken consistently about peace, justice, and the dignity of human life.
When Trump threatened to obliterate Iranian civilization, Pope Leo called the threat “truly unacceptable.” When Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself in the robes of Jesus Christ, healing a sick man, the reaction from many Christians was immediate and bipartisan — “blasphemy.”
Trump deleted the image and then told reporters it showed him “as a doctor, making people better.” He said the fake news dreamed up the Jesus connection.
Only an Antichrist would compare himself to Jesus, deny that he did it, and then lie about it while denying it.
As an aside, Mike Johnson claims he asked Trump to delete it. And if you believe the busiest worker-bee in the devil’s workshop, then you must really think that Trump is a deity — but I digress.
Trump then turned on the Holy Father, calling him “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy,” and claiming the Catholic Church elected an American pope to “deal with” him. He said, “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” Every cardinal and bishop who weighed in backed the pope, not the president acting as the Antichrist.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it was “disheartened” — a weak word when one is fighting the devil.
The warp-minded Riley Gaines warned that “God shall not be mocked.” Pope Leo, for his part, said he had “no fear” and would continue to speak out. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he said.
Only an evil fool attacks a pope at his own peril. But does an Antichrist care about peril?
This is not the first time Trump has draped himself in the robes of Jesus. He has called himself “the chosen one,” standing with his arms spread wide. He has claimed God spared his life when an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear in 2024. “It was God alone,” he said.
In his inaugural address, he declared he was “saved by God to make America great again.” His evangelical base applauded, happy to bend scripture to fit a man who has violated nearly every one of the Ten Commandments and whose relationship with Christianity consists of… well...posting pictures of himself as Jesus.
All this while Trump has admitted that he’s not “heaven-bound,” something only the Antichrist could dream of.
Trump doesn’t have a Christian bone in his body. He is a thrice-married, serially lying, hush-money-paying, convicted con man who used a Bible as a photo-op during the Black Lives Matter protests — and held it upside down — and who retweeted a post calling him “the second coming of God,” thanking the person for “the very nice words.”
Meanwhile, the real world burns from the Antichrist fires.
Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global growth outlook and warned the world economy sits on the brink of recession, driven by Trump’s war with Iran. In the worst-case scenario, global growth falls to just 2 percent — “a close call for a global recession.”
According to the IMF, if the war drags on and oil prices climb to $110 or $125 a barrel, global inflation tops 6 percent and nations fall into recession. The hardest hit, as always, are the poorest countries.
Add Trump’s nonsensical tariff policies, which built a wall of import taxes around the world’s largest economy.
And then there is the patented Antichrist language. Trump posted: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure — the bridges and power plants he threatened — are war crimes under international law.
Iran is heir to one of the oldest civilizations in history. And a religious holy ground. Trump threatened to erase it. If that isn’t the language of an Antichrist, I don’t know what is.
On Monday a DoorDash employee delivered McDonald’s to the White House. Trump, defending his image, said he is “making people better… And I do make people better.”
He does not make people better. That claim is his most consequential lie. Under Trump, grocery prices have climbed on tariff-inflated supply chains. RFK Jr., his health secretary, has turned public health into a laboratory for conspiracy theories, gutting vaccine confidence and dismantling the CDC’s credibility.
Medicaid is being hacked apart, stripping health care from the poorest Americans. Transgender people have been made into enemies of the state, stripped of dignity by executive fiat. The mountain of lies does not merely mislead — it destroys lives.
Only an Antichrist wants to destroy lives.
And then there is USAID. Trump stripped it to the bone, leaving a global humanitarian infrastructure in ruins and putting millions at risk.” The poorest people on earth, shoved over the edge by Trump — the epitome of an Antichrist.
With Trump, things always go from bad to worse. They never end well. Every reckless decision cascades into another, generating more chaos, more pain, more damage that takes years to repair — if it can be repaired at all.
He is on a road that leads somewhere to hell, where only an Antichrist would be happy.
He says he is the chosen one. He may be right. But the one he was chosen to be is not the one who brings peace. It is the one who defies Christ and seeks to end the world.
Trump, the very definition of the Antichrist.
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Trump just uttered a sentence that could open the doors of hell
Saturday’s back-to-back headlines in The Washington Post were: “‘They Have Chosen Not To Accept Our Terms,’ Vance Says” and “U.S. Intelligence Shows China Taking A More Active Role In Iran War.” They echo headlines from a century ago that reported on the early days of what quickly became World War I.
In 2021, China and Iran became military allies, signing a “broad strategic partnership encompassing economic, diplomatic, and security dimensions.” Russia signed a similar comprehensive military/security agreement with Iran in January of last year. The three countries are now military allies and formally assisting each other. Hold that thought.
Then, on Sunday, America’s resident madman Donald Trump announced on his Nazi-infested social media site that the United States Navy will illegally blockade the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow chokepoint through which 20 percent of the world’s oil used to flow every day — threatening to intercept “every vessel in International Waters” that’s paid a toll to Iran.
The US blockade of the Strait began Monday.
That means all the shipping of oil for China and drones for Russia will be intercepted by the US. We’re now blocking the war and energy supplies of nations that have nuclear weapons and whose military assets are already in the region. And it came just hours after the peace talks in Islamabad — led by three American grifters with absolutely no diplomatic experience — had predictably collapsed.
What happens next will depend entirely on whether anyone in this administration has ever seriously studied what happened the last time a similar cascade of great-power commitments, cornered leaders, and military miscalculations all converged at once.
A hundred and twelve years ago this summer, a young Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip fired two shots in Sarajevo, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.
What followed was a deadly catastrophe, because every major European power had spent the previous 40 years putting together mutual defense treaties with other major European powers.
(In the 1908 Bosnian Crisis, Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia, land that Serbia claimed; the Serbs were humiliated and furious. The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 left Serbia stronger and more willing to reach out to the Slavic people still living under Austria-Hungarian rule, particularly those in Bosnia, further enraging the Austria-Hungarians.)
Everybody was armed to the teeth and, frankly, paranoid about everybody else. So, when Franz Ferdinand’s assassination gave Austria-Hungary an excuse to punish its longtime enemy Serbia, those treaties clicked into place like the tumblers of a massive combination lock and the doors of hell swung open onto the most catastrophic war the world had, at that time, ever seen.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia, bound by pan-Slavic solidarity and treaty, mobilized. Germany, allied with Austria-Hungary and, seeing the Russian mobilization, declared war on Russia. The Franco-Russian alliance dragged France in.
Once the fighting started, Germany’s Schlieffen Plan required invading France through neutral Belgium, which triggered Britain’s 1839 treaty obligation to protect Belgian neutrality.
Within six weeks of two pistol shots in Sarajevo, virtually every major power in Europe was engaged in a brutal war that escalated with the inevitability and power of a landslide. The leaders who set the whole machine in motion genuinely believed they could control the escalation, but they were terribly and tragically wrong. The interlocking agreements and past hostilities simply took over, and seventeen million people died.
I’ve been thinking about Sarajevo a lot this week, because what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz right now follows the same terrifying script, except that this time, the European, Middle Eastern, and Asian powers that are being pulled toward what could easily become World War III all have nuclear weapons.
Here’s how we got here:
Benjamin Netanyahu made six trips to the White House in the year before the war began, each time pressing Trump and his old family friend Jared Kushner with the argument that Iran was ripe for regime change, that the mullahs were one good strike away from falling, and that history was calling.
What the New York Times’ reporting now makes clear — and what Trump’s own CIA director and secretary of state reportedly called “farcical” and “b------t” in private — is that Netanyahu had an overwhelming personal reason to want this war: he’s been fighting a fraud, bribery, and breach-of-trust criminal trial that could put him in prison if he’s convicted.
Wars are good for embattled leaders: they can generate emergency status and even pause court proceedings. And when this war started on February 28th, Netanyahu’s trial did indeed grind to a halt under Israel’s wartime court emergency rules, which had to be repeatedly extended. The trial is only now, this week, resuming. (Trump, to help his fellow authoritarian, has been publicly pressuring Israel’s president to pardon Netanyahu, telling him to do it “today” and calling him a “disgrace” for hesitating.)
So Trump (himself facing a crisis from the Epstein documents and accusations of raping a 13-year-old girl) and “Whiskey Pete” Kegseth (who simply loves war) launched a bloody confrontation in which one of the key decision-makers’ primary motivation — at least on the Israeli side — was to keep himself out of prison.
And 44 days later, the man who should be in the defendant’s chair is instead flying into southern Lebanon to pose with troops (his popularity is now sky-high in Israel because of the war), while the United States Navy blockades one of the most consequential waterways on the planet.
On Sunday, Trump posted to his failing social media site a declaration that may end up being seen, in retrospect, much like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. He proclaimed that the Navy will begin “BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” and will “seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.”
That last sentence is the one that could rock the planet, because, as the independent National Security Desk analysis makes clear, Trump’s phrase “every vessel in International Waters” is a global directive. It means the U.S. Navy now officially claims the legal right to board, search, and seize foreign ships anywhere on the world’s oceans as well as the ships of any nation trying to pass through the Strait.
Under international maritime law, that’s called “piracy.” And here’s the other parallel to the tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia back in the day: roughly 80 percent of China’s oil imports that transit the Strait — that Trump just said he will “blockade” — are Chinese-owned or Chinese-connected vessels.
— China already has a Type 055 cruiser, a Type 052D destroyer, and a massive surveillance ship sitting right there in the region, in the Gulf of Oman.
— Chinese satellites have been providing real-time targeting intelligence to Iran throughout this war.
— Russia has been running electronic warfare systems that, according to pre-war assessments, degrade American radar and communications by as much as 80 percent.
— Iran’s military has been successful in killing over a dozen American troops and wounding hundreds — and downing multiple US military aircraft — because of targeting information Putin’s reportedly been giving them.
These are active military contributions to the Iranian war effort right now.
So what happens when a U.S. destroyer orders a Chinese-flagged tanker to heave to in the Strait of Hormuz and a Chinese warship sails between them? Trump has to choose between backing down — and watching the blockade collapse — or firing on the naval vessel of a country with roughly 400 nuclear warheads.
And this isn’t a purely hypothetical scenario. China and its leader Xi Jinping have made it abundantly clear that maintaining an uninterrupted energy supply through the Strait is one of its core national interests; it won’t simply steam away.
On the Russian side, Vladimir Putin is also not a man who responds with moderation to being cornered. And he’s already in deep trouble in his own country, as well as on his back foot in Ukraine.
The Atlantic Council and RAND have both documented that Putin’s domestic position is more stressed than at any point since his brutal and criminal Ukraine invasion began. Russia today faces runaway military spending consuming eight percent of GDP, skyrocketing inflation, fuel shortages, and a society that polls show has grown deeply tired of the war in Ukraine.
Analysts at the Royal United Services Institute have concluded that Putin literally cannot afford to be seen accepting strategic defeat, because the entire justification of his authoritarian model rests on his promise to “restore Russian greatness” (Make Russia Great Again). If he fails, he may not survive. Not just politically, but physically; Russia has a long, ancient history of dealing harshly with failed leaders.
Thus, a cornered, domestically vulnerable Putin with 6,000 nuclear weapons who is already actively helping Iran kill Americans isn’t a guy who backs down gracefully. He’s a leader who escalates.
And to compound things, on Sunday one of the most important parts of the worldwide autocratic network Putin’s been building for decades (including his support for Trump’s election and re-election) collapsed.
In Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has spent 16 years building the model of “illiberal democracy” that Trump, Vance, and the Heritage Foundation have openly cited as their template, voters turned out in the highest numbers since the fall of communism — a stunning 78 percent — and handed a decisive victory to opposition leader Péter Magyar and his Tisza party.
Vice President JD Vance was just there last week, rallying with Orbán, promising Trump’s “economic might” to help out Hungary (which is suffering under years of corruption and looting by Orbán’s oligarch buddies) if Fidesz held on. That ally is soon to be gone (Magyar takes over in May). The worldwide autocrat network, which is now largely led by Putin, Trump, Orbán, and Netanyahu, is beginning to fracture at its European edge.
When great powers are simultaneously cornered along with a smaller ally, when their leaders face domestic crises that demand the appearance of strength, when interlocking military commitments are already active and drawing them toward conflict, that’s when the world has historically stumbled into catastrophes that nobody wanted and nobody planned.
In 1914, it took six weeks until the dogs of all-out-war were fully unleashed. This time, we’re already 43 days in, and we have destroyers parked in a mined strait that China needs to stay alive economically and Russia would love to see humiliate the United States and Europe.
Louise and I have traveled the world extensively; I’ve stood in the World War I cemeteries of France and Belgium, with row after row of white crosses stretching to the horizon, and been stunned by the fact that every one of those young men died in a war that the people who started it genuinely believed they could control.
The lesson of WWI is that leaders who think they can manage escalation usually can’t.
The time to speak up is right now, before the tumblers click into place. Call your senators and representative (you can reach them through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121) and tell them to support the Democrats’ War Powers Resolution that could stop Trump from going even farther down this treacherous, deadly, possibly-planet-destroying road.
Congress must reassert its constitutional war-making authority: under our Constitution, no president gets to blockade an international waterway with a social media post, and the American people didn’t vote for a nuclear confrontation with China and Russia over Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Trump must be impeached now.
And make sure you’re registered to vote and that everyone you know is registered, because the November 2026 midterms are the most direct democratic check we still have on where this is all heading. Check your registration at Vote.gov.
- Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.
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Republicans are brazenly flaunting a criminal plot
“A free election is one where those in power have enough doubt about the outcome to make it worth rigging.” — Sen. Eugene McCarthy.
There was a time, not long ago, when most politicians did all they could to ensure the public was kept blind to immoral, illegal, or questionable behavior. They closed their deals in smoke-filled rooms, collected their bribes, stuffed their pockets with cash, all out of the public eye.
Those days are a distant memory, replaced by politicians who flaunt their criminality, boast openly, lie, cheat, and demand that no one holds them accountable. Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump lead a party that has spent decades spreading lies, misinformation, disinformation, and half-truths to advance their agenda around voter suppression, voter subversion, and the outright theft of certain Americans’ constitutional rights.
Republicans continue to argue they have had to impose tough voter-ID measures to prevent what they describe as widespread voter fraud. But the real reason is that they would be beaten around the head and face if they ran solely on the issues.
Trump said as much in 2020, when during a Fox & Friends interview he observed: “The things they had in there were crazy,” referring to voter protection and expansion proposals in a bill under consideration. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
This is larceny dressed up as concern about nefarious characters meddling with America’s elections. But the MAGA Republican fixation on election malfeasance has no basis in reality. Republicans have created a solution in search of a problem.
Barrage of pressure
Last year, Florida found 198 “likely noncitizens who illegally registered and/or voted” in the state out of the more than 13 million people on its voter rolls, according to a report from the state’s Office of Election Crimes and Security. The office referred 170 of them to law enforcement.
However, the Brennan Center for Justice cites a Loyola University School of Law study of voting patterns between 2000 and 2014 that found only 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of 1 billion votes cast. But the 24 states with voter ID and other restrictive laws are realizing their desired result of diminishing African American turnout.
Which is why DeSantis, Trump, and MAGA influencers have ratcheted up their well-oiled voter suppression and election interference apparatus with the 2026 midterms on the horizon. The SAVE America Act working its way through Congress is a Republican Trojan horse designed to engineer an election power grab and critically undermine voting rights.
“For months, we have warned of a drive by President Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent — and over the past week, the public issue has exploded,” Brennan analysts reported on Feb. 10.
“Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb.”
In Congress, U.S. Sen John Thune has weathered what is described as “a barrage of pressure to change the rules and install a ‘talking filibuster’” but has so far resisted.
“It’s time for Thune to grow a set of balls,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tennessee, said in response. “Nuke the filibuster, pass all this stuff and pass Trump’s executive orders.”
SAVE Florida
Trump has mused openly about seizing states’ control of elections and nationalizing the process to ensure that he and his MAGA cronies can game the process. But this type of barefaced ambush must bear the imprimatur of law. For his part, DeSantis and the Republican-dominated Legislature have acceded to Trump’s wishes and have brought Florida onboard with more legislative legerdemain.
During the recently concluded legislative session, Florida Republicans passed the state’s version of the SAVE America Act. In Congress, the Senate on March 17 began “a marathon” debate. Despite mounting pressure from MAGA supporters, it is unclear whether the bill reconciling differences between the House and Senate versions will pass.
The Florida bill, which DeSantis signed Wednesday, could disenfranchise millions of voters by putting in place a new set of barriers. Voters would be required to prove their citizenship, while the bill would disqualify student IDs as acceptable forms of voter identification.Meanwhile, the voter registration applicants’ citizenship status must be verified by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Until that happens, applicants will be registered as unverified voters and must cast provisional ballots. Those votes would not be counted unless the voters’ legal status as citizens can be verified through the department’s records.
Elsewhere, in 2025, MAGA Republicans were trying to cement their positions. According to the Brennan Center, lawmakers in at least 47 states were considering about 486 restrictive voting bills. And state legislatures enacted at least 31 restrictive voting laws, the second highest total since the center began tracking this legislation in 2011. In addition, lawmakers in at least 31 states considered 129 election interference bills last year.
Impending purge
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket, other elections experts, and legal authorities like Elie Mystal agree about the danger the SAVE Act poses. Mystal cites The Economic Times, which estimates that at least 21 million eligible voters may not be able to provide birth certificates and passports.
“The people most likely to struggle with the new requirements are the usual suspects — people of color, young people, and poor people — but there’s an additional group that could easily be prevented from voting should this bill become a law: married women who have changed their name,” Mystal writes.
“Those women likely do not have a birth certificate with their new marital name, and if they also don’t have an updated passport with their married name, they could be denied their right to vote.”
The federal legislation would require regular purges of voting rolls, so people who don’t vote every election cycle “might suddenly find that they’ve been de-registered.” The bill authorizes prosecution and imprisonment of election workers who help people who lack proof of citizenship to register.
The consensus of critics across the political spectrum is that the Save Act and similar bills “are part of a broader federal agenda to sow distrust in our elections, undermine election administration, and discourage Americans from making their voices heard.”
Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told MS Now’s Chris Hayes that the SAVE Act has significant Democratic opposition. “I don’t think this is going to succeed, because not one Democrat believes that the biggest problem facing this country is fake voter fraud,” he said.
Murphy believes Trump’s motivation stems from a desire to distract Americans from the burgeoning disaster in Iran.
“This war is wildly unpopular. Gas prices are going up and food prices are sure to follow. He has run out of traditional paths for his party to win this in November. So the only thing he has left to do is to try to rig the electorate. … This will allow Stephen Miller and others to create some kind of pretext to try to throw out some portion of the results.”
This fear of losing control is what drives the GOP’s political strategy. They will never make voting easier because Republicans would never win another election if they did.
Retaining the levers of power by any means is the mission.
They’re deploying a mind-boggling mélange of strategies — purging voter rolls; truncating early voting; eliminating same-day registration; outlawing the counting of out-of-precinct provisional ballots; moving or closing down precincts without notice; eliminating pre-registration programs for 16- and 17-year-olds; shuttering early voting locations, especially in Black and brown communities; outlawing ‘Soul to the Polls’ campaigns; and making it easier to challenge voter eligibility.
Democrats in the Florida Legislature have been trying to fight the onslaught but are hopelessly outnumbered. Still, Mystal is encouraging Democrats nationally to coalesce around beating back Republicans.
Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation, argues the single best response is overwhelming turnout. Until the midterms, though, he cautions that Americans would be wise to not ignore the considerable danger to the country Trump and his party presents.
To ignore the threat posed by Trump, to pretend like everything is going to be okay, to assume that upstanding members of the courts will rise to prevent the theft of the election, is to stick your head in the sand.
– Elie Mystal
“Trump and the Republicans have no intention of letting the upcoming midterms (in which Republicans are predicted to lose control of the House) proceed fairly. They’re attacking the election through legislative, law-enforcement, and political means.”
He adds: “They’re also putting in place the legal ability to steal the votes that get through these gauntlets.”
Mystal, a former litigator, laments the feeble opposition from Democrats. While Rome burns, the opposition wrings its hands and procrastinates, he writes.
A muscular response begins with a nationalized response from the opposition party and appointment of a shadow elections czar who would serve as the Democratic party’s designated spokesperson for the cause in the run-up up the midterms.
At the grassroots level, Mystal continues, people need to build “the street-level infrastructure to monitor or confront ICE or any other goons Trump unleashes on Election Day,” he writes.
“But, we need more, and we need it now. They are coming for the election. That is obvious. What we are doing to stop them needs to be just as obvious. And that’s how you fight despair. That’s how you counteract doom. The threats to the upcoming election are real. They cannot be and should not be understated. But you can’t help people defend their rights by ignoring the obvious. You help people, and our democracy, by joining the battle.”
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Convicting Trump is no longer a pipe dream
Friends,
Speaking at a January 6 retreat for House Republicans, Trump stated, “You gotta win the midterms ‘cause, if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
This was before Trump’s agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, before the Justice Department released more Epstein files, before Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, before Trump threatened death to the entire Iranian civilization, before a gallon of gas hit $4 or more, before other prices also began rising because of the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, and before additional price hikes associated with Trump’s tariffs had kicked in.
It was also before Trump’s polls slid to record lows, before the MAGA faithful began complaining that Trump had betrayed his promise to avoid foreign entanglements, and before a slew of special elections in which Democratic candidates have won Republican districts (and even when they didn’t win, lost by far smaller margins than Trump won by in 2024).
Until recently, I thought impeaching Trump and convicting him in the Senate was a pipe dream. I was concerned that even talk of impeachment at this stage might distract attention from the affordability crisis brought on by Trump and could even fortify Republican charges of Democratic “extremism.”
No longer.
The president of the United States is stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to America and the world. The American public is beginning to see it.
We’ve got to do whatever we legally can to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment would be useful if Trump’s Cabinet and key advisers had any integrity, but they don’t. They’re ambitious, unprincipled traitors.
Which leaves impeachment.
You may be skeptical. After all, he’s already been impeached twice, to no avail. How can the third time be the charm?
Because it seems likely that Democrats will retake control of the House and the Senate in this fall’s midterm elections (unless Trump prevents free and fair elections).
And because it’s also possible that there will be enough votes in the Senate starting next January to convict Trump of impeachable offenses and send him packing.
I understand how difficult this may seem. Both times Trump was impeached in the House, he was saved by the Constitution’s requirement that two-thirds of the Senate (67 senators, assuming all 100 are present) convict in order to remove a president.
The highest Senate vote count against Trump came in 2021, and it was 10 votes short of the constitutional requirement. Fifty-seven senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict him of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in U.S. Senate history, but it still fell well short of the 67 votes needed to convict Trump.
So why do I think it’s possible now? Because public sentiment has swung further against Trump now than it was in 2021. And it’s likely to swing even further against him, because he’s going out of his mind at a rapid rate.
The way to accomplish this is to defeat enough incumbent Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2026 to create a Democratic majority in that chamber, totaling some 54 votes, and pressure at least 13 Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to vote to convict him.
That’s not impossible. In the upcoming midterms, it’s likely that Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins will be replaced by a Democrat (either Janet Mills or Graham Platner). I also assume that former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper will replace Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who’s retiring.
And I’d like to believe that the good people of Ohio will see the light and reelect Sherrod Brown over Jon Husted, the dullard who was appointed to fill the remainder of JD Vance’s term.
James Talarico could take the Texas Republican Senate seat now occupied by John Cornyn. In Alaska, I’d put odds on Mary Peltola defeating incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. In Nebraska, assume that Dan Osborn prevails over incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. And so on.
Republican senators last elected in 2022 who will be on the ballot in November 2028 include some who are vulnerable because they’re in swing states, such as North Carolina’s Ted Budd and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson; or are in states that could be competitive, such as Indiana’s Todd Young; or are vulnerable to internal party shifts, such as Louisiana’s John Kennedy and South Carolina’s Tim Scott.
Those vulnerabilities mean that their constituents could push them to vote to convict Trump in an impeachment, or else threaten to vote against them in 2028.
So it’s possible to get the 67 Senate votes, my friends. And it’s absolutely necessary that we try.
The vast No Kings demonstrations should be considered a prelude to targeting enough Republican Senate incumbents and open races to flip the Senate this fall, and pressuring Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to do their constitutional duty.
Now is the time to show the size and intensity of America’s commitment to removing Trump from office, for the good of us all.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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Trump just admitted lying to MAGA — and it could be his breaking point
It all just gets weirder and weirder, doesn’t it boys and girls? I didn’t have “Trash the Pope” and “Post a Trump-As-Jesus Meme” over Truth Social within an hour of each other on my 2026 Bingo Card, but here we are.
If the president was trying his hardest to convince Christians and Catholics that he wasn’t a man of faith and had just been yanking their devout chain all along, he couldn’t do better than starting a feud with Pope Leo and depicting himself as Christ.
Here we have the least Godly human being presently walking the earth brazenly claiming religious turf he has no business being within a million miles of. It is as shameless as it is absurd.
The most befuddling part, of course, is that anyone takes a single bit of it seriously.
Let’s take them in order.
The war Trump has launched with Pope Leo is one he cannot win. The mystery is what he hopes to gain from this. He wrote on Sunday that the pontiff was “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.”
Interesting. I wasn’t aware that the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church was also a politician. Leo, an incredibly cool human, basically told Trump to get bent, rejecting Delusional Donnie’s claim that the Pope would be nothing without him – certainly not Pope.
That’s right, a convicted felon who was once inseparable from the world’s most notorious convicted sex trafficker somehow believes he holds the moral high ground over the man who is the vicar of Christ on earth. In no movie script would this ever fly. And yet, this is what real life is currently handing us.
Does Trump somehow think his MAGA morons are going to suddenly believe, “You know, this Pope dude seemed to be upstanding, but now that Trump’s bashed him, it’s clear this guy in the funny hat is hopelessly partisan and corrupt.”
If it’s a battle between the world’s most holy man and the planet’s most criminal, my money’s on the guy who doesn’t lie to me every five seconds or unethically rake in billions off merchandise tied to my job.
This is all, of course, about the fact Pope Leo dared not blindly support Trump’s every move in the Iran War, given that he’s a man of peace. We all know that Trump’s flailing insecurity won’t tolerate the smallest bit of resistance without melting down. It’s what makes him so singularly endearing.
And then came the Jesus meme. The one Trump admitted that he posted himself. The one that he thought depicted him “as a doctor.” That’s right, a doctor who touched the forehead of a guy who looks like a cross between Jeffrey Epstein and Jon Stewart (sorry Jon) while Trump is holding a glowing orb of light and dressed in flowing robes as a light beam filters down from the sky behind him – beside the eagles, fighter jets, fireworks, and Statue of Liberty.
I could have sworn I saw that doctor on “The Pitt”?
It’s complete insanity, of course, and just another ridiculous lie to cover up the fact he got so much blowback on his blasphemous illustration. He naturally blamed “the fake news” for concocting such an unbelievable idea as a Christ depiction.
To which I respond: Oh, Jesus H. Christ, just cop to a screw-up for the first time in your pathetic life, you twit. Fat chance.
Will the supporters who have so loyally stood by Trump’s side through all of his madness finally see this as a breaking point? I wouldn’t count on it at all, and neither would you.
Why the Christian Right in particular still sees fit to support someone who mocks their religiousness at every opportunity remains unfathomable. It can’t just be that he was the savior who got the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
We know Trump can’t really see himself as Christ. He’s using the image of Jesus to appeal to the fanatics who somehow view him as the Lord. Everything he says and does goes against everything Christianity is supposed to stand for. Not that Trump understands the first thing about it, given how he has never cracked open a Bible in his life.
It's a miracle that his base is even criticizing the Jesus move, which motivated him to retreat and take down the post despite defending himself as innocent due to the bogus doctor claim.
Trump uses religion like he uses everything else. It’s simply a way to justify his self-serving agenda and manipulate the already brainwashed. He hypes himself as a defender of Christian principles, fanning the flames of an imaginary “war on Christianity” and “war on Christmas.” He is supposedly dedicated to protecting “religious liberty” in everything from healthcare to business, solely as a means of deception.
He makes frequent appearances with evangelical pastors and faith leaders as part of his con job. And who can blame him? So far, it’s worked like a charm, except for the sudden turn against his Jesus fiasco (let’s call it Christgate).
No one should be shocked by his outrageous decision to post the meme. So many people in the Christian Nationalism movement in particular frame him as the flawed-but-useful – and perhaps even divinely appointed – Chosen One that he must figure he’s got these suckers right where he wants ‘em.
Trump has also successfully linked religion to the broader culture war, including framing LGBTQ+ rights vs. religious freedom. It puts religion at the center of a mythical “us vs. them” narrative that helps mobilize Republican turnout. He also uses meaningless religious phrases like “We’re a nation of believers” without the need to refer to any theological specificity.
In other words, we are, in fact, being ruled over by the most cynical anti-belief figure in American history. It’s high time for the people he’s hoodwinking to wake up and smell the sacrilege.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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MAGA's drooling over this disgrace represents a dark irony
In the current social media swamp climate that’s laden with AI deep fakes and X bots pushing propaganda, there’s been a fascinating reaction to the Eric Swalwell scandal, which ended one of the worst weeks in this country’s history when we desperately could’ve used a win.
We’ve come to expect a giant news story dump on Fridays here in the Trumpian garbage fire, but it usually comes from the Republicans doing yet another terrible thing. After a week like the one we just survived, we needed the pendulum to swing back our way with the kind of uplifting news that rekindles our belief that we can still have nice things during the worst of times.
Seriously, the week began with Trump casually threatening to end a civilization, only to change his mind a few hours later by agreeing to a non-ceasefire ceasefire and a plan written by the Iranian government that he didn’t read and therefore explained very badly. The Republican non-response was yet another capitulation in a long line of never holding Trump accountable for anything, while they smugly kept blaming Joe Biden and the Democrats for everything.
Those same Democrats who were calling for impeachment and/or the 25th Amendment have now been pulled into the kind of scandal usually reserved for the worst of the Trump regime. The fallout from the bombshell allegations against Rep. Swalwell (D-CA) is still accumulating, with the sort of lurid and shocking details still coming to light that no one ever wants to hear, yet we hear over and over again about men abusing their positions of power.
We don’t have enough internet space to delve into the history of the patriarchy and why society ends up blaming victims of sexual violence far more than believing them. Or why this country is so provincial about sexuality that people are shamed into repression, then end up acting out in ways that can be harmful to themselves and others.
But there’s a pattern that always emerges online almost immediately as soon as a famous man is accused of being a sexual predator, and it has rarely been anyone’s first take that the women are telling the truth.
Look how many women have credibly accused convicted felon Donald Trump of various forms of sexual assault throughout his life. E. Jean Carroll is still waiting on her settlement, while his dozens of other accusers will never get any sort of justice.
It took multiple Epstein accusers coming forward after decades of anonymity before the media began seriously covering Trump’s relationship with him, and yet there’s still no accountability for his alleged decades of violence against women and children.
Think about how many women had to tell their stories about Harvey Weinstein before he ever saw the inside of a courtroom. Remember how Anita Hill was dismissed to clear a path for Clarence Thomas, and when Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony under oath wasn’t enough to keep Brett Kavanaugh off the country’s most powerful judicial bench.
So it’s not surprising to see what we’re seeing. This one just hits different.
My initial reaction to the story about Swalwell, whom I’d dubbed my “Dem Crush” all the way back during the first Trump impeachment trial, was “No! Not him!” That’s not my denial; that’s my disappointment. A LOT of women reacted this way, and it’s understandable. Democrats are supposed to be the good guys, champions of women, and Swalwell came across as a particularly good guy. His family was very much centered in his social media presence, the doting husband and devoted father of three adorable young kids, which makes all of this even worse.
While I was trying to get to the truth, various takes were happening all at the same time:
- The immediate shaming of the women who came forward, which of course conflicted with
- The immediate acceptance of the women who came forward
- Accusations that Roger Stone and Katie Porter were somehow involved
- Lots of people saying, “The timing is just weird!” when the article about Swalwell had been in the works for months
- Some Democrats are calling for Swalwell to drop out of the California Governor’s race — a bid he ended on Sunday. He then resigned from Congress on Monday.
- Other Democrats criticized anyone calling for Swalwell to drop out
- MAGA gleefully and unironically embracing the same kind of sex scandal that Republicans are far more often involved in, as if Swalwell’s story erases everything Trump has ever done
By Saturday morning, the Twitter consensus seemed to be that all Democrats are responsible for Eric Swalwell, but no Republicans are responsible for Donald Trump, but there’s been much more Democratic infighting than anything else. I got Instablocked by a longtime mutual follower because she was mad that I seemed to be jumping on an anti-Swalwell bandwagon, when I was in the very early stages of the Kubler-Ross grieving process.
This isn’t the same thing as when Democrats were prematurely abandoning Joe Biden in droves after he had a sore throat at his one debate with Trump. I never turned my back on Dark Brandon. But once I learned that someone I’ve known and trusted on social media for years, Adam Parkhomenko, is married to one of Swalwell’s accusers, Ally Sammarco, I knew I had to ignore all of the noise. Someone who’s zero degrees from Hillary Clinton doesn’t need to make up stories about anyone to get ahead.
Democratic women are facing a rough disappointment, one that feels similar to John Edwards breaking our collective hearts, but no one should be attacking each other over believing survivors of sexual violence.
The only person at fault for Eric Swalwell’s behavior is Eric Swalwell, and therefore, he’s the only one anyone should be mad at. And yet there’s already a divide among Democrats about this. Part of it is making sure a Republican never becomes Governor of California, but thankfully, the party has other choices besides Swalwell.
Hard truths take longer to get over, and this one is going to hurt for a while.
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Not everyone's convinced by Trump's Jesus backtrack
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Trump's terrifying terrorist list likely has a new name on it — yours
Trump’s thought police may already have your name in their database, which is growing — according to Kash Patel — at the rate of around 300% right now. They’re not looking for people who’ve committed crimes but, rather, people who they think may commit crimes in the future. Thought and opinion crimes.
Yeah, like in the movie Minority Report, only with an Orwell 1984 twist. You could call it the FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center.
We shouldn’t be surprised, as horrific as this is. When wannabe dictators are elected to lead countries and want to end their democracies and impose absolute rule, they typically follow a simple series of steps, sometimes referred to as “The Dictator’s Playbook.” They:
— Purge government institutions of professionals and replace them with yes-men and groveling toadies.
— Strip their political party of anybody who’d even consider challenging them.
— Help friendly oligarchs buy up the nation’s primary media and turn it into a mouthpiece for the new regime, while directing billions in government contracts as recompense to those same men.
— Pack the courts so they and their buddies can crime without consequence while they drain the government of wealth.
— Build a separate, parallel police force loyal first and foremost to Dear Leader that they can use to terrify the population and “keep order.” (Schutstaffel, Brownshirts, Blackshirts, Tonton Macoute, Central Nacional de Informaciones, Brigada Político-Social, KGB/FSB, ICE, etc.)
But key to their entire identity and supporting their base of power is their ability to identify “an enemy within” and convince enough of the population that these people represent such a danger to the nation that they must be suppressed.
If you’re a democrat or lean that direction, that’s you and me. And that’s now.
Reporter Ken Klippenstein has been on this beat for a while, and his newsletter is well worth the read. He first identified the GOP’s hit list in Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, often referred to as “NSPM-7.” It identifies as potential “domestic terrorist” threats those Americans who espouse:
“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”
Klippenstein then, three months later, discovered that the Trump regime — specifically, Bondi’s DOJ and Patel’s FBI — was already busily compiling lists of such potential terrorists, sharing the responsibility with some 200 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) working collaboratively with local police departments across America.
And Bondi had instructed them to go back as far as five years in their scrubbing of social media and searching out our thoughts and opinions to find Americans who presumably may oppose Christianity, billionaires, or Tradwives.
But that was just the beginning.
Now, this week, Klippenstein has found that Patel has set up within the FBI a group — including 10 different federal investigative and police agencies — to “proactively” identify those of us who may disagree with their opinions about religion, gender, or capitalism.
The old “Terrorism Screening Center” set up in the wake of 9/11 to look for guys from Saudi Arabia who may want to learn to fly planes without landing them has been shut down and replaced with the “Threat Screening Center.”
And Bin Laden’s guys aren’t the “threat” they’re looking for: it’s those “potential domestic terrorists” who aren’t sufficiently Christian; who oppose the abuses and excesses of the “free market’s” unregulated no-holds-barred monopoly capitalism; and are or have friends who are queer or otherwise support the queer community.
One of the most troubling parts of the entire story is that America’s mainstream media appears to have no interest in this whatsoever, even though it appears right there in Trump’s new budget and is already up and operating within the DOJ and FBI.
And, ironically, reporters — particularly those for what Republicans call “liberal” publications and media outlets — would probably be among Patel’s prime targets. As Klippenstein notes:
“Again, all of these developments have yielded virtually zero media attention.”
Which tosses the responsibility for letting Americans know about the new Schutstaffel that, come election time, may well be rounding up or at least “visiting” people on its list, to you and me.
America was founded on the idea that your thoughts and opinions are your own and the government has no business regulating them or punishing you for them.
Under today’s GOP, Putin is writing our European/NATO foreign policy, Netanyahu is writing our Middle Eastern foreign policy, and now, it appears, the late George Orwell is writing our domestic policy.
The question, then, isn’t whether this is happening — it already is and they’re bragging about it — but whether we’ll tolerate it. If we continue to let the Trump regime and the GOP decide which thoughts and opinions are acceptable and which make you a criminal suspect, we’ve already given up the very freedoms our Constitution was written to protect.
Our answer has to be loud, visible, and relentless: sunlight, outrage, and actions like protesting, contacting our elected officials, and voting before the Trump/Republican machinery of hate and suspicion becomes a permanent new normal in America.
- Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.
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Trump has reached a tipping point — and he's now hurtling to his end
The past terrifying week has caused me to wonder: How did America ever get to a point where one man, backed by the military might of the United States, could credibly threaten death to an entire civilization?
I’m also wondering how 19 super-rich American households could have added $1.8 trillion to their wealth in just the last 24 months — roughly the size of the economy of Australia — while the rate of child poverty in the U.S. has more than doubled, from a low of 5.2 percent in 2021 to over 13 percent now?
How have we come so perilously close to climate catastrophe, with spring temperatures in the Western United States already shattering records — and yet governments are spending over a trillion dollars a year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and banks have channeled over $3 trillion to fossil fuel companies since the Paris Agreement, while there are almost no funds to protect living ecosystems?
How have we allowed artificial intelligence, the most powerful technology the world has ever seen, to threaten millions of jobs; make vulnerable the software that runs our financial, energy, and defense systems; and potentially destroy the human race — while allowing it to amass so much political power that it eludes all guardrails and regulations?
I have served at the highest levels of the U.S. government. I’ve watched our political and economic systems grow and change over the last 50 years, and I’ve spent much of that time writing about their evolution. I’ve never been reluctant to accuse those in power of abusing their authority.
While I have some ideas about how and why our system has sacrificed democracy and critical thought to the false gods of greed and growth (anyone interested in my tentative thoughts is more than welcome to read my recent Coming Up Short), I cannot state with certainty how we arrived at this point.
Yet notwithstanding how we got here, how do we change course? I refuse to accept that we cannot, or that it’s too late.
On Friday, I taught students who are seeking degrees in public policy. They wanted to know why — given all this — I remain optimistic.
I told them that I have faith in the goodness and reasonableness of the American people when they become aware of huge problems that threaten our and the world’s existence. And that the problems I’ve mentioned have now reached such size and dangerousness that the public can no longer ignore them.
We are, I think, coming to a tipping point in how we understand the challenges to our continued existence.
As author Jeremy Lent has written:
“A civilization built on a different foundation would start from an acknowledgment that the deep interconnectedness of all life is not romantic aspiration but scientific fact — confirmed by complexity science, systems biology, and Earth science, and affirmed by wisdom traditions of cultures that never lost that understanding.
From this recognition, different goals follow: not perpetual growth but setting the conditions for all people to flourish on a regenerated Earth. Not maximization of returns on capital but the kind of reciprocal, mutualistic relationship with living systems that makes long-term human wellbeing possible.
There is no blueprint that will save us. No one person or group can design in advance what such a civilization will look like in its particulars. But a framework of core principles can orient us — the way a distant horizon orients a traveler moving through unmarked terrain.
You may not yet see the exact path, but knowing the general direction changes everything about which opportunities you embrace and which you recognize as alluring detours.
The trance that keeps us from seeing this is powerful. But it has been broken before. Every paradigm that once seemed like reality itself — the divine right of kings, the natural inferiority of women, the Earth at the center of the universe — turned out to be a myth that was shattered.”
I agree with Lent. It’s time to eschew the myths that contributed to the reelection of the most dangerous person ever to occupy the White House, myths that continue to limit our beliefs and imaginations: that widening inequality and an ever-larger military are necessary and inevitable, that we need a billionaire oligarchy to guide our economy and a “strongman” to lead our government, that a political revolution founded on returning American democracy to the ideal of self-government would be too destabilizing, that continued growth of the Gross Domestic Product is an unmitigated good, and that more “productivity” and “efficiency” are always beneficial.
The most dangerous myth of all is that there is no alternative to the path we’re on, that we have no control over our destiny, and that, just as it was inevitable that we came to where are, our unraveling is similarly inevitable.
I refuse to accept this deterministic myth. The first act of genuine systemic change is to stop believing it.
It’s been a terrifying week, but one that is awakening millions of people.
Thank you for being an ally in seeking a better world.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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These bumbling clowns were so inept Iran's hardliners could barely keep straight faces
There is an old American idiom for a group so collectively inept they couldn’t organize a one-car parade, as another axiom goes. We call them the Three Stooges. They were a legendary comedy trio famous for their chaotic, physical slapstick and for being a cultural shorthand for lovable but total incompetence.
After watching JD Vance (Mo), Steve Witkoff (Curly), and Jared Kushner (Larry) stumble out of Islamabad empty-handed, having failed to end a six-week war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or extract a single meaningful concession from Iranian hardliners, the comparison feels apropos.
I’ve been reading comment sections of stories about Trump’s 21st century trio of clowns, and I’m not the only one who has labeled them after the indelible comedy trio.
With that said, let’s do a little review about the strengths - err weaknesses - of each of the foolish players.
JD Vance arrived in Pakistan as Vice President of the United States, a title he has held longer than he held his Senate seat, which he won a mere three years ago. His previous experience in high-stakes negotiation consists largely of brokering peace between childless cat ladies and their felines who took umbrage at his offensive jab.
In June of last year, Vance’s stupidity reared its bulbous, bearded head when he tried to explain the concern around the U.S. first foray into Iran. "I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives".
Well, of course we can laugh about Trump understanding national security objectives, but Trump was among the presidents during those last 25 years — along with other Republicans.
Then there is Jared Kushner, whose legendary negotiating prowess consists primarily of leveraging his proximity to his father-in-law to attract billion-dollar investment deals from foreign sovereign wealth funds to enrich himself. A chip off the old father-in-law.
In a January 2020 interview with Sky News Arabia, Kushner defended his qualifications to lead the Trump administration's "Peace to Prosperity" plan by stating:."I’ve been studying this now for three years. I’ve read 25 books on it." This from the same guy whose memoir was reviewed by the New York Times as a "queasy-making" slog that reads more like a college admissions essay than a serious political account.
And Steve Witkoff. As Trump himself might say, “Who in the hell is this guy?” Prior to Trump designating him a diplomatic savant, Witkoff was focused on luxury real estate development in Manhattan and Miami. Seemingly, it’s this background that presumably explains why he reportedly confused enrichment facilities with “industrial reactors” and referred to the Strait of Hormuz as the “Gulf of Hormuz.”
He and his boss just can’t get the lingo “straight” about Hormuz.
Somewhere among the rows of tombstones in Arlington National Cemetery, revered diplomat Henry Kissinger is pounding furiously on the lid of his coffin, demanding to be let out.
Just about everyone in the world is probably scratching their heads as to why these three numbskulls were leading the way on such consequential matters, and wondering what could have possibly been involved in the three’s preparation, and whether they truly understood the stakes and consequences of what they were doing.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, required two years of intense negotiation, a coalition of six world powers, teams of nuclear scientists, career diplomats fluent in Farsi and the theological contours of the Islamic Republic, and marathon sessions in Lausanne and Vienna.
In other words, it was exhausting and comprehensive.
The foundational principle, agreed upon by all sides, was that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” The Islamabad talks lasted 21 hours before collapsing into mutual recrimination. Only a fool, or someone who has spent his career flipping luxury condominiums, or someone who thinks women should stay in violent marriages, would believe a nuclear and geopolitical settlement forged in decades of hostility could be resolved between sun up and sun down.
The backdrop to this failure is even more damning. Early in Trump’s second term, the State Department was systematically gutted - Middle East and Iran - with more than 3,800 employees shown the door, including the bulk of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, its dedicated Iran office, 13 Arabic speakers, and four Farsi speakers.
The ambassadorships to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE sat vacant as the region ignited. The institutional memory, the language skills, the quiet back-channel relationships that make diplomacy possible, were summarily dismissed because Trump’s “gut” knows more than they all collectively knew and understood.
What was sent to Islamabad in their place? A neophyte and narcissistic vice president, a money-thirsty son-in-law, and a real estate developer who surely spells “Straight of Hormuz” wrong like his boss.
The Iranian delegation was composed of ideologically committed, strategically patient officials who have spent decades enduring sanctions, threats, and negotiations. No one, besides China and Russia, are rooting for the Iranians, but let's be honest, they must have struggled to keep straight faces during negotiations.
Now here we are, with no hope in sight. The ceasefire deadline is not receding. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Iran remains firm in clinging to their uranium and nuclear program. The region sits on tenterhooks.
And, perhaps even more worrisome, the same three bumbling fools who walked away empty-handed in Islamabad are, as far as we know, still in charge of what comes next.
In the original Stooges shorts, the chaos always resolved itself. Someone got a pie in the face, furniture got destroyed, and by the final scene, everything was improbably fine.
That is the reassuring cinematic fiction of the undying genre of slapstick comedy. In real geopolitics, when the Three Stooges leave the stage, they truly look like a trifecta of losers. And their next foray into diplomacy will likely end in the same, proverbial pie in the face thrown at them by Iranian extremists.
Moe, Larry, and Curly always got another chance. So do these three stooges, and that prospect is more of a horror show than a comedy short.
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End in sight as Trump's childish rampage reaches its limit
This election season's message is painfully simple — Democrats must show up as the adults and run as the parent and grandparent ready to deal with what remains of this adolescent mess.
Perhaps it will feel familiar to many, a rush to arrive and survey the damage, knowing someone has to take over, organize, and clean. It will not be the fundamentally unequipped, the delinquents, the kids. Once again it will be us, the Dems.
To the extent this administration adheres to any one ethos, it's not about making anything great. It's much more "because we could!" accompanied with a vacant smile, dopamine-lit eyes, someone reflexively acting in self-interest in the moment, no thought about tomorrow, or others, living second to second, fully adolescent, still impressed only that he can do it, never wondering if he should.
That is the Trump administration and all movement MAGAs — think Pete Hegseth.
In the same way that adult family and friends have for ages shown up at the car accident, the police station, the doctor's office, and taken over, Democrats must move from here to November, and beyond, holding to one core value, both as principle and character trait: "time to hand it to grown-ups."
It is a job as thankless as it is obvious, and all too familiar.
Democrats cleaned up after the George W. Bush administration's coddling of Wall Street nearly drowned the world's economy in a sea of CDOs and swaps. In 2021, Dems took over like a well-run PTA to ensure the world's most-necessary vaccine got distributed and a society rebooted amidst an epidemic killing millions. Democrats must move forward again today, ready to simply deal with the daylight after this administration's dark run. The job will be semi-familiar, though never close to this level, and yet the path to office and power, the path to opportunity to limit and clean, has never been clearer.
The "issues" barely matter anymore.
One can look at literally almost any action this administration takes, whether it is the Iranian war, the now unconcealed racism and misogyny at the root of the anti-DEI rampage, the grift-gift, decimation of the healthcare system to cover tax cuts to billionaires, doesn't matter — it's all done with teen glee, caring only about today and themselves, not the consequences for us or even themselves. And it's time to call it what it is, the inevitable result of wrongly empowered kids, entirely free of adult predisposition, never mind supervision.
They made football and video game memes amidst war, fired general officers for being women or Black — lacking all shame. Like kids everywhere, they do it "because they can." Any Democrat wanting to make a difference in stopping this or eventually helping to clean it up had best come forward infused with utter earnestness and candor. "It is time to stop, grow up, and clean up." Projecting any politics is malpractice.
It sounds simple, and yet it is also so damned powerful. The true gravitas granted by being "an adult in the room" acts as nuclear kryptonite to these super-kids. See Megyn Kelly's reaction to simple "adulting," when she recently referenced Hall of Fame Adult Pete Buttigieg and many other Democrats, catastrophizing like the mean-girl cheerleader willing to burn the town to a pile before allowing a rival prom-queen, promising to vote Republican even if Trump dropped a nuke because:
"That's when I think Democrat, that's what I think. That's smug, arrogant. I'm better than you. I look down my nose on you. Even though you've done three tours of duty. ... That to me, I could never vote for, never."
Perfect Trumpism, never sounding more high school, never more afraid of a teacher, a parent, someone judging what just happened and saying, "No, we should not be openly attacking the world, threatening genocide, embracing racism, paying off billionaires, now knock it off and go home." And that's because Kelly does, in fact, know that adults would step in and be better than this — much better. There is no reaching Kelly with any message.
But she's hardly the norm. Real people, real grown-ups still exist and terrify the GOP.
Maturity must be the platform.
I am not currently advising any single candidate, but the message to all Democrats out there now is to drop all political pretense. Instead, message out with a candid, "I care, and I will help fix it." Look at Mayor Mamdani in New York City and his approach — young, yet an adult in charge. Rising Texan star, precocious James Talerico, has some of the same juice; it's about approach, not age. Senators Chris Murphy, Mark Kelly, and Amy Klobuchar (Speaking of Minnesotans) long carried this message while also being the type everyone relies on when things get bad.
That is the message from this point forward. Adult supervision, the games are over, grow up, accountability is coming, and then assuring the world, "We've got this now." That is everything needed for a world needing saving.
Sad that it's so simple, isn't it? But simple doesn't mean easy, indeed — in this case, it's the exact opposite.
But this is where we stand. It doesn't matter why it's third down and 15; it just is. Life plays out this way for grown-ups every day, from intra-family to international. Inevitably, as bad as things get, whether it be troops in Iran or a drunken fight at a prom, testosterone-powered and poisoned rides eventually end. A typical Hegseth "because we could, brah!" butts up against a global "no more." The party ends, daylight comes, sober assessments get made, plans formed, find a first down and move the ball — that's what adults do.
It is also the Democratic platform from now until grown-ups govern — as compelling as it is needed, as true as it is sad. The simpler, the more mature, the more powerful. Stand ready to take over for the kids playing the most dangerous games. They hate that we know better and really hate already knowing that resolutions require consequences and rules. It will be extremely hard. Kids hate getting caught.
But the world has literally never needed us more. Fortunately, they're not asking for superheroes, merely adults.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist at Large, former associate editor of Occupy Democrats, author, and attorney. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com, still seeking a few more beta readers for his latest soon to be released novel.
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This woman has a lot of dirt on Donald — and she's not afraid of him
OK, so that Melania Trump thing on Thursday was just downright bizarre.
I mean, complaining about all of the “lies” being told about her in the press from her exposure in the Epstein Files? Thanks, Madame First Lady, but literally no one was talking about your friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – at least not until you called so much attention to it by unilaterally calling a news conference in the White House.
She griped about “the false smears” from people “looking to cause damage to my good name” (good name?) and how they “must stop.” Well, mission accomplished, Melania. They stopped. In fact, they never actually started. The press has much bigger fish to fry looking at the alleged crimes of actual pedophiles rather than someone who had an unfortunate relationship with Epstein’s co-conspirator.
The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Melania’s mock outrage had little to do with her. There was no gossip, no speculation, no allegations. She might as well have been railing about the White House wait staff. There remains more pure controversy surrounding Amazon’s funding of her documentary.
So yes, we have now entered a realm where Trump’s family members are using the Epstein debacle to distract from… what? The Iran war sort-of ceasefire? Ongoing conjecture about the diminished mental capacity of her husband as he threatens genocide on the Middle East? The fact gas prices continue to skyrocket?
It’s a mystery.
But like all good mysteries, everyone has a theory or two or three surrounding it. Here’s mine: Melania wants to matter again.
The woman is no rocket scientist, but she’s also not quite as dumb as she’s often charged. She understands that she’s the least popular First Lady in American history. Her legacy at this point surrounds having centered a documentary that focused on trying on shoes and baring her ankles, and once wearing a jacket that was inscribed on the back with, “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?”
I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, she was struck by a momentary twinge of conscience that inspired her to assure the world she’s not some Epstein fiasco stooge, and that she wants Congress to call in Epstein survivors to testify under oath.
This doesn’t, of course, mean that Melania handled her Thursday announcement in a particularly effective or appropriate manner. Whoever is overseeing her personal marketing is doing her no favors. For one thing, you don’t just go around denying things you aren’t at the present time accused of, unless, of course, you’re trying to get out in front of a potential scandal to control the narrative.
Ah yes, there’s that.
A lot of the chatter at week’s end centered on the likelihood that there was something big coming down the pike and Melania wanted to be on the record covering her own backside. But what could that be?
One thing that I surely appreciate is the rogue aspect of this. It seems pretty clear that Melania didn’t seek or receive administration approval – or that of her husband in particular – before deciding to do this. That’s sort of delicious when you consider that literally no one else in the president’s orbit has that kind of power. She is alone in Trump’s sphere in being fireproof.
I think.
Given this fact, Melania carries an extraordinary amount of power via having immunity from dismissal. I’ve always thought she held all the cards in that marriage. It’s far easier to imagine her filing for divorce than him.
We also have to believe the First Lady knows more about what’s contained among the Epstein Files redactions as well as in those files that have yet to be released. Ergo, she holds a lot of cards.
Was what she said on Thursday about keeping herself out of trouble while prepping to throw her husband beneath the bus if necessary? It’s doubtful, but possible. I would have been significantly more impressed had Melania stepped up to the lectern of the Grand Foyer and said, “If I’m being honest, my husband should be forced to testify at a Congressional hearing. He knew Epstein better than anyone.”
I know. When hell freezes over. But a man can dream.
Let’s remember that this is the first First Lady in history who doesn’t live at the White House fulltime. She’s also rarely anywhere close to her husband’s side, even when he needs propping up. Their marriage is, by all appearances, one of convenience, if that. From Melania’s perspective, it looks far more like one of inconvenience.
Melania no doubt appreciates the perks of being married to the most powerful man in the world while at the same time shunning the duties. Forget sleeping in the same bed; I’d be surprised if they’ve slept in the same wing over the past decade.
This is all a longwinded way of saying that Melania’s priorities are unlikely to be completely, or perhaps even partially, aligned with her husband’s. She’s in the Melania business, not the Melania and Donald business. She knows many more specifics about her husband’s past behavior than we do, and maybe that fills her with sufficient disgust to leave him twisting if it ever came down to it. With any luck, it will.
We will probably know soon enough why Melania said what she said on Thursday. The least likely reason is that she’s legitimately worried about her own reputation, because let’s be clear: the people and the media don’t give a single damn about her relationship with Epstein and Maxwell. What they care about is how it might play into Trump’s culpability.
What I appreciated in Melania’s decision to go public with something that was well off the public’s concern meter was the sheer balls it took to do it. If this kind of behavior were to evolve, we may need to start treating her with something resembling respect
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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