TACO Tuesday's lasting hangover
It'll take more than Pepto to calm this shitstorm.
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Yesterday, the president threatened to commit genocide.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote Tuesday morning, congratulating himself for putting an end to “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death.”
In the end, Trump grabbed the lifeline thrown out by Pakistan (possibly with some direction from the White House), agreeing to “suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks” and insisting that “we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Trump claims the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened, although he has made representations about Iran’s position before, only to be immediately contradicted, so … YMMV.
But Trump’s latest climbdown won’t undo the damage from his murderous escalation. Republicans and Democrats, along with ordinary Americans, have seen with their own eyes that the president’s erratic behavior isn’t strategic.
This is a crazy person, who did a crazy thing, and is likely to do many more crazy things soon.
Madman theory
Trump isn’t the first president whose theory of foreign policy amounted to peace through mania.
“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war,” Nixon told his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, in 1968. “We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
Nixon had famously terrible judgment, but at least he had the perspicacity to deny Haldeman’s “madman” claims. Trump embraces the madman moniker. Asked by the Wall Street Journal in 2024 whether he’d use force to defend Taiwan, he smirked “I wouldn’t have to, because [Xi Jinping] respects me and he knows I’m fucking crazy.”
And perhaps he is! But vowing to crush his enemies hasn’t yielded the hoped-for results this time around.
Hundreds of countries did not line up to make disadvantageous trade deals when threatened with crippling tariffs. The war in Ukraine did not end. He couldn’t even manage to bully the Republican-controlled Senate into ditching the filibuster and blue-slip rule.
And so the president resolved to chew the furniture harder in hopes that this time his enemies will quail in fear as they ought to.
As his war on Iran stretches on and Trump repeats the cycle of making threats, setting a deadline, and then caving, even the stock market has quit falling for his headfakes and rewarding his lies with a temporary rally. So Trump slammed his fist into the wall, threatening to commit war crimes and even genocide if someone — anyone! — didn’t spare him the ignominy of a land war in Asia.
And now, at long last, it seems to have occurred to his allies that the old man may be driving them straight off a cliff.
Rats test the waters
“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” tweeted former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.”
Greene is deep in her apostate era, but she’s hardly the only right-winger warning Republicans that they need to start backing away from Trump before he tarnishes the conservative brand completely.
After tut-tutting at Trump for using profanity — “Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning?” — Tucker Carlson is now exhorting members of the administration to refuse illegal orders. (Although he said later that he would still vote for Trump again.)
Sen. Ron Johnson, a longtime Trump stalwart, frantically signaled that we need to go back to pretending to liberate 93 million Iranian people, not obliterate them.
Even Alex Jones can see which way the wind is blowing.
“How do we get to 25th Amendment his ass,” Jones growled to his lawyer Robert Barnes, a frequent guest on his Infowars podcast.
Barnes suggested that there was nothing for it but to “tackle Trump, let him pretend the he’s the president, and publicly report that he’s going through a health issue, and Vance take over.” Which sounds a lot like one of the conspiracies these same two brain geniuses floated during the Biden administration!
Naturally, these patriots know who is to blame for this fiasco — and it isn’t Trump.
“The Iranian President tweets that he is willing sacrifice his own life for his people. Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice Charlie Kirk and is willing to sacrifice every American life and livelihood for Greater Israel,” tweeted Candace Owens. “Who is the animal again?”
Owens also called Jews “murderous gypsies” and “Godless people” who “believe the entire world is their birthright.”
“Everyone can thank Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham, Mark Levin, and Larry Loomer.
And Donald Trump for listening to these war obsessed maniacal murderers,” Greene posted. (She means Laura Loomer, she just thinks it’s funny to imply that Loomer is trans.)
Carlson, who has embraced open antisemitism since his fall from Fox, somehow transubstantiated a threat to annihilate millions of Muslim civilians into an attack on Christianity.
“Is it possible that what you’re watching is a very stealthy, yet incredibly effective, attack on what, from a Christian perspective is the true faith, belief in Jesus?” he just-asking-question-ed on Monday.
Of course, Israel has long advocated for the US to invade Iran. On Monday, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan got the tick-tock of Trump’s decision process, including a presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicting that the Iranian people would greet Americans as liberators.
Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against US interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.
Besides, Mossad’s intelligence indicated that street protests inside Iran would begin again and — with the impetus of the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion — an intense bombing campaign could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime. The Israelis also raised the prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border from Iraq to open a ground front in the northwest, further stretching the regime’s forces and accelerating its collapse.
The article makes clear that Trump’s advisors knew this was “bullshit” at the time, and told him so. Sadly, none of them was willing to argue against invading Iran anyway, except for Vice President Vance, who would very much like us all to know that he vocally opposed it.
Vance’s unsubtle effort to distance himself from this disaster confirms that he’s always been a soulless ghoul without principles or loyalty. But more than that, it demonstrates that the war and Trump’s endless escalations are triggering alarm bells in MAGAworld.
25th for 47
The chorus of public figures demanding Trump’s ouster grows ever louder.
On Tuesday, dozens of Democrats, along with Greene and Owens, called for Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. For years, the 25th Amendment was a punchline, dismissed as a fever dream of the unhinged resistance. But now Trump has dragged us into an illegal war, with zero buy-in from Congress or the American public. And even if he wanted to declare victory and go home, he can’t, because Iran has proven that it can shut down the Strait of Hormuz any time it likes.
Suddenly Trump’s most vocal supporters worry that the madman isn’t bluffing, and they could be looking at a level of carnage that would drastically change the math, both domestically and abroad.
Naturally, Trump’s defenders have leapt forward to assure the doubters that he’s just threatening to do genocide because he’s wily. Only an idiot would take the president at his word, they scoff.
Conservative provocateur Erick Erickson insists that Trump isn’t actually a madman, he’s merely “a man playing a role as a negotiation tactic.”
“Unfortunately, the President is going to be backed into a corner of extreme options by doing this, or be mocked for TACO again,” he added, masterfully deploying the passive voice to lament that the president is in a position where he might have to commit war crimes simply to save face.
Trump’s eventual reversal can’t put that genie back in the bottle. We all saw what we saw, and the jolt served as a much-needed stiffener to Democrats’ collective spine.
As for Republicans, they’ve had to confront the reality that their leader isn’t playing 10-dimensional chess. With the midterms bearing down on them, they’re yoked to someone who won’t just come all the way up to the line and put one toe over it, but may actually plunge headlong into the nuclear abyss.
Per NYT:
A couple weeks before the war began, Mr. Trump, who had known Mr. Carlson for years, tried to reassure him over the phone. “I know you’re worried about it, but it’s going to be OK,” the president said. Mr. Carlson asked how he knew. “Because it always is,” Mr. Trump replied.
For years, conservatives told themselves that Trump’s constant escalations were crafty gamesmanship, that he was keeping all options on the table to avoid tipping his hand to the enemy. This barely-averted disaster cuts the knees out from under their creative fiction. Trump'’s not performing as a madman.
He’s just barking mad.
That’s it for today
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That screed from Trump - take a moment to re-read - is the language of delusion. What adult, what normal human being, talks like that? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States!
I don't think anything I see in American politics with Trump in the White House is going to surprised me now. But threatening massive war crimes when you have the power to commit them if you choose to is not funny or an acceptable negotiating. tactic. It's like a father threatening to rape a teenage daughter during a serious disagreement. Doesn't matter how serious the disagreement you just don't do that. You shouldn't even think of saying that.
As for the 25th Amendment. That requires large numbers of his cabinet to say he's clearly unfit. This cabinet has been selected for loyalty above all else. They've shown resolute fealty with North Korean level grovelling to the Dear Leader. I simply cannot see large numbers of these spineless creeps upending the cult leader. It just ain't going to happen.