NOW WHAT WILL HE SCREW UP?

Is the Iran war over? I don't know. I think President Trump might take any deal he can get now, because the Iranian regime's refusal to kneel was making him look bad, but I think we could still arrive at an impasse soon, because the two sides' demands are incompatible. And if all this really is over, or will be over soon that increases my anxiety.

For the past five weeks, we've at least known the main arena where Trump was going to do horrible, ill-advised things. Sure, he was doing other terrible stuff, but Iran was his main focus.

Now what?

Trump is an addict who needs a stronger and stronger dose of edgelordism to satisfy his cravings. He's also an old TV guy who thinks every week is sweeps week, so he wants to devise special stunt programming to keep the audience engaged.

If, in the near future, he's not getting all this from Iran, he'll need to get it somewhere. I know he plans to overthrow the Cuban government, but, sadly, that will probably go more smoothly than the Iran war has. So his need to do something truly horrifying, ill-conceived, and transgressive, something that offends even some of his allies and that he he gets away with by the skin of his teeth, will persist until he satisfies it.

That's why I worry about the elections. Last night we saw again that Democrats are exceeding all expectations in off-year elections.

Democrats won a judicial election in Wisconsin -- a state Trump won -- by nearly 20 points, while also winning the mayor's race in Republican-leaning Waukesha.

I have never seen this much #blue in the state of #Wisconsin Sheboygan (blue collar, #manufacturing Trump +16) is blue The biggest swing was Crawford county, #rural on #Minnesota border- Trump +14 to Taylor (Dem) +22 - a 36 point swing left I think white working class is not buying it anymore

[image or embed]

— Soumya Rangarajan, MD, MPP (@soumya-goblue.medsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 11:23 PM

So I think he's coming for the elections. But he might just as easily find another place to transgress. He mentioned Greenland in Monday's press conference, so I don't think that's a dead issue.

He needs this amount of policy madness. I don't think he'll be satisfied with less now.


*****

I was surprised to see that nearly all of the most-liked comments in response to this Fox News ceasefire story were negative:

I can honestly say that I’ve never been more disappointed in this administration. This changes nothing. I realize I know zero about what is taking place through back channels. But unless this results in both 100% surrender of nuclear materials and 100% surrender of the IRGC and a relinquishment of power, this has all been for nothing. We’re now bargaining over the Straight of Hormuz? That was a forgone collateral damage we knew would happen before we even started this. The IRGC puts civilians around their power facilities, NATO threatens war crimes and we fold like origami. Now who looks like the paper tiger? I thought so much better of this administration.

****

If Iran gets to keep its 60% enriched uranium, then that means that Trump choked and the Iranians won. So disappointed in you right now Prez. So disappointed.

****

The regime is still in place. There has been no change. Trump is negotiating his surrender. Iran will be a problem once again in the future. Doesn't matter what deal is made. China and Russia will see to it.

****

As part of the plan, the US has in principle agreed to lift all primary and secondary sanctions against Iran. It has also agreed to accept Iran’s nuclear enrichment and recognize its continued control over the Strait of Hormuz. What did Trump's war accomplish

****

Trump got suckered, Iran is playing him like a fiddle, and the US is looking the fool for it.

****

I voted for Trump - Twice. He blew this one big time. Iran called Trump's bluff, he folded. There is no negotiating with Iran. He also blew Greenland.

****

Art of the deal:
1) Take something that was already working well
2) Do something to screw it up
3) Whine about it, threaten military actions, and tariffs
4) Negotiate a deal that was worse than where we started at step 1
5) Claim victory
6) Enjoy adulation from not so smart MAGA

****

Alright, who wants to bet Iran will put out a statement in the next 12 hours that they had no idea about this agreement?

****

I am really sick of Trump and his "lets make a deal" vision on every world problem. Mostly hes not solving anything and just stirring crap up for nothing. Tonights latest two week extension is typical Iranian stalling. Everybody saw it coming. So disappointed and tired of Trump.

****

I’m a Trumper but boy what a stupid move 🤦‍♀️

****

Delay has always been in the Iranian playbook and we always fall for it.

****

Everyone knew Trump would back down. Whether a republican or democrat you just knew. Trump talks big on everything then backs down. He just wants attention. Destroy civilization??? Give me a break. Is there no one who will stand up to this idiot?? And you talk about Biden losing his mind. Trump sure as hell is no better. Neither one should be president. We need leaders not over the hill lunatics.

****

Every reason that Trump gave for starting the Trump War still exists:
-Iran still has missiles and drones, and the means to make more.
-Iran can reconstitute its nuclear program
-The Iranian regime is still in place, just more radical than before since the Revolutionary Guard is in control now.
-Iran is still killing its people.
--- Now it's the closing of the strait that's the biggest problem, which was NOT a problem before the start of the war.

The military has done an outstanding job on the military piece of the war. CinC Trump has FAILED on the political piece of the Trump War.

****

Mr. President, you may think you're jerking the Iranians around, being tough and making the deal, but the flip flops, and back and forth silliness not only jerks them around it jerks the American people around, specifically the US military families. Unbelievable. And so much for ending the endless wars.

****

Why does he keep caving to these terrorists? They keep playing him like a fiddle. I’m beginning to lose respect for him.

****

And this solves nothing. Acting like a lunatic for 48 hours and then magically cooking up a ceasefire does not provide anyone with a stable, solid solution. That might assuage the stock market for a few days, we might see a nominal drop in oil prices but we need stable; secure leadership for there to be a long term correction to the damage already done.

****

That's it! I've been a loyal Trump supporter for years. OG proud MAGA man. Even handsomely donated to Stop the Steal. But this lack of follow through leads me to believe he's full of bunk. Should have voted for Nikki Haley.

****

Careful, Mr. President. Don’t believe what they’re telling you. There are fewer honest Iranians than there are moderate Democrats.

****

Until Iran reopens the strait, nothing is certain. Trump may be negotiating with himself again

I'm not cherry-picking these. They're nineteen of the twenty most-liked comments. There's one pro-Trump comment in this group:

I know you TACO texters think you are cute but this is a good thing, both for the safety of our military and the lives of potentially innocent people in Iran. Everyone should be rejoicing in this announcement and hope and pray it leads to a permanent cease fire and a permanent non-nuclear Iran. Maybe we can all stop and pray for freedom for the Iranian people and the families of the tens of thousands of lives lost to their brutality.

Even this is more hopeful than triumphant.

I hope this is representative of at least one portion of Trump's base. If so, he's not fooling as many people as he used to.

DONALD TRUMP PLANS WAR CRIMES AND LONGS FOR PURITY

Yesterday I wrote about President Trump's late-night Truth Social posts of a video showing veiled, presumably Somali women at the Mall of America.

Donald Trump just posted a video of Somali people enjoying the Mall of America to the soundtrack of “Mad World” because he is a bigoted POS

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 6, 2026 at 12:35 AM

That's obviously Trump's idea of a dystopian hellscape. But a few hours before that, Trump gave us another glimpse into his own nightmares, re-posting this tweet of a woman washing her bedding with fire hydrant water at what I assume is a homeless encampment in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles fire hydrants seem to be working just fine now pic.twitter.com/xCCfYXTHHD

— One Bad Dude (@OneBadDude_) April 4, 2026

Then yesterday afternoon -- as he pondered whether to commit war crimes by destroying critical civilian infrastructure in Iran -- Trump gave us the flip side of his nightmares, with two posts of colorized footage from the past:

Trump shares footage of old New York and PARIS after his press briefing on Iran pic.twitter.com/n5JjYfaXbU

— RT (@RT_com) April 6, 2026

The message of these videos, and the L.A. and Mall of America videos, is obvious: In a bygone era, our cities were utopias where well-dressed white people strolled peacefully, and there wasn't a black or brown or Muslim or poor person in sight. This is an idea that right-wingers find captivating -- and plausible, so much so that the right-wing actor Kevin Sorbo recently humilated himself by tweeting this:

Look at this video of NYC in 1975, see how peaceful it was?

Look at how everybody seems to be enjoying their lives, and not contrast it to today. Our country has been ruined.pic.twitter.com/KiqGcmEnp9

— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) April 5, 2026

Those of us who lived in the city in the 1970s could have told Sorbo that New York in that era was broke, crumbling, and crime-ridden. It's richer and safer now. There were 1,645 homicides in the city in 1975. There were only 305 last year.

You might have seen that Kevin Sorbo tweet. What you probably don't know is that a day before he posted it, American AF, aka @iAnonPatriot -- the same right-wing tweeter whose Mall of America tweet was picked up by Trump -- posted the New York City clip Sorbo used, but with an explicitly anti-Muslim message.

Footage of NYC in the 1970s is going viral..

Not a single Muslim in sight — it was perfect. pic.twitter.com/MAMFSJLkli

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) April 3, 2026

Right-wingers look at the world and see only utopias and hellscapes. A utopia is a place where everybody looks and thinks like them. A hellscape is any environment where some people aren't exactly like them, or do things they don't like -- wear clothes they disapprove of, practice a religion they don't practice, cope with adversity in a way they find unsightly.

This is why right-wingers love AI slop. AI can create images in which enemies are vanquished brutes, Donald Trump is a young, muscular conqueror, and Jesus looks on and approves. Everything in an AI image is exactly the way the creator wants it to be. That's how right-wingers think the world should work -- and could work.

Those of us who lean left and live in cities know that our environment is flawed. We see the flaws every day. We also see the good things. Sometimes we love the balance and sometimes we hate it, but we don't think a place has to be perfect to be good.

We don't like the way our right-wing fellow citizens vote, but we favor government policies that would help them, too, like universal health coverage. Right-wingers, by contrast, look at us and think:

Trump's warning to Iran right now sound like a variant on that: Imagine no Iran.

God help us.

[image or embed]

— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 8:14 AM

Trump thinks that if he bombs Iran back to the Stone Age, the Persian equivalent of the Paris and New York videos above might magically emerge.

At least he's not promising to build Trump Tehran, complete with a gold statue of himself.



Did I say that right-wingers believe that everything is either a hellscape or (their idea of) a utopia? That's what I mean.

I THINK ILHAN OMAR OCCUPIES MORE REAL ESTATE IN TRUMP'S BRAIN THAN BARACK OBAMA

While we wait to see whether the next phase of the Iran war will be a ceasefire, a massive series of war crimes committed on President Trump's orders, or Trump chickening out on those war crimes because investors and his Gulf pals don't want much more infrastructure damaged, let's look at one of Trump's Truth Social posts from last night's posting spree:

Donald Trump just posted a video of Somali people enjoying the Mall of America to the soundtrack of “Mad World” because he is a bigoted POS

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 6, 2026 at 12:35 AM

I say "one of" his posts, but he actually posted this twice last night -- once with no text and once with the text that originally accompanied the video. That was in a three-month-old X post from an influencer called American AF (@iAnonPatriot), a bigot whose followers include Donald Trump Jr., Lauren Boebert, Megyn Kelly, and Mike Flynn. Here's that original tweet, which offers no evidence for its main claim:

This is literally the”Mall of America” in Minnesota.

85% of these people are on welfare, btw. pic.twitter.com/mf0gzQiYdj

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) January 15, 2026

Trump's decision to post this has been ascribed to garden-variety racism, but note that he's not showing us Black people in typical American clothes. Trump assumes that the veiled Black women he sees here are Somali. The fact that there are veiled Somali women anywhere in America makes Trump crazy. One veiled Black woman from Africa especially infuriates him: Minneapolis congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Trump hates Omar so much that he mentions her in social media posts that have nothing to do with her. Here's a message he's posted four times this year, as part of his campaign to oust Greg Goode, a Republican state senator from Indiana who has resisted Trump's call for mid-decade congressional redistricting in his state.

I think Omar sets off a toxic bigotry chain reaction in Trump's brain. On the one hand, she dresses in a way that conceals her hair and skin, which, to Trump, suggests not only disgusting non-European foreignness but also lack of sexual access. (Trump believes women should attempt to live up to male standards of beauty and be sexually accessible, although I suspect that he finds nearly all Black women unattractive.) On the other hand, this traditionally dressed Black woman takes no shit from Trump and pushes back whenever he or any other right-winger attacks her. This plays into a common stereotype amnog white male racists, especially those from the urban North: that Black women are mouthy and rude. (Womnen are supposed to be accommodating and deferential to men, you see. And they should smile more!)

I believe that Minneapolis experienced the worst of ICE because Trump is fixated on Ilhan Omar, a woman whose very existence (and persistence) he finds utterly intolerable. In recent years, I think Omar's rent-free presence in Trump's head has made him angrier than Barack Obama's, and that's saying a lot.

THAT TRUTH SOCIAL POST WAS WHAT TRUMP'S BASE VOTED FOR

Yes, it's real. You can go here to see it at Truth Social.

People I respect are arguing on social media that this doesn't seem like a post Trump wrote himself. I disagree. I think it's Trump's genuine voice. Remember the golf course video after the 2024 debate with President Biden, a leak I'm sure came from Trump's own team?

You couldn’t leak a more flattering video of Trump if you tried.pic.twitter.com/yHyinmbEys

— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) July 4, 2024

“How did I do with the debate the other night?” Trump asks a small group of people. When told he did “fantastic” and “amazing,” Trump continues, referring to Biden, “Look at that old, broken-down pile of c***. It’s a bad guy.”

Trump then goes on to claim that Biden has “just quit” the presidential race, which he says means that he will take on Vice President Kamala Harris in the election instead.

“I think she’s gonna be better,” he says, seemingly referring to his ability to beat her as an opponent. “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s just so f***ing bad.”

Bob Woodward and co-author Robert Costa told us in their 2021 book, Peril, that Trump likes the F-word.

President Donald Trump exploded at then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, yelling, "I don't give a fuck about your fucking transcript" after Esper threw cold water on his desire to quell protests with military force, according to a new book.

And in October of last year, Axios reported that Trump used the word as part of an effort to sell a possible peace deal with Hamas to Benjamin Netanyahu.

When Hamas came back with a "yes, but" to President Trump's Gaza peace proposal on Friday, Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss what he saw as good news.

Netanyahu felt differently. "Bibi told Trump this is nothing to celebrate, and that it doesn't mean anything," a U.S. official with knowledge of the call told Axios.

Trump fired back: "I don't know why you're always so f***ing negative. This is a win. Take it."

So this is how Trump talks.

Now, who's his target audience? I think it's Americans as much as Iranians. Trump knows he got bad reviews for his April Fool's Day speech on Iran. It was scripted and subdued, and nobody liked it. Some even called it "low energy." So this is the opposite.

Is this what his base likes? Take a look at the response to the golf course video in the tweet above, which is from a co-owner of the right-wing Babylon Bee.

You couldn’t leak a more flattering video of Trump if you tried.

The Truth Social post is the lead story at Breitbart. Breitbart's story begins:

Blunt, unambiguous and straight to the point. That was President Donald Trump on Sunday morning as he warned Iran of the perils that lie ahead if it fails to open the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

I assume the post was teed up when it wasn't clear whether the mission to rescue the second of two downed U.S. pilots in Iran would be a success (it was). Trump wanted to be ready to change the subject if necessary. (Bizarrely, he's succeeded in changing the subject from a successful rescue mission to his temperament.) The post might also have been an effort to banish reporting on Trump health rumors from the headlines. (The White House denies that Trump had a medical emergency yesterday that required him to be transported to Walter Reed.)

Greg Sargent says:

This open threat of war crimes is pure sociopathic bloodlust and sadism but it's also another sign that he's failing and that he's in a fury about it.

He's threatening war crimes because he's failing. War crimes are how he intends to redeem himself. (No one whose opinion he respects or whose support he wants believes that there's anything wrong with committing war crimes against enemy Muslims.)

A Wall Street Journal story makes clear that he's eager to commit war crimes:

Top aides have privately made the case to President Trump in recent days that Iran’s power-generating facilities and bridges are legitimate military targets because destroying them could cripple the country’s missile and nuclear programs, officials say.

Trump embraced the rationale, sharply questioned by legal experts and human-rights groups, in a nationwide address Wednesday when he vowed to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages.”

If he holds back, it'll only be because allies in the region talk him out of it...

Trump’s threat to strike Iran’s power plants has alarmed some Gulf state partners who fear that it could spur Tehran to lash out at their energy infrastructure....

The fear of a spiraling series of tit-for-tat strikes on Middle East energy facilities isn’t a hypothetical concern. When Israel struck a major Iranian gas field last month, Iran responded by striking a major Qatar natural-gas field. And Kuwait on Friday accused Iran of attacking a major desalination plant.

... or because the markets react with panic on Monday (which may or may not happen).

But for now, Trump is the president his base voted for. Nobody in the base cares that he profaned a major Christian holiday. They think it's awesome. They regard this -- both the trash talk and the threatened brutality -- as a form of muscular Christianity.

WHY TRUMP ASSUMED IRAN DIDN'T HAVE AGENCY

In a New York Times conversation, Jamelle Bouie and David French discuss a fact Donald Trump doesn't seem able to grasp: that in a conflict, the enemy can fight back. Below I'll try to explain why Trump believes this.

Bouie says:

It’s very strange. I guess I’ve never really seen anything like it in American politics. Just an administration, a set of people, who have no real ability to just conceptualize what their political opponents, or their foreign enemies, might want to do of their own accord. It’s like they really do not believe that other people have independent action.

French says:

One of the reasons they look at the Venezuela situation, and they keep going back to that, is that it’s probably their most successful version of this, that Venezuelan intervention. But you go again and again, and you see the same pattern: “We have to pummel people harder.” And that works with Republican members of Congress, for example, but it doesn’t tend to work with other sovereign nations. Other sovereign nations don’t like to be pummeled. And so, what they’ll do is they’ll find a way to stop or prevent the pummeling, and it’s not always the way you want.

So, for example, if you’re trying to torment Canada, well, you can’t go crying if Canada says, “We’re going to forge a closer economic relationship with China and Europe than with the U.S., because we have self-preservation interests.” No. They keep thinking, if we pummel, then we’ll achieve the results that we want, when sometimes pummeling has the exact opposite effect. What it typically does is alienate people at scale.

I agree that Trump thought he could simply hit Iran as hard as possible and force a surrender, which is how he saw his assault on Venezuela. But "Use overwhelming force and you'll win" has been a successful strategy throughout his political career, at least until recently.

Remember that Trump was a success as a real estate developer, but was a failure after that. Then he had a mixed record as a famous person slapping his name on products. Then he became a TV star and had a show that was a hit, but after a few years it was less and less of a hit.

Politics is the only area in which Trump has failed (he always fails) and then returned to the top of the heap. Which doesn't speak well for politics. There's something wrong with any field that would allow Trump to dominate it twice.

Trump overwhelmed his enemies in 2015 and 2016. His primary opponents were too polite to get into the bare-knuckle brawl that might have beaten him, or to fight him strategically (for instance, with campaign withdrawals that might have cleared the field for a strong opponent). Also, Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media had pushed a coarse, pro-wrestling view of politics for so many years that Republican primary voters were eager for a hatemongering brawler.

Trump's general-election opponent had been pummeled by both the right-wing and mainstream media for years. That's why he was able to win an Electoral College victory.

Trump survived the Mueller report and an impeachment the same way he won the election: He was loud and crude, and the right-wing press defended him more forcefully than the Democratic Party and the rest of the media attacked him.

He lost the 2020 election, though the margins in the swing states were close. He was impeached again and he survived a second time. And then he was given room to mount a comeback. The legal cases against him were built too slowly. His 2024 primary opponents weren't able to kick him when he was down. He defeated a weakened Democratic Party.

To sum up: The political system never gave Trump the thrashing he deserved. Democrats and Republican critics fought too politely. The non-GOP media thought he was the true voice of the Volk and was far more willing to punch "wokeness" than Trump.

So Trump got used to the idea that the enemy doesn't have agency because for years his enemies did a piss-poor job of using their agency.

Until Chris Van Hollen pushed back on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Until Canada put its elbows up with regard to tariffs and "51st state" talk. Until Greenland and Denmark pushed back on annexation. Until anti-ICE protesters pushed back in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

But there were still enemies who chose not to use their agency: big law firms, elite universities, members of Congress in both parties, Democratic consultants, op-ed writers who still obsessed over "wokeness" while demanding that Democrats throw trans people under the bus.

Trump thought they were the rule and the few determined resisters were the exception. He still thought he could work his will pretty much anywhere in the world he pleased. And now we're in a quagmire in Iran.

EVEN WHEN RIGHT-WINGERS CARED ABOUT EPSTEIN, THEY DIDN'T CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN

I'm sure that Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic is correct when he says that this is one reason Pam Bondi just lost her job as attorney general, but it's not the main reason:

President Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi after more than a chaotic year marked by her indignant congressional hearings and woeful mishandling of the Epstein files....

Bondi’s ouster is the culmination of Trump’s growing frustrations around the intense, inadvertent scrutiny that she brought upon the administration, as she went from saying the Epstein client list was on her desk, to claiming it didn’t exist, to handing out big dramatic white binders for a photo op with MAGA influencers that contained no new information. She continuously tried and failed to declare the case closed, while exposing Epstein’s victims to more abuse by identifying them in the files. Eventually, even Republicans on the House Oversight Committee agreed to subpoena Bondi over her “possible mismanagement” of the files.

In The New York Times, Glenn Thrush and Tyler Pager appear to rank-order the reasons Bondi lost her job, and their ranking seems plausible:

Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.

President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files.

Right -- "her inability to prosecute the people [Trump] hates" and to meet his "unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies" is the main reason she's out.

Mr. Trump has been particularly angry about the Justice Department’s failure to win cases involving his political opponents, including against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.

One key Trump adviser outside Ms. Bondi’s line of authority, the federal housing official Bill Pulte, had long pushed for her firing, blaming her for slow-walking and bungling the James and Comey cases, among other things, according to people familiar with the situation.

Her firing was primarily because she couldn't mount and win unwinnable cases against Trump's enemies.

Trump's anger is shared by the rest of his party. Listen to Congressman Chip Roy on Fox Business this morning. What's he talking about? Vengeance and propaganda-driven right-wing witch hunts, not Epstein:

Rep. Chip Roy on what he wants out of Trump's next AG: "We want the people who were harassing J6ers held accountable. We want to know the truth on Arctic Frost. We want to see heads roll. We want to see John Brennan and Jim Comey held accountable. The next AG needs to be very aggressive."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 3, 2026 at 8:27 AM

Roy says:

We've got to deal with things like antifa. The president rightly declared them a terrorist organization. We want to see people who are affiliated with these Marxist networks funding antifa, creating all sorts of danger for the American people, we want them held accountable. We want the people who were harassing J6ers held accountable. We want to know the truth on Arctic Frost. My records were targeted under Arctic Frost, Jack Smith. We want to see heads roll. We want to see John Brennan, who the Judiciary Committee referred to the Department of Justice, held accountable, and Jim Comey.

These are all things that we think need to happen. The next attorney general needs to be very aggressive, and I hope the president will pick somebody that will do that.

Arctic Frost was Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- and yes, all your right-wing relatives know that, and assuming you know what they mean when they say "Arctic Frost." As part of that investigation, calling records of some D.C. Republicans were accessed -- just records of who called whom, not audio of the calls -- and Republicans, both in D.C. and back home watching Fox, will never stop being angry about that.

And here's another GOP congressman from Texas expressing similar views in a Newsmax interview -- and saying that his constituents agree with him:

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, said Thursday on Newsmax that President Donald Trump's firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to reflect frustration inside the administration that the Justice Department had not moved fast enough to deliver what many supporters see as long-promised accountability....

Cloud, speaking on "Bianca Across the Nation," said the issue went beyond pursuing Democrats and centered on what he described as abuses under the previous administration....

" ... I will say back when I'm back at home, the number one thing I would hear from people is this is the administration of accountability. And we expected to see action and accountability brought to all that malfeasance that we've seen in the previous one."

This gets us back to Jeffrey Epstein. When your right-wing relatives cared about the Epstein story, it wasn't because children were made to suffer. It was because they believed the guilty parties were exclusively Democrats (and non-right-wingers from overseas). They wanted accountability in the Epstein case in order to bring down their political enemies, not because cruelties were inflicted on children. As soon as it became clear to them that Epstein's circle included people on their side, they lost interest.

Republican voters want their enemies crushed. They still support Trump because they see him pursuing this goal. (His Ahab-like obsessions are their own.) They want their enemies jailed or executed whether or not they believe these enemies consorted with Epstein. Most of them don't connect Jack Smith or James Comey or, say, Anthony Fauci or Barack Obama with Epstein, but they hate them and want them punished. Epstein's crimes are just a pretext for them. They'd want their enemies punished even if there had never been a Jeffrey Epstein. They want it as much as they want all undocumented immigrants, Muslims, and trans people (and liberals, for that matter) killed, jailed, or banished from the United States.

THIS IS WHY LEADERS SHOULDN'T SURROUND THEMSELVES WITH FLATTERERS

I ain't no student of ancient culture, as Fred Schneider of the B-52s once said, so I'm not sure if this is true:

An auriga (plural aurigae) was a slave who drove vehicles in the Roman circuses....

It has also been speculated that this name was given to the slave who held a laurel crown, during Roman Triumphs, over the head of the dux, standing at his back but continuously whispering in his ears "Memento Mori" ("remember you are mortal") to prevent the celebrated commander from losing his sense of proportion in the excesses of the celebrations.

We know that no one plays this role in Donald Trump's life. In fact, it's the opposite: He's regularly treated to flattery sessions at which Cabinet members compete with one another to see who can be the most excessive in their praise for him.

A president who acknowledges the fact that some people doubt his brilliance might start a war of choice and declare victory prematurely, but he'll probably recognize that he needs to create an aura of triumph. So on May 1, 2003, a few months into the Iraq War, President George W. Bush donned a flight suit, boarded a Navy jet, and landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier before delivering a victory speech before a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner. It's now understood that Bush was merely a passenger in that jet, though he claimed he wasn't, as CNN reported at the time:

Bush said he did take a turn at piloting the craft.

"Yes, I flew it. Yeah, of course, I liked it," said Bush, who was an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard after graduating from Yale University in 1968.

The speech is now seen as a debacle, but at the time, it worked.

Compare Trump's speech. Zeteo reports:

... if you are the US commander in chief, and you’re one month into a major war that you launched, the one communications job you have is to be able to go on live TV and project calm, confidence, and reasonably high energy to the American people, when you’re telling them how well the war is going.

On Wednesday night – April Fools’ Day, funnily enough – President Trump couldn’t even be bothered to do that. (He’s a former reality TV star; he is supposed to be good at doing TV.) Setting aside for a moment the typically incoherent jumble that pervaded his televised address, the American president delivered a jarringly listless, elderly-seeming speech that did little to inspire confidence – including in his own ranks.

In his own ranks? Really? Apparently so:

During and after his address, an array of Trump advisers, administration officials, allies on Capitol Hill, and rich Mar-a-Lago buddies gave Zeteo their snap reviews of Trump’s message and delivery. (Yes, they asked for the cloak of anonymity, so as to not piss off God King Donald.) Virtually across the board, the president was panned by his own people, with some denigrating the speech as pointless, and others reiterating how much senior members of the administration never wanted this to happen in the first place.

One Trump administration official said the following on Wednesday night: “It reminded me of listening to Joe Biden speak.”

In Trumplandia, that is perhaps the worst possible thing you could say about anyone, much less the sitting president and leader of the GOP.

At times while watching the speech, I thought that Trump is now so addicted to those Cabinet praise sessions that he decided to conduct an auto-praise session, on live TV. He said:

Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks. Our enemies are losing and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning, and now winning bigger than ever before.

Before discussing this current situation, I also want to thank our troops for the masterful job they did in taking the country of Venezuela in a matter of minutes. That hit was quick, lethal, violent and respected by everyone all over the world....

Our armed forces have been extraordinary. There’s never been anything like it militarily. Everyone is talking about it....

The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat. You all know that. We built the strongest economy in history. We’re going through it right now, the strongest in history. And one year we’ve taken a dead and crippled country. I hate to say that, but we were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far....

But he said the war would go on for two to three weeks, and he demanded that other nations reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Global markets flipped out. There's a partial recovery now, but it's Iran's doing, not Trump's:

Stocks clawed back earlier losses to turn positive on Thursday as investors continued to monitor the Iran war and rising oil prices....

The three major indexes ripped higher after Iranian state media said that the Middle Eastern country is working with Oman on a protocol for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

A toll, presumably. That's worse than the pre-war status quo.

Also, maybe it was a mistake for Trump not only to promise two or three weeks more war, but to lecture his critics on how long other wars were:

It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days. We are in this military operation, so powerful, so brilliant against one of the most powerful countries for 32 days.

Shut up and eat your quagmire, America, Trump seemed to be saying. This could take a while. No, that didn't inspire confidence.