HERE'S WHY OLD TRUMP DOUBTERS WILL STAY LOYAL TO THE GOP AND YOUNG TRUMP DOUBTERS WON'T

On Thursday, former congressman and almost attorney general Matt Gaetz denounced the war in Iran in a speech at CPAC. Raw Story reports:

... although he didn't directly criticize Trump, Gaetz took issue with those backing the military strikes.

"I come from the wing of the Republican Party that is only loyal to one nation, and that is the United States of America," Gaetz said.

One sentence in Gaetz's speech really stands out. In this sentence, Gaetz attacks Israel without mentioning the country's name.

"And so while I may not agree with the likes of Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro or Mike Huckabee that we have some sort of near slavish loyalty to a country in a far away land, I would walk across hot coals arm in arm with those individuals to stop the Democrats turning America into a more transsexual version of Venezuela.”

Gaetz is attacking two Jewish Iran hawks and a Christian Zionist Iran hawk. Shots fired, as they used to say.

But notice something else here. Gaetz says he'll make common cause with these hawks to fight the real enemy -- Democrats. I suspect that this makes a lot of sense to older Republicans, even the ones who might not think the war is a good idea. That's because they started drinking the Fox/talk radio Kool-Aid a couple of decades ago and they're certain that no matter what they might think about Donald Trump's wars (or his tariffs or gas prices or any other disappointment they've felt in the past year), it's obvious to them that Democrats are worse. Democrats are evil! Democrats want them to tolerate the presence of un-American freaks and weirdos (trans people, Muslims, immigrants who aren't from European countries). Democrats want to take their guns and turn this country into a communist Sharia hellhole, for the sheer joy of making real Americans suffer.

That's what their favorite broadcasters have told them every hour of every day for many, many years. They believe it. They'll remain loyal Republicans no matter what Trump does, and no matter how deep a quagmire he's getting us into in Iran.

("A more transsexual version of Venezuela" is cleverly concise, in a malignant way. It's a bit like "acid, amnesty, and abortion," the catchphrase that was used against George McGovern in the 1972 reelection campaign of Richard Nixon -- a phrase that means "supportive of everything that repulses you.")

But the media diet of the young males who rallied to Trump in 2024 doesn't work the same way. Many bro podcasters and short-clip influencers are sexist, bigoted, and anti-"woke," but most of them didn't get the memo that Democrats are Enemy #1. Charlie Kirk knew that, and the Daily Wire podcasters know that, but other modern influencers don't. Some are actually willing to agree with Democratic or Democratic-affiliated politicians on liberal or progressive policy ideas.



Matt Gaetz is 43. He reads as a young man, but he's had a couple of decades to marinade in the Old Right media's anti-Democratic absolutism. Young 2024 Trump voters haven't. Gaetz won't get through to them. Hell, they might also like Zohran Mamdani. They want a better economy, a better job market, a better housing market, and an end to the fear that they might be drafted to die in World War III. They're still not sure who can deliver on that agenda, if anyone. They're not like the exurban and rural Boomers and Gen Xers who have homes and have (or have retired from) decent jobs, and who just want government to punish the people they hate. Most of them will turn up at the polls this November and vote GOP, because the GOP hates the people they hate.

Most of the young won't. Their indoctrination isn't sufficiently thorough.

SCHUMER SCORES A PARTIAL WIN, AND REPUBLICAN BASE VOTERS SEEM DEMORALIZED

It's not clear whether the House will agree, but the Senate has voted to end the impasse over DHS funding.

The Senate voted early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement and deportation operations, raising the prospect of an end to a weekslong partial shutdown that has strained federal workers and caused long waits at airports.

The measure does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, reflecting a proposal that Democrats had offered for weeks as they refused to fund federal immigration enforcement operations without adding new restrictions on agents.

I'm quoting from the New York Times story. The Times stresses what Democrats failed to achieve:

The measure that the Senate approved contains modest provisions that lawmakers had already agreed to in January, including money for body cameras for immigration enforcement officers.

But the legislation falls short of the restrictions that Democrats demanded after federal immigration officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis in January. It does not include provisions barring ICE agents from wearing masks or requiring that they obtain judicial warrants to enter private homes.

And the deal does not reflect narrow concessions that the White House agreed to last week, including requirements that officers display visible identification and limits on immigration enforcement at “sensitive areas” like hospitals and schools.

Or you could say:

Unpopular opinion alert: Chuck Schumer deserves credit for keeping his caucus in line until Republicans folded.

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— Matthew Gertz (@mattgertz.bsky.social) March 27, 2026 at 7:26 AM

You know who agrees that Republicans were the losers here? A significant percentage of the people in right-wing comments sections. These Fox News commenters aren't happy:

The Republicans never do carry through with what they start, lifelong Republican here and I’m getting fed up with these pathetic excuses for republican Senators, the Democrats hold the Republicans feet to the fire and always Back the Republicans down

****

It appears Trump is a party of one , his fellow Republicans do not possess the testicular fortitude to lead or fight for American citizens , they always seem to quit rather than fight.

****

Lifetime Republican and Im old, first time I’ve ever said I’m embarrassed by Republican leadership. Absolutely spineless and gutless.

****

Well, once again Republicans cave. Democrats let all these criminals walk into our country, and now they are condemning the very people who can remove them? And republicans cave into their outrageous idiotic demands? We need republicans that have a backbone. That can get out there and tell the truth.

****

Cowards. That's how the republicans in office will be remembered. Cowards, who caved to democrat whining, gave them what they wanted and got nothing of value in return.

****

GOP caves again to the left…which is how the country was crippled in the first place. The president is the only republican with a spine

And in the comments to this Breitbart story:

Can you stop being useless for once and act like the majority in power party. Congress is one grifter after another. The things they care about passing are bills that pad their bank accounts.

****

Thune, McConnell, Tillis. Names that just make me sick.

****

RACO: RINOs always chicken out.

****

Primary out, and if not, then let them be defeated by the Dems. Lots of pain, but then vote in correct blood. I'm sorry, but this is the only way unless apathetic voters wake up

****

Thune hurts Trump more than Schumer.

****

Trump hurts Trump more than Schumer by continually supporting RINOs. John Thune should never have been the Majority Leader with Trump still singing Thune's praises. Get the damn Save Act Passed.

Republicans have a tiny majority in the House and are still preserving the filibuster in the Senate, and yet President Trump and the right-wing media are raising the base's expectations of what the GOP can accomplish. Now GOP voters expect DHS and ICE funding with no concessions (which can happen in a reconciliation bill, because a reconciliation bill can pass the Senate by a simple majority)and they expect passage of the maximal version of the SAVE Act, with all the extraneous anti-trans provisions Trump wants to attach to it (the Senate parliamentarian probably won't allow them to put every SAVE Act provision in a reconciliation bill, which must be budget-oriented).

Trump has ensured that anything less than 100% of this looks, to the base, like failure on the part of congressional Republicans -- months before the midterms.

Genius plan to demoralize your voters, Donnie. Have a nice November.

LEAKERS: "IT WASN'T ME"

Yesterday I told you about an NBC report that President Trump's primary source of information about the war in Iran is a daily good-news-only highlight reel that's prepared for him by CENTCOM.

Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for President Donald Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.

The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”

... the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week, two of the current officials and the former official said.

Emily Horne, a former National Security Council and State Department official told Greg Sargent of The New Republic that she has a theory about this leak:

I’m going to tell you my little conspiracy theory about this story. I think this story is a White House plant....

You’ve got multiple sources, both current and former, who are all singing from the same sheet of music—which says to me, again, this is coordinated. This is a plan. So what does that tell us? That tells us that even though this is a story that on a casual read looks kind of embarrassing for the president—and is, I think, being treated as such on social media, like the president of the United States needs a greatest-hits compilation of CENTCOM strikes in order to understand how the war is going—I understand that reaction.

But to be clear, there’s a deeper message that I think they want planted in people’s minds, which is that this White House is now creating excuses for why the war is not going well and why the American people do not approve of this war. And one of the excuses that they are creating is, well, the president of the United States is not being fed good information by his military.

That is what they are trying to plant with this story, if—as I suspect—this is a planted story. They’re trying to create a paper trail and a narrative that says this is going badly not because Donald Trump made terrible decisions, but because his military leadership is not being honest with him about what is happening.

I think it's an attempt to shift blame, but I don't think it's necessarily President Trump and his inner circle trying to shift blame to the Pentagon. The leakers are likely to understand that while this might make the Pentagon look bad, it absolutely makes Trump look bad. Anyone who's paid attention to Trump's presidencies knows that he likes to be fed good news and he likes briefings that don't require him to read a lot of words. Here's an Atlantic story from January 2018:

Before [his first] inauguration, Trump told Axios, “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.” In February, The New York Times reported that National Security Council members had been instructed to keep policy papers to a single page and include lots of graphics and maps....

In March, Reuters reported that briefers had strategically placed the president’s name in as many paragraphs of briefing documents as possible so as to attract his fickle attention.

I think the leakers are people who expect this story to make Trump and the Pentagon -- or at least the current Pentagon leadership -- look bad. Their purpose is to say, Don't blame us. Who might want to send that message? I'm not sure. Maybe Vice President Vance, who formerly positioned himself as an opponent of miltary adventurism? Maybe Marco Rubio, who's frustrated that the Iran war has postponed the overthrow of the Cuban government he longs for? Maybe Pentagon careerists who don't like Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense?

*****

I don't think Trump himself is setting Hegseth up as the fall guy. Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez write:

Trump has seemed eager to shift some credit (or blame, depending on who you ask) for his disastrous war in Iran to Hegseth. Earlier this week, the president said, “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Trump blames Hegseth for the war: "Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, 'Let's do it.'" pic.twitter.com/QBGeFuhM1M

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2026

But Trump's remark, in a Memphis speech on Monday, doesn't seem like blame to me. In fact, he portrays himself as the person who wanted to do something about Iran:

You know, our economy was fantastic. We had a Dow at 50,000. They say it couldn't happen in four years, it wouldn't happen during my term, but if I got anywhere close, it would be a great success. Well, in my first year, we hit 50,000. And with the S&P, they said -- even more difficult. They said it would be impossible to hit 7,000 on the S&P, and we hit that in our first term.

And then, unfortunately, I came -- I called Pete, I called General Caine, I called a lot of our great people. We have great people. And I said, let's talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country known as Iran that for 47 years has been just a purveyor of terror, and they're very close to having a nuclear weapon.

We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55,000 and 60,000. There's no end. Or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem. And, uh, Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, let's do it, because you can't let them have a nuclear weapon.

To me that's Trump saying, I, in my infinite wisdom, astutely recognized the threat from Iran, and Pete agreed that we needed to act.

Then I look at that Zeteo story, and I see this:

Donald Trump’s so-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has earned himself a new nickname, current and former US officials tell us. Among various staffers and officials working within the august confines of the Pentagon and Department of Defense, the former ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host and “death and destruction”-obsessed Trump acolyte is known as “Dumb McNamara.”

This is, of course, a reference to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, an architect of American military escalation in Vietnam who, despite his disastrous record, maintained a reputation as a brilliant, shrewd thinker. It is exceedingly hard to find anyone in the corridors of Washington power – or anywhere on the planet – who would label Hegseth a brilliant mind.

However, the nickname “Dumb McNamara” has spread within the US government due to Hegseth’s cheerleading of the war and bombing blitzes – overzealous bloodlust and enthusiasm for military fiasco that reminds American officials of, well, a very stupid version of Robert McNamara.

I suspect that there might be overlap between the "current and former US officials" who are leaking the words of "various staffers and officials" in the Pentagon and Defense Department to Zeteo and the "three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official" who are leaking to NBC. I think Defense careerists and/or disgruntled civilians in the White House are doing the leaking, not Trump loyalists.

DOES TRUMP REALIZE THAT OTHER PEOPLE EXIST?

Jamelle Bouie is trying to understand why President Trump doesn't prepare for easily imagined outcomes.

Neither Trump nor his aides, according to recent reporting, planned for Iran to target shipping and close the Strait of Hormuz. They also do not seem to have planned for serious and sustained retaliation against America’s Gulf state allies. They did not plan for an energy crisis and the potential disruption to the global economy, and they did not plan for America’s European allies to, by and large, reject their call for support....

What’s striking is how familiar this pattern feels. The administration did not expect the public to be repelled by DOGE. It did not expect outrage over the treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It did not expect Democrats to respond to threats of partisan gerrymandering with their own push to wring as many Democratic seats as possible out of so-called blue states. The administration certainly did not expect the mass mobilizations against the deployment of National Guard troops and the use of ICE and Customs and Border Protection as a roving paramilitary force.

Bouie thinks this is an extreme form of narcissism.

Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him. He is a consummate narcissist, and he is, without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office. Over his decades on the public stage, we have seen little to no evidence that he believes in the existence of other minds....

And so, whenever other people do act of their own accord, both the president and his administration find themselves flat-footed.

Is that it? Yes, more or less -- but consider this NBC story, which is getting a lot of attention:

Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for President Donald Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.

The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”

... the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week, two of the current officials and the former official said.

We know that Trump has a seemingly limitless need for narcissistic supply -- he needs people around him to proclaim that he's great and brilliant. These videos of "stuff blowing up" in Trump's glorious war obviously serve the same purpose as the elaborate statements of praise Trump receives from Cabinet members and others on a regular basis.

But while I believe these nothing-but-good-news sizzle reels distort Trump's view of the war, I believe what the NBC story also tells us:

The highlight reel of U.S. Central Command bombing Iranian equipment and military sites isn’t the only briefing Trump gets about the war. He’s also updated through conversations with top military and intelligence advisers, foreign leaders and news reports, the officials said.

He must know that some things aren't going splendidly. He clearly understands that the war has upset global markets, otherwise he wouldn't be talking so much about negotiating a possible peace deal, even if Iran says that those negotiations aren't taking place. On immigration, he can obviously see that his crackdown isn't playing well, otherwise he wouldn't have fired Kristi Noem and relieved Greg Bovino of his duties.

Trump -- a lifelong believer in Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking -- grasps that other people exist, but he believes that they should ingest the news Trump-style, with a strong emphasis on his successes. In reference to Trump's Iran news digests, NBC tells us:

... the videos are ... driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing....

Trump isn't completely oblivious to the existence of other people. He needs to spend time in his bubble of narcissism, but one of his other primal needs is the need to hate everyone who disagrees with him.

Of course, that resolves to narcissism, too. Trump believes that if the media covered the war the way his video briefings do, everyone would love what he's doing. Therefore, his struggles in the polls are the media's fault. Similarly, he's angry at Congress for not passing a version of the SAVE Act with anti-trans provisions attached; he's convinced that passing the bill in this form will guarantee Republican victories in every future election, which means that if the bill doesn't pass, or doesn't pass exactly the way he wants it, then he's not responsible for Republican election losses in the midterms.

Yes, Trump understands that other people exist, and he knows that some of them don't think the way he does. But he regards that as a mistake that needs to be corrected for his benefit.

COULD SENDING ICE TO THE POLLS BE AS MUCH OF A FLOP FOR TRUMP AS SENDING ICE TO THE AIRPORTS?

Yes, this is worrisome:

During a conversation with conservative lawyer Mike Davis on his “War Room” program, [Steve] Bannon asked, “We can use what’s happening with these ICE [officers] helping out at the airports, we can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections, sir?”

Davis responded, “Yeah, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places, because if you’re an illegal alien you can’t vote, right? It’s against the law, it’s a federal crime for you to vote in federal elections.”

“And so, if you’re an American citizen, you should be happy that ICE is there, because you’re not going to have illegal aliens canceling out your vote,” he added.

“Exactly,” Bannon replied. “Pick ‘em out of line starting today, and maybe the lines will get shorter.”

The New York Times tells us:

When President Trump wanted to do something about the long lines at U.S. airports on Monday, he turned to one of his favorite tools: Immigration and Customs Enforcement....

Mr. Trump has increasingly used ICE to try to achieve personal and political objectives, deploying a force with a quasi-military bearing around the country with a message that he intends to not just carry out his anti-immigration agenda but to also enforce his views on constituencies and states that have opposed him.

But is it working? It is in the right's fantasy world. Here's a response to the airport deployment from a prominent right-wing cartoonist:

But here's the reality:

ICE agents at JFK doing...nothing

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— Molly Ploofkins (@mollyploofkins.bsky.social) March 23, 2026 at 4:22 PM

ICE agents deployed to nation's swamped airports to stand around and do nothing: defector.com/ice-agents-d...

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— Defector (@defector.com) March 23, 2026 at 2:10 PM

While security waiting lines get longer and longer.

Incredible scene: Travelers wait on hours-long security line at George Bush International Airport in Houston while Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blasts through the speakers. (video shared directly with me)

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) March 23, 2026 at 1:01 PM

Sending ICE to the polls is obviously a very different matter. ICE agents can intimidate voters, including citizens who might be mistaken for non-citizen immigrants, or people who have protested the administration and might fear that they're in a database and thus could be subject to arrest.

But it's possible that a combination of legal pushback by Trump critics and strategic incompetence by the president himself will cause this effort to seem as sad and pointless as the airport deployment. First, please note that the number of agents deployed at airports yesterday was "between 100 and 150," according to the Times. That's not enough to cover all the key precincts in all the key races in November -- though, obviously, the fear of these agents might have a force-multiplying effect even where they're not deployed. There's also the fact that many people will vote early in person (unless the Supreme Court decides not merely to end the acceptance of late-arriving mail ballots but also ban early voting altogether), so the intimidation will have to go on for weeks.

And there'll be lawsuits.

It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place. In fact, it is a federal crime for anyone in the U.S. military to interfere in elections in any way. More specifically, it is a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to deploy federal “troops or armed men” to any location where voting is taking place or elections are being held, unless “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” ...

It is also a federal crime for anyone, including federal agents, to intimidate voters. Anyone who does so may be liable for a number of different federal criminal offenses.

We could have clueless ICE agents forced to stand well outside polling places, doing nothing the way they're now doing nothing at the airports, if at least some judges issue emergency rulings preventing ICE from operating at the polls.

And some state laws might apply.

Legislation to restrict immigration enforcement or the presence of federal forces near polling places and other election sites has been offered or announced in California, Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington....

The New Mexico legislature in February passed a measure that largely mirrors restrictions in federal law against armed federal personnel at polling places....

The bill says officials generally cannot order or bring troops or other armed federal agents to polling places or parking areas for polling places beginning 28 days before Election Day, when early in-person voting begins. It also would prohibit officials from changing who is qualified to vote contrary to New Mexico law or from imposing election rules that conflict with state law. Violators would be guilty of a felony.

That New Mexico bill is now state law.

I don't want to downplay the dangers here, but I think it's possible that President Trump will mishandle this. He wins praise from his base no matter how poorly he executes his plans, so he's always at risk of failure. (See also: the war in Iran.) I'm worried about federal goons at the polls, but a poorly executed deployment is a real possibility.

THE BLACK-AND-WHITE SITCOM THAT EXPLAINS TRUMP

I know I'm supposed to believe that Donald Trump has dementia, but this is Trump being clear-headed and sane -- or as clear-headed and sane as he's capable of being:

After four weeks of useless threats, bombings, and death, President Trump is placing a five-day pause on his war on Iran after failing to attain the “unconditional surrender” that he claimed he would earlier this month.

“I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social.

Trump sees himself as a world-bestriding dictator, but he fears the financial markets, and this was a precision-timed effort to appease them.

The announcement came just two hours before U.S. stock markets opened, and Trump noted the pause in strikes will last the duration of the trading week. The decision caused previously skyrocketing oil prices to dip significantly.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 650 points as I type this, so it's working.

Trump threatened Iran and Iran made Trump blink, as The Bulwark's Andrew Egger notes:

... Iran appears not to have taken Trump’s threats to target their domestic power generation very seriously. Taken on their merits, these threats were astonishing: a 48-hour deadline for Iran to surrender its primary point of geopolitical leverage, or suffer widespread strikes against civilian infrastructure. But while such strikes would have been catastrophic for Iran, they would have been terrible for America, too, sending the price of oil spiraling into the stratosphere for God knows how long....

How thin did Trump’s bluff turn out to be? The president didn’t even wait until his 48-hour deadline was expiring to call it off. He blinked with twelve hours to spare—ensuring that the entire threat period took place while markets were closed over the weekend....

All the madman posturing in the world can’t change this simple fact: Iran knows how badly Trump needs to get the oil-price situation under control. Again and again, Trump has signaled he will let other foreign-policy objectives fall by the wayside to address this major domestic concern.

To me, Trump's capitulation is a sign of sanity, or at least sanity Trump-style. I realize that his decision to create the crisis that this capitulation is intended to solve seems like evidence of delusional madness. It is -- but I don't think it's dementia madness.

Here's my view: Trump has a more or less healthy brain, but he can't stop trying to do things he can't pull off. He's essentially Ralph Kramden from the old sitcom The Honeymooners, except he's Ralph Kramden with obscene wealth, fame, and, now, the nuclear launch codes.

We always saw Ralph Kramden with his mind on fire, absolutely certain that his latest get-rich-quick scheme was foolproof. As president in his second term, Trump actually is getting rich corruptly -- but what makes the synapses in his brain fire excessively is the idea that he can transform America, the America, and the world, through cockamamie schemes that are either doomed to failure or likely to improve nothing. Tariffs! Regime change in Venezuela! Expelling every undocumented immigrant in America, starting with the most sympathetic ones! Fighting the war with Iran that every previous president understandably decided was too much trouble! All of these are guaranteed to make Trump not just the greatest president ever but the most consequential person in world history!

Ralph Kramden fell for American Dream sales pitches promising easy money. Trump falls for simple political ideas, often peddled on Fox News.

I hate it here.

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— Matthew Gertz (@mattgertz.bsky.social) March 23, 2026 at 8:43 AM

(Source: Ben Smith at Semafor.)

Even the Iran war, as I noted yesterday, was a crazy idea sold to Trump by Rupert Murdoch and Benjamin Netantyahu, who are both much less likely to suffer blowback from it than the United States.

Trump is a crazed believer in his own brilliance. If he hadn't been born wealthy, he would have been a serial failure who couldn't quit his day job. Instead, Ralph Kramden got to be the most powerful person in the world.

LET THEM EAT HATE

In a New York Times op-ed, Phil Klay, an Iraq War veteran and author of the National Book Award-winning short story collection Redeployment, notes that the Trump administration has never offered a clear justification for the war in Iran. However:

... as I watched a video posted by the White House in which a group of angry, rifle-wielding bowling pins labeled “Iranian Regime Officials” are struck by a Stars and Stripes bowling ball that turns into an airplane, followed by actual combat footage of U.S. airstrikes, I realized how one rationale for this war has remained clear and consistent: the administration’s delight in displays of violence and domination.

STRIKE. 💥🦅 pic.twitter.com/XMzNNtlT63

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 12, 2026

Many top administration officials do seem to regard the brutality as an end in itself:

The bowling video is one of many sizzle reels posted on White House social media accounts celebrating the war by mixing images of death and destruction with footage from video games or sports highlights. The president declared that military officials told him “it’s more fun to sink” ships than to capture them, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exulted, “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” The Trump aide Stephen Miller proclaimed that the Iran war showcased a military “that isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.”

At another news conference, Mr. Hegseth made the macho posturing even clearer: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”

But this isn't just for their own enjoyment. They're doing it -- and proudly asserting that they're pitiless -- because they think the public will get off on the cruelty.

A portion of the public clearly is enjoying this content: the video above has 126,000 likes on X as I write this. It's all in keeping with the main message of the Republican Party for the past several decades: We are good and our enemies are pure evil. Watch us make those enemies howl in agony.

For the Republican voter base, the war doesn't need a purpose. Owning the enemy is purpose enough. The GOP will never make its voters safer, healthier, more economically secure, or more able to obtain employment, but it will talk about enemies incessantly, and let the base revel in how it's tormenting those enemies. And even when the enemies are overseas, all roads lead back to the ultimate enemy:

Enemy 1) Foreign autocracy Enemy 2) Domestic opposition party

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— Matthew Gertz (@mattgertz.bsky.social) March 22, 2026 at 8:36 AM

(The Truth Social post is here.)

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump claimed that no foreign regime was a greater enemy than Democrats -- for instance, in a Fox News town hall less than a month before the election:

“I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said, adding: “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

Over several decades, the right-wing media has primed the GOP voter base to hate everyone who's not aligned with the Republican Party, whether it's truly bad actors like the Iranian regime or a high school teacher driving a used hybrid with a COEXIST bumper sticker. So this Bloomberg report comes as no surprise:

Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies....

Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The News Corp. founder communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.

We knew about Netanyahu and commentators such as Mark Levin. We didn't know about Murdoch -- but of course he'd be rooting for what a war he assumed would goose Fox's ratings, give Trump a boost in the polls, and rally voters around Republican candidates in the midterms, all while distracting voters from their own concerns, particularly the economy. It's not achieving most of those aims, but that's always been the Fox/GOP formula: reminding the rubes that the right will give them satisfying enemies to hate, and will show those enemies squealing whenever possible.

(Please note that the top administration cheerleaders for the war, Trump and Hegseth, are former Fox commentators, along with Miller, who got into politics as a regular talk radio caller while he was still in high school.)

Klay writes:

Our greatest wartime leaders thought we should wage war only when it was absolutely necessary, that we should articulate the clear moral and political objectives that we use to guide our strategy and that we should treat the shedding of blood with the seriousness it deserves.

Power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, cruelty is not the same as strength, and a politics built on such ideas promises ruin, delusion about the limits of our power and a betrayal of the promise of our founding.

Yeah, but it gives 40 percent of the electorate a lot of distracting dopamine hits, and that's worked out great for the GOP and the Murdoch press so far.