Donald Trump and maga Republicans are enabling failed incompetent foriegn policy, They have fallen in Iran and cannot get up!

Trump’s extended ceasefire shows his desperation to exit his failed and illegal Iran war — but he doesn’t know how. Americans are endangered by Trump's inability to conduct a foreign policy that goes beyond threats and military force. Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Trudy Rubin.

In 1966, the famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow came up with a description of a mental bias that became known as “Maslow’s hammer.”  “If the only tool you have is a hammer, I suppose it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail,” Maslow contended. Or, as some have reworded his theorem: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This is a good diagnosis for how Donald Trump has trapped us all in his unnecessary and illegal war with Tehran. A war from which he can’t find a good exit.

It also explains why he indefinitely extended an April 21, ceasefire deadline with Iran, announced on Tuesday evening, even though he’d just threatened to resume bombing if there was no nuclear deal by then.  (Like Douglas Shields from Pittsburg wrote in a letter to the New York Times: "seen more stable direction from a weather vane — and at least it knows which way the wind is blowing. At this point, the only consistent policy is inconsistency, and even that seems subject to revision.") 

As Maslow would no doubt have diagnosed, Trump is a bully whose modus operandi is to browbeat, insult, and threaten opponents and allies (especially those who respond with timidity). He is impatient and seeks quick hits and big headlines.

Overseas, the military hammer has become his preferred tactic so long as the strike is quick, as in Venezuela and the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.

But, when an adversary is tougher and the fight more complex, with a strategy that outflanks his erratic tactics, POTUS is flummoxed. The illegal Iran war has laid bare how Trump’s strategic and cognitive weaknesses endanger Americans, as well as the entire world.

“Trump did not know what he was getting into,” I was told by Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon, and one of the smartest Mideast analysts in the field. “This is the first real foreign policy crisis he has faced, and he has no idea what he is doing. It’s scary 😱😰😧.”

POTUS swallowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pitch that Iran’s Islamic regime could quickly be toppled by U.S.-Israeli bombing and replaced by more malleable secular leaders. 

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) Director John Ratcliffe called such regime-change scenarios “farcical,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio labeled them “bullshit,” according to a New York Times investigation. But given his lack of knowledge about Iran and his conviction that his instincts trump expertise, the president picked up his military hammer.

Trump underestimated Iranian leaders’ tolerance for pain and determination to salvage their Islamic republic (even though their numbers were decimated and their country’s economy was in shambles).

But, most importantly, said Crocker, Trump failed to foresee (even though he was warned) that the Iranians had a critical card to play: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz through which about 20% of the world’s energy resources flow. Iran had never tried to close the strait before, but U.S. and Israeli bombs convinced its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that this was a necessary option.

“Iran now knows they can close the strait,” Crocker said. “Every day that the strait is closed adds to the economic pain of the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This has terrible consequences globally. They have turned the Strait of Hormuz into the Strait of Iran.”

Even Trump, with his unfettered verbosity, has referred to it by that name.

Last week, Iran offered to reopen the strait, but made clear its military would still control traffic in and out and charge tolls to passing tankers. Unsatisfied with this unpleasant option, Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade Iranian ports so its oil exports were also halted.

But, Iran’s current leaders are betting, probably correctly, that they can withstand that pain longer than Trump can, with his eye on rising gas prices and midterm elections. Tehran says it won’t return to talks until the U.S. blockade is lifted.

Faced with this standoff, and the choice whether to resume bombing or extend the ceasefire deadline again,👀 Trump blinked.

Let me be clear, I am glad he backed down. But it revealed his desperation to exit the mess he has made.

“Iran has won the first round,” Crocker contended. “This is not going well.”

Trump’s problem is that he now has only bad options to reopen the strait.



Some right-wing hawks are advocating that he pick up the hammer. Fox News’ Hugh Hewitt actually recommended Trump go “full Sherman,” recalling the famed Civil War general’s scorched-earth march to Atlanta, and proposing POTUS destroy all of Iran’s oil and energy infrastructure.

Not only would this be a war crime affecting civilians and a further blow to global energy prices, but it would be unlikely to move the survival-intent hard-line IRGC, which now appears to be running the show.

Moreover, the worst possible option — which would be totally insane — would be for Trump to launch a land war in Iran to try for real “regime change.”

Iran was not an immediate threat to the United States before Trump started this war, and even he knows that sinking into such a bloody quagmire would probably set him on the path to bipartisan impeachment.

The only way out, said Crocker, is to try to swap a simultaneous end to the U.S. blockade against Iran’s ports for a full Iranian opening of the strait. Ideally, this would mean no IRGC control of shipping or tolls on vessels entering or leaving.

“This will be harder for Trump to do now, when he is weaker,” Crocker said. Especially when the Iranians know he is eager for an offramp, after he extended the deadline.

“But it is pretty apparent to everyone, except Donald Trump,” Crocker added, “that he’s not going to bomb Iran out of anything. The only way he can leave [the war] and save face is to get back to the status quo ante on the Strait of Hormuz.”

As for a return to talks on eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, Crocker believes that “at some point we will go back to the table.” However, he noted, the nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama — which would have halted Iran’s nuclear program for 15 years had Trump not withdrawn from it — took two years to complete.

For future negotiations to have a chance, Trump would have to abandon his “I win, you lose” approach to diplomacy. He would finally have to assemble and listen to an expert team instead of sending his ill-informed real estate buddy and son-in-law.

Hope springs eternal, but this hope requires a suspension of disbelief.

True, Trump is desperate to end his misbegotten Iran venture, but he seems to believe he is winning. On Truth (Fake❗ ) Social, he was posting New York Times clips from 2004, citing the top ratings of “The Last Season of My Apprentice Juggernaut.” In other words, how can such a winner be wrong❓

The best we can hope for is that fear of higher gas prices will keep Trump’s hammer in abeyance — and that he will find a way to negotiate the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, declare a fake victory, and bring the troops home.

Perhaps after this Iran debacle, the U.S. public will grasp the danger of leaving a one-tool 🔨president in charge of foreign policy and the nuclear button when they vote in November — and choose legislators who are willing and able to rein him in.

Donald Trump inconsistency: "more stable direction from a weather vane" opinions

Donald Trump the UN-stable genius is emotionally unbalanced.

To the Editor of the New York Times: “Trump Is Turning America Into a Psychotic State,” by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner. (Opinion guest essay, April 12), is disconcerting on many levels. 

To date, the other two branches of our government - judiciary and legislative- have failed to hold Donald Trump in check. 

Perhaps he feels that the Supreme Court decision that granted him sweeping immunity allows him to rule without restraint. Congress seems unwilling to hold Trump accountable when he clearly acts beyond the legal limits. These factors, combined with a president who can be emotionally unbalanced and whose circle of advisers seldom pushes back, place the country in an extremely precarious position. From Amy M. Ferguson Dunmore, Pennsylvania

To the Editor: Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner are ultimately making an argument about process, not just personality. Strip away the rhetoric, and what remains is a concern that the machinery of government — deliberation, consistency, institutional memory — is no longer reliably engaged. When that discipline weakens, policy begins to look less like strategy and more like improvisation.

The United States has weathered strong presidencies, weak presidencies and moments of real turmoil. What is different here is the suggestion of sustained unpredictability at the institutional level. That is not a governing philosophy. It is the absence of one.

I’ve seen more stable direction from a weather vane — and at least it knows which way the wind is blowing. At this point, the only consistent policy is inconsistency, and even that seems subject to revision.  From Douglas Shields in Pittsburgh, PA

Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner lay out in depressing detail Donald Trump’s lethal combination of qualities: evil, ignorance, out-of-control anger and disorganization. And he has freed up and nurtured the parts of our society and culture that share those qualities.

The results have plunged the rest of us into a state of dread💢😨

But, like the rest of Americans, I was mesmerized watching the return of the Artemis II astronauts and the ground team that pulled off this mission, I felt a bracing shot of optimism.

We were treated to an awesome display of the qualities of the other part of our culture: thirst for knowledge, intelligence, drive, planning, attention to detail and cooperation. And diversity — among both the crew members and the entire mission team. These qualities remain alive and well❗ From Natasha Lisman in New York

Donald Trump and maga Republicans like Senator Rick Scott and Senator Susan Collins are ignoring their constituents' voices

Echo opinion published in the Sun Sentinel Florida newspaper by Katherine "Kitty" Donovan:  This is not what Republicans voted for.

In Maine Writer's opinion, this excellent opinion could just as well have been written about Maine Senator Susan Collins.

I am a lifelong Republican from Boca Raton. I never imagined I would be writing something like this. But here we are.

Like many Floridians, I feel unrepresented — not by the opposing party, but by my own. That should alarm anyone who still believes in representative democracy. When elected officials stop listening to their constituents, we are no longer participating in governance. We are being managed.

Recently, my U.S. senator, Rick Scott, sent out an update touting his efforts to pass the SAVE Act, a bill framed as necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting. The message was urgent, emphatic and unwavering.

But, it was also deeply disconnected from reality.

There is little evidence that noncitizen voting occurs at any scale that would justify sweeping new federal restrictions. 

What the SAVE Act would do, however, is create new barriers for eligible voters — particularly married women, seniors, disabled individuals and lower-income Americans — who may face additional hurdles in proving citizenship under stricter documentation requirements.

There is also a question of scale. Even conservative-leaning data sources have documented extremely few cases of noncitizen voting over decades, compared to the billions of ballots cast nationwide in that time. Meanwhile, millions of Americans lack ready access to documents like passports or birth certificates, and tens of millions — particularly married women whose names have changed — could face additional hurdles under stricter requirements. That imbalance raises a fundamental question: Are we solving a real problem, or creating a new one?

As Republicans, we used to stand for limited government and individual freedom. We believed the burden should not fall on citizens to prove themselves again and again just to exercise a fundamental right. That principle seems to have been abandoned.

At the same time, far more urgent issues are being ignored.

We are witnessing executive actions that raise serious constitutional questions, including military engagement abroad without clear congressional authorization. 

Regardless of party, Congress has a duty to assert its role in matters of war. Silence is not leadership.

We are also seeing growing alarm from communities across the country about immigration enforcement practices — families separated, detainees held without timely charges, and reports that demand transparency and accountability. These concerns deserve serious attention, not deflection.

Yet instead of addressing these pressing issues, our leaders are doubling down on legislation that appears more about political strategy than public necessity.



This is not the Republican Party I have supported my entire life.

Across the country, Americans are exercising one of our most fundamental rights: peaceful protest. 😊❗

Demonstrations on March 28th "No Kings" 👑reflected a growing sense that voices are no longer being heard through traditional channels. Dismissing these movements does not make them disappear — it deepens the divide.

Let me be clear: This is not about abandoning conservative values. It is about reclaiming them.

We should be defending the Constitution, not sidestepping it. We should be protecting the right to vote, not making it harder. We should be demanding accountability from every branch of government, regardless of which party is in power.

And above all, our elected leaders should be listening to the people who elected them to serve.

If the Republican Party continues down this path, it risks losing not just elections but the trust of those who once stood firmly behind it.

I am one of them.

Katherine “Kitty” Donovan, of Boca Raton, is a retired Broward County school administrator with 37 years’ experience in middle schools, a grandmother of three boys and the Florida state senior ambassador for Giffords Gun Owners for Safety.

Donald Trump has failed miserably in his self declared war with Iran. His lack of strategy is extremely dangerous

Echo message published on X/ (formerly Twitter) by Jürgen Nauditt

Jürgen Nauditt

Stupid Donald Trump, the biggest failed strategist in US history, has plunged America into a strategic catastrophe. During his self-proclaimed “victory parade” against Iran, he squandered at least 45% of the US's precision-guided missile arsenal in just seven weeks—including half of all THAAD* (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missiles and nearly 50% of Patriot interceptor missiles. This isn't some fake news blog reporting this, but CNN, citing a CSIS analysis and internal Pentagon data. The result? An “imminent risk” of munitions depletion should a real conflict erupt in the coming years—for example, with China. Trump has ruined the US defense capability for years to come. And for what? For nothing. No regime change in Iran. No destroyed nuclear program. No strategic breakthrough. Just a shaky ceasefire that gives the mullahs time to rearm while America stands naked. 

Trump, the great (flunkie❗) “Art of the Deal” master, has once again only produced hot air – and in doing so, burned through the most expensive and scarce weapons in the USA like a pubescent boy with fireworks.

*The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a premier U.S. Army anti-ballistic missile system designed to destroy short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles in their terminal phase using kinetic "hit-to-kill" technology. Deployed since 2008, and developed by Lockheed Martin, it is a highly mobile system that intercepts threats both inside and outside the atmosphere.

#ImpeachTrumpNOW❗💢

Donald Trump obsessed with power but he will fail because his failed leadership is unable to inspire loyalty

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe: 

Trump’s obsession with winning is a losing strategy. 

Raw power can only get a strongman leader so far. 

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it❗

Thank you for your service❗ 😞😰💘💙

By Stacie Nicole Smith, the managing director of the Consensus Building Institute and the director of the Workable Peace Project, a high school curriculum designed to teach conflict resolution.

For years, I watched ninth-graders learn a lesson that continues to elude some of the most powerful people in the world.

These students participate in a classroom role-play exercise based on one of history’s most famous diplomatic exchanges: the Melian Dialogue, recorded by Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian War. 

In 416 BC, Athenian envoys arrived at the small island of Melos with an ultimatum: submit or be destroyed. 

When the Melians protested, the Athenians cut them off. “The strong do what they can,” they said, “and the weak suffer what they must.”

The outcome: Athens “won” that conflict. Melos refused to submit and was conquered, its men killed, its women and children enslaved. In the very short term, it was a victory for Athens. 

Today, the logic of “the strong do what they can” seems to define how the world works. Great powers are ignoring the norms that once restrained them: Russia invaded Ukraine, and the United States arrested Venezuela’s leader and bombed Iran. The current administration’s approach to US foreign policy embodies the Athenian ethos, from a zero-sum approach to trade relationships to a willingness to take the country to war. 

In Canada, like the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently lamented at the World Economic Forum’s summit in Davos, “It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

Those who admire the Athenians’ vision of strength seem to miss the fact that Thucydides didn’t record that exchange to celebrate it. It’s a prelude to catastrophe. Because, within a few years, Athens’s enemies united against it. The empire Athens built by force dissolved precisely because it had been built by force. 

Loyalty from its conquered coalition proved only as durable as the armed force holding it together. I mediated environmental disputes, organizational conflicts, and complex multiparty negotiations, and I have seen how decisions dictated by the powerful are much less stable than agreements designed to meet the interests of all parties.

Students I observed almost always figured this out. In the role-play, some were Athenians, some , and they were prompted to think beyond what they “can” or “must” do. 

Instead, they had to consider what would meet their core needs, uphold their values, and endure the test of time. Students routinely found compromises Athens never even considered — like reduced payment by the Melians* or autonomy over some matters of governance. Those arrangements would have given Athens much of what it needed while giving Melos more reason to accept its rule. This is what mediation experts call the “mutual gains” approach to conflict resolution.

In other words, the students I work with learned the limits of coercion. By rejecting the moral case out of hand, Athens made its contempt for justice explicit and thereby handed every wavering city-state a common cause. Overtly illegitimate behavior reduces the cost of opposing the aggressor, makes coalition-building against it easier, and converts previously neutral parties into motivated adversaries. 

Legitimacy is not a constraint on power — it is a form of power. In their focus on demonstrating strength, the Athenians ignored the strategic importance of building legitimacy.

Mediators know that win-lose deals are almost always worse deals, especially in the long run. The pattern is consistent: One party’s interests are ignored and it is forced to comply with the aggressor’s demands, resentment accumulates, and the forced “agreement” holds only as long as the aggressor can maintain the pressure.

The mediators I work with share the conviction that achieving win-win deals on the world stage is possible. 

People practicing the dynamics of coercion and negotiation firsthand can learn to avoid the pitfalls of the raw, and usually short-lived, exercise of power.

The lesson from Thucydides, then, extends far beyond violent conflict. The ninth-graders in my classroom figured this out in an afternoon. The question is whether today’s strongmen will figure it out before the costs become irreversible.

*Melians were the inhabitants of the Aegean island of Melos, famously involved in a 416 BC, incident during the Peloponnesian War. They maintained neutral, friendly ties with Sparta but were forced into a confrontation by Athens, which demanded their submission. Following their refusal to surrender, Athens conquered Melos, executing all men and enslaving women and children

"like telling Albert Einstein he doesn’t know physics", "Hillbilly" JD Vance a former Marine Corps corporal is saying whaaaaa?

Donald "Dump" Trump, "Hillbilly" JD Vance, His Holiness Pope Leo and the midterm elections.  Published in the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California.

Echo opinion letter to the editor: Donald Trump presides over a U.S. population of 348 million people. Pope Leo has a world following of more than 1.4 billion people. 

Trump’s approval rating is under 40%. Leo’s approval rating is around 84%.  Obviously, Donald Trump is jealous, so what does he do❓ He goes after the pope and tells him he’s “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.” (Maine Writer,🙄 laughable if it were not also pathetic, spoken by a man who thinks he is like god. Lucifer had 👿this same problem. (Book of Revelation 12:7-9 -war in heaven.)

In reality, it would be an understatement to say Trump is not only a convicted criminal, but he’s also terrible for foreign policy. 

Then "Hillbilly" JD Vance, who was also a Marine Corps corporal,  tells the pope that he doesn’t know the gospel❓ That’s like telling Albert Einstein he doesn’t know physics. 

And the "do nothing" Republicans, like Maine's Senator Susan Collins,  in Congress are saying and doing nothing about this Trump incoherence. We’re doomed if the Democrats can’t take over the House and Senate in November.

From Bill Krumbein, in Santa Rosa, California

Donald Trump puts 300,000 immigrants in danger if the U.S. abandons immigration legal Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

The Gavel, an article published in the Boston Globe: 

Sadly, the Trump administration doesn’t want these desperate refugees. But these people have nowhere else to go. By Kimberly Atkins Stohr

The harm that would result from the Trump administration’s harsh push to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian nationals living in the United States is not theoretical. Sadly, it’s a matter of life and death for upward of 330,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians in the United States who fled horrific conditions to protect themselves and their families. That is something that I hope comes across loud and clear❗ during oral arguments at the Supreme Court scheduled for later this month.

The peril is so great that the State Department has declared that no one should travel to either country for any reason.

“Based on almost any metric, Haiti is just a very dangerous place to be,” said Brian Concannon Jr., executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a human rights non-government organization based in Marshfield, Mass.

“It’s the highest murder rate in the world,” Concannon told me. “Nearly 1.5 million people [have fled Haiti]. Gangs control 90 percent of the capital [of Port-au-Prince] and in many areas elsewhere. Haiti has the highest kidnapping rate in the world. It’s one of the worst places to be a kid. It’s one of the top five hunger spots in the world.”

An important fact here: While natural disasters and political upheaval are the sources of Haiti’s instability, experts have long cited that the United States has contributed to the situation through its ineffective political interventions and unsuccessful aid policies.

Similarly, according to a friend-of-the court brief filed by the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre and Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, there is no safe home for Syrian TPS holders to go if they are expelled by the Trump administration.

“Since the fall of the brutally repressive Assad regime in December 2024 Syria remains in a state of internal and international armed conflict and continues to suffer extraordinary and temporary conditions that preclude the safe, dignified and sustainable return of refugees,” the brief states.

Under the law governing TPS, those who apply and meet the fairly strict criteria for TPS protection are allowed to remain in the country legally, as long as the conditions that led to their home country’s TPS designation persist. 

But,  despite the dire living conditions in Haiti and Syria, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted a notice that “after reviewing country conditions and consulting with the appropriate U.S. government agencies,” Haiti, Syria, and several other countries “no longer meet the conditions for its designation for Temporary Protected Status.” It’s worth noting that all of the countries Noem stripped of that designation are majority Black, Latin, or Muslim. (Evil 👿Noem❗)

Several federal judges ruled in favor of TPS recipients who challenged DHS’s efforts to strip their status, temporarily blocking them from being deported while litigation over the matter proceeds.

But in an unsigned shadow docket order last year, the Supreme Court allowed some Venezuelans to be stripped of their TPS protections. The bid to end that designation began during the Biden administration in 2023 but was continued by the Trump administration.

So, is there any hope that the Supreme Court will reach a different conclusion when it comes to those fleeing Haiti and Syria?

Perhaps. Unlike in the Venezuelan case, the Supreme Court in March took the Haiti and Syria challenges off the shadow docket, ordered the parties to fully brief the case on an expedited basis, and scheduled oral arguments for April 27.

Perhaps the court has given consideration to the words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent from the Venezuelan shadow docket order, which acknowledged the real-world human stakes.

“What should happen to 300,000 human beings ❗ while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging❓” Justice Jackson wrote. “Should those individuals get to remain in the United States, working legally, as the Government promised them a few short months ago? Or should they be left vulnerable to job loss, family separation, and deportation to a country the Government determined in January was ‘experiencing a complex, serious and multidimensional humanitarian crisis’ to which they could not ‘returb in safety’❓”

I’m hoping that her colleagues listen. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

An excerpt from The Gavel, a newsletter about the Supreme Court from columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. 

Question to Donald Trump and maga Republicans? Has Iran surrendered yet? Multiple choice answers are "yes" or "no".

An opinion essay published in the New Yorker magazine, by David Remnick.

In war, truth is the first casualty.” It’s a line often attributed to Aeschylus, and it has never lost its relevance. Sometimes the culprit is the observer—the propagandizing correspondent, the mythologizing historian. Now, two months into Trump's illegal war of choice, the chief offender of truth is Donald Trump himself.

Donald Trump's war on truth. Who knew? 

On February 28th, at two-thirty in the morning, the White House press operation released a prerecorded video of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago standing at a lectern in dim light. Wearing an oversized U.S.A. ball cap and no tie, Dpma;d Trump announced that he had ordered American bombers to commence destroying targets throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump made a claim of preëmption. He was acting, he said, to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” (This was confusing. Hadn’t Trump declared last June that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program? Hadn’t the Omani foreign minister, a mediator between the U.S. and Iran at negotiations in Geneva, just told “Face the Nation” that “a peace deal is within our reach”?) Trump went on to counsel the Iranian people to find refuge somehow—“It’s very dangerous outside, bombs will be dropping everywhere”—but then, at some unspecified moment, they should “take over” their government. “Let’s see how you respond.” And to his American listeners, he admitted, “We may have casualties. That often happens in war.”

For a narcissist obsessed with the projection of strength and grandeur, Trump gave a peculiarly gravity-free performance. The bill of his ball cap obscured his gaze. He raced and rambled through his text. And, rather than hustle back to the White House, he lingered at his country club. He had a fund-raising dinner to attend. It was left to the communications director, Steven Cheung, to provide clear instructions on how to react to the prospect of another American war in the Middle East. “NO PANICANS!” he wrote on X. “TRUST IN TRUMP!”

Donald Trump, together with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could soon be heard lauding the precision with which they had “decapitated” the Iranian leadership and flattened military, police, and intelligence installations. And yet, as the late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once blithely said, in the thick of America’s catastrophic misadventure in Iraq, “Stuff happens.” The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of the Iranian security hierarchy, would not survive the first day of bombing; neither would about a hundred and seventy-five innocents in the southern city of Minab, most of them children. When asked about a girls’ school there, which was struck by what was likely an American cruise missile, Trump blamed Iran. “They are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” he said.

Now, as war has engulfed both the region and the global economy, Trump and his sycophantic advisers have taken to improvising on the fly, floating conflicting justifications for war and predictions about its duration. The Iranians were close to developing missiles that could reach the U.S. (They weren’t.) They were weeks away from building a nuclear weapon. (They weren’t.) Israel forced America’s hand. (Marco Rubio.) “No, I might have forced their hand.” (Trump.) It’s all about regime change. (Trump.) It’s not about regime change. (Trump, later.) When confronted with these contradictions and falsehoods, all the President’s men followed his lead: they blamed
the media.

With increasing frequency, Trump berates reporters (particularly female reporters). He sues media outlets for sport. Resolve is in short supply. The owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper of Watergate, has done irreparable violence to his property merely to stay in Trump’s good graces.

But, while the President has little regard for the freedom of the press, he craves its ceaseless attention. His need has the quality of addiction. In Washington these days, there is hardly a reporter who does not have the Donald Trump's cellphone number. It is said that the best time to call is late at night while he is watching himself on TV and shitposting in his pajamas. Trump loves to muse aloud, then watch as those musings register in foreign capitals, and in the markets. Lately, he has been willing to say anything. The war will be over soon. Or maybe not. Whatever. Each pseudo-scoop is as ephemeral as a mayfly. But who can resist? When asked about the possibility of sending his infantry into Iran, he answers in the language of golf: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” At other moments, he simply changes the subject to, say, his taste in interior decoration—“If you look behind me, see the nice gold curtains.” Are you not entertained?

His advisers, of course, know what to do. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has cracked down on actual reporting at the Pentagon and has filled his pressroom with “influencers” and propagandists, spoke in his usual tone of rage recently when he lambasted CNN’s coverage of the war as “fake news.” He would be pleased, he said, when the Trump-friendly Ellison family, which has already swallowed up CBS News, finally takes possession of CNN, too.

Brendan Carr, who runs the Federal Communications Commission for Trump, eagerly joined the fray by threatening to revoke the licenses of television networks that are, in his view, “running hoaxes and news distortions.” Trump pronounced himself “thrilled” with Carr’s outburst. On Truth Social, he accused “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” of airing “LIES.” Perhaps, he wrote, he will prosecute unruly journalists on “Charges for TREASON.”

Carr’s threats to pull network licenses have no legal weight; the more immediate danger is that media owners, who are all too aware of the economic pressures they face, will quietly cut back on critical coverage of the Trump Presidency in general, and the war in particular. They will fear landing outside the boundary of what is deemed patriotic. The historian Garry Wills, in an essay on Phillip Knightley’s 1975 book about wartime journalism, “The First Casualty,” wrote, “A liberal democracy submits to propaganda more readily than a totalitarian state. Self‐censorship is always more effective than bureaucratic censorship.”

The most cruel irony is that Donald Trump, who addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation, urging them to throw off the yoke of a regime that has brutalized them for decades, is the same man who threatens American journalists with treason charges and tries to strong-arm broadcasters into subservience. Having torn up a nuclear agreement in his first term and gone to war with no coherent goal in his second, Trump now directs his fire at the one thing he cannot afford to leave standing: the truth. What’s at stake is democracy’s oldest promise—that the people may call on their government to answer for what it does in their name. ♦

Published in the print edition of the March 30, 2026, issue, with the headline “The First Casualty.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are hypocritical to point fingers at Iran when Trumpisn is enabling war crimes

Letters to the Editor: After accusing Iran of extortion, Donald Trump needs to look in the mirror.  Echo opinion letter published in the Los Angeles Times. 

To the editor: Donald Trump, speaking about Iran: “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world because that’s what they’re doing” (“Trump says U.S. military has blockaded Iranian ports to pressure Tehran,” April 13).

Trump either won’t admit to or is unable to recognize the blatant hypocrisy of his statement. Since at least the beginning of his second term, Trump has been blackmailing and extorting the world, both allies and adversaries, through his tariffs and other policies, to an extent never before seen from an American president.

As we’ve witnessed, Trump has one set of morals and ethics for everyone else, and a second standard for himself. Trump’s immorality and “decision-making” has been a disaster for the United States and the world.

Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran is just the latest example of his incompetence.

From Ray McKown, in Torrance California

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are enabling war crimes and must be held accountable with Nuremburg trials

Echo opinion letter published in the Virginian Pilot newspaper

Donald Trump posted a message on his (Fake ❗)Truth Social threatening Iran with what can be described as civilization genocide: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” No American president in history has ever uttered anything even vaguely comparable. Even in the light of its past misdeeds, Iran has done nothing to warrant such shocking bombast, much less unilateral destructive action against a nation of 93 million people. Fortunately, at least for now, Trump backed away from his apocalyptic threat. (Nevertheless, Trump has not abandoned these destructive and dangerously crazy notions.  Rumors are he is in conflict with senior officers in the Pentagon who are upholding the Uniform Code of Military Justice and not willing to follow illegal orders.)

Iran posed no material threat to the U.S. before Trump, in concert with Israel, started a war with that nation. So far the monthlong attacks have failed to achieve any of its stated objectives, including regime change, halting Iran’s nuclear program, exhausting its weapons stockpile, loosening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz or ending its ability to attack other nations.

If his threat held any actual intent, then shame on him. If the American public views his threat as somehow acceptable or within bounds, then shame on us.

Robert Spitzer, James City County,Virginia 

Hillbilly JD Vance went to Hungary to support Viktor Orbán's failed racist government. But Hungarians voted for Tisza Party led by Peter Magyar

Why Orbán’s Loss Was So Devastating to the New Right

J.D. Vance went to Hungary to defend the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and western civilization itself. (Maine Writer: Hillbilly Vance failed again❗ So, former Marine Corps corporal JD Vance is delusional.  He believes he is an accomplished politician and an amateur philosopher. But, actually, he is a self confessed Hillbilly)

Marine enlistee JD Vance achieved the rank of corporal. Adolf Hitler also achieved this same rank when he served in the German army during World War One.

Echo essay published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by Sarah Jones.

“Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy❓” he beseeched a crowd in Budapest last week. “Will you stand for western civilization❓ Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the god of our fathers❓” Defy “the bureaucrats” of the European Union, he told them; go to the polls and stand with Orbán.  (Maine Writer:  But, Vance conveniently forgot to ask, "Do you stand for racism❓")

Thankfully, the Hungarian people did not listen. 

So, they ended Orbán’s 16-year-long rule and handed power to Péter Magyar, a onetime Orbán ally who ran on an anti-corruption message. Magyar’s party, Tisza, has won two-thirds of the country’s parliamentary seats, ❗a supermajority that allows it to reverse Orbán’s most autocratic assaults on the constitution and the rule of law. Vance told Fox (Fake❗) News that he was saddened, though not surprised, by the result. 

Orbán’s polling had been terrible, but the campaign speech was “the right thing to do” for such a loyal friend of the Trump White House, he added.

Orbán’s loss is a blow to Vance, who has aligned himself with the departing prime minister and his party, Fidesz. 

Also, there are similarities between the two men. Both had a Christian awakening when it was convenient, both are obsessed with fertility and both scapegoat immigrants. 

Orbán once said that Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” a kind of bigotry Vance echoed when he smeared Haitian immigrants in Ohio. 

Resentment is part of the Vance brand and has been since Hillbilly Elegy, (a biography about the former Marine Corporal now Trump's VP) which makes him a natural counterpart to Orbán. Both act and speak like they are populist heroes at war with the elite.

Still, Vance is one player in a much bigger game. As Orbán concentrated power, he built a sophisticated, transnational infrastructure to prop up reactionaries around the world. In the process, he became an intellectual and political hero to the American new right — a nativist and profoundly illiberal movement.

Orbán reserved his generosity for certain ideas and certain people. The conservative writer Rod Dreher abandoned the U.S. for Hungary and a role at the Danube Institute, created in 2013, to facilitate “the transmission of ideas and people” throughout Europe and the English-speaking world, including the U.S. The Orbán government funds the institute through the Batthyány Lajos Foundation, which also supports The European Conservative, where Dreher often writes. “Many contributions” to the journal try to legitimize illiberal democracies like Hungary, scholars Valentin Behr and Eve Gianoncelli have argued. TEC’s chief editor defended Augusto Pinochet and his “necessary” coup in Chile, which overthrew a democratic government and sent death squads after critics. In the world of TEC, immigrants are a danger to women, “transgender ideology” inflicts “terror” on the West, and Charlie Kirk was right about, well, everything. The journal now shares an address with the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which also gets funding from Orbán.

Dreher is full of praise for Orbán, whom he considers “a real visionary” and with whom he shares an appreciation for The Camp of The Saints,🤢 a 1973, novel by Jean Raspail that depicts “little monsters” with “dark skin” who overtake the West. The book is “repulsive,” Dreher wrote in 2015, but he said it offers some valuable insight; Orbán went one step further and cited it when he decried “race-mixing” in 2022.

He is hardly alone. A Hatewatch investigation found that American conservatives Christopher Rufo, Michael O’Shea, and Jeremy Carl signed contracts with the Batthyány Lajos Foundation in 2022, thus committing themselves to defending Orbán’s pronatalist policies, among other subjects — possibly while violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

Pronatalist summits in Budapest attract American conservatives worried about our own U.S. national birth rate. The U.S.-born post-liberal theorist Gladden Pappin leads the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, a state-owned entity. The Orbán government has become such a beacon for the American right that the Danube Institute’s István Kiss has addressed the Tennessee legislature; State Senator Rusty Crowe introduced a resolution praising the “estimable” Hungarian think tank for its “respectful conservatism.” Magyar claimed on Monday that the Orbán regime has funded CPAC’s conferences in Hungary❗

Orbán showed allies what is possible, and they admire him for his audacity, since they know their goals can only succeed under illiberal conditions. If the press questions policy or investigates corruption, muzzle it and flood the market with propaganda. 

If the goal is hierarchy and racial purity, reproductive coercion must become a national policy. 

As the new right flexes its strength here, it pivots toward Orbán or an Orbán-like strategy. The chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, often threatens to censor the press.  Florida 

Governor Ron DeSantis is transforming the New College of Florida into a reactionary bulwark — his own version of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, perhaps. The new right understands, as did Orbán, the importance of a brain trust. Someone has to write the policy and skew the data.

But, pseudointellectualism can only take a movement so far. 

Orbán had not completely destroyed Hungarian democracy, so his ambitions were riskier than his allies understood. Orbánism didn’t work either as policy or as an illiberal strategy. Hungary’s birth rates are falling again. The GDP per capita is “well below” the OECD average. Corruption further weakened whatever political or moral authority the Orbán regime might have had with voters. And, Orbán could not buy true popularity for the journals and media outlets he funds. TEC is still “niche,”as Euronews put it, and the regime’s investment in Dreher never made much sense. His most influential period is long over, and he seems ready to move on. After Orbán’s loss, he said he may move to Vienna. Then he complained about his ex-wife and her “ambush divorce.”

The new right will survive Orbán. It might leave Budapest or start a new think tank, but it still has patrons, and ideas are notoriously hard to kill. For Americans, there’s always the Claremont Institute or the Heritage Foundation — a domestic ecosystem that is more durable than the Orbán regime. 

An army of fellows and contributing editors will pump out white papers and commentaries and graphs for decades to come. But, guess what ❓ They can’t make people agree, or even respect them, and that matters — for now, anyway.

Illiberalism tends to lose its shine. Vance spoke at a TPUSA event in Georgia. The arena was nearly empty. “Although I did vote for Trump,” a young Catholic told the Associated Press. “I am not a Trump supporter anymore.”

Orbán is no philosopher, sprinkling reactionary thought like fairy dust on the people of Europe and North America. His efforts have been strategic. As he financed the global right, he assaulted the Hungarian public sphere and became more and more autocratic. Reporters Without Borders calls him “a predator of press freedom” for his efforts to squeeze independent media out of Hungary and says that Fidesz and its supporters control roughly 80 percent of the country’s news outlets. Fidesz rewrote the Hungarian constitution, allowing the party to expand and then pack the constitutional court with allies, and it reshaped electoral law so it could more easily control Parliament. The Orbán government targeted the Central European University over its links to George Soros, the liberal Jewish philanthropist, and forced it to leave the country. To raise the country’s birth rate, Orbán restricted abortion rights while passing financial incentives for childbearing — but only for heterosexual couples. The government banned Budapest’s annual Pride parade, or tried to; Hungarians turned out anyway.

Orbán showed allies what is possible, and they admire him for his audacity, since they know their goals can only succeed under illiberal conditions. If the press questions policy or investigates corruption, muzzle it and flood the market with propaganda. If the goal is hierarchy and racial purity, reproductive coercion must become a national policy. As the new right flexes its strength here, it pivots toward Orbán or an Orbán-like strategy. The chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, often threatens to censor the press. Governor Ron DeSantis is transforming the New College of Florida into a reactionary bulwark — his own version of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, perhaps. The new right understands, as did Orbán, the importance of a brain trust. Someone has to write the policy and skew the data.

But pseudointellectualism can only take a movement so far. Orbán had not completely destroyed Hungarian democracy, so his ambitions were riskier than his allies understood. Orbánism didn’t work either as policy or as an illiberal strategy. Hungary’s birth rates are falling again. The GDP per capita is “well below” the OECD average. Corruption further weakened whatever political or moral authority the Orbán regime might have had with voters. And Orbán could not buy true popularity for the journals and media outlets he funds. TEC is still “niche,”as Euronews put it, and the regime’s investment in Dreher never made much sense. His most influential period is long over, and he seems ready to move on. After Orbán’s loss, he said he may move to Vienna. Then he complained about his ex-wife and her “ambush divorce.”

The new right will survive Orbán. It might leave Budapest or start a new think tank, but it still has patrons, and ideas are notoriously hard to kill. For Americans, there’s always the Claremont Institute or the Heritage Foundation — a domestic ecosystem that is more durable than the Orbán regime. An army of fellows and contributing editors will pump out white papers and commentaries and graphs for decades to come. But they can’t make people agree, or even respect them, and that matters — for now, anyway.

Illiberalism tends to lose its shine. Vance spoke at a TPUSA (Turning Point USA) event in Georgia. The arena was nearly empty. “I did vote for Trump,” a young Catholic told the Associated Press. “I am not a Trump supporter anymore.”

Donald Trump lost his friend Viktor Orban in a Hungarian democratic election!

Here’s How to Defeat Trumpism

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by The Editorial Board: The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Trumpism❗

Budapest, Hungary:  Peter Magyar’s landslide victory in Hungary this week offers inspiration to Americans hoping to overcome Donald Trump’s corrupt, authoritarian approach to politics. The key question is precisely how Mr. Magyar conducted such a successful opposition campaign.

He faced long odds. Viktor Orban had been prime minister for 16 years, during which he changed election rules, installed loyalists in once-nonpartisan government jobs, undermined judicial independence, repressed political opponents and hounded independent media and universities. 

Orban tilted the political system in his favor, yet Mr. Magyar nonetheless crushed Mr. Orban in voting on Sunday. 

Indeed, Mr. Magyar’s party appears to have won a two-thirds❗ supermajority in Parliament and 53 percent of the popular vote, compared with 38 percent for Mr. Orban’s party.

Hungary is obviously a very different country from the United States. But, Orban’s rise and his (mis) use of power were long models for Donald Trump. Now, Orban’s demise can be a model for America's Democratic Party and any other party that is trying to defeat an authoritarian right-wing threat, as evidenced by Trumpism.

Two aspects of Mr. Magyar’s campaign strategy were especially important. First, he focused on the bread-and-butter issues that often guide the decisions of swing voters, and not just in Hungary. In the United States, these voters soured on Trump after his first term and helped elect Joe Biden in 2020, only to become frustrated with inflation and they voted (wrongminded 🙄💢)  in 2024, to return Trump to office.

The campaign platform of the party Mr. Magyar leads, Tisza, was titled “Foundations of a Functional and Humane Hungary.” 

The campaign strategy criticized the inefficiency of government services. Its agenda included tax cuts for working-class families, expanded health care, increased pensions, larger child benefits and a pay increase for support staff members at schools. It said it would help pay for these programs through both a wealth tax on the very rich and the recovery of European Union transfer payments reduced because of Orban’s anti-democratic policies. Mr. Magyar’s party spread its campaign themes in innovative ways through social media, making Orban’s state-run media messaging look old and tired.

Crucially, Mr. Magyar made corruption a core campaign issue. 

Mr. Magyar spent more than 20 years as a member of Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party, rising to senior roles in state-controlled institutions. But Mr. Magyar quit Fidesz in early 2024, to protest a scandal involving the government’s pardon of a well-connected former official who had sexually abused boys. Mr. Magyar said he was disgusted by the corruption, and he gave a viral interview in which he claimed that “a few families own half the country.” He then joined the Tisza party and rose to become its leader.

On the campaign trail, he linked Orban’s corruption to Hungarians’ frustration with their stagnant living standards. 

In his victory speech on Sunday night, Mr. Magyar promised a country where citizens could rely on their government to help provide good medical care, a decent family life and a dignified retirement. What should matter, he said, was not political connections but the kind of person somebody was.

It is easy enough to imagine an American version of this strategy.  Trump, like Orban, used his office to enrich himself, his family and his friends. He issued pardons to political allies who have committed violent crimes, including one accused of sexually abusing children after receiving his pardon. He cut taxes for the affluent and made it harder for working-class Americans to receive health care. (Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins 😔supported this horrible policy❗) Trump's illegal war in Iran has increased gas 💲prices.

Trump's populism is fake. It serves a small slice of wealthy, well-connected people at the expense of most Americans, and it leaves him and his party (including Senator Susan Collins) politically vulnerable to an opposition that can credibly use government as a force for good. Mr. Magyar’s victory highlights the Democratic Party’s need to develop an ambitious agenda that goes far beyond criticizing Trump and charts an alternative vision for the country. Democrats do not yet have that agenda, but many in the party ​recognize that they need one.

The second lesson may be harder for Democrats — and center-left parties in Europe — to absorb. Mr. Magyar, who identifies as center right, won partly by avoiding the social progressivism that dominates elite left-leaning circles and alienates many voters. He ran as an economic progressive and a cultural moderate if not conservative.

He used patriotic symbols like the flag and benefited from having a last name that means “Hungarian.” (Imagine a candidate named “Joe American.”) He portrayed himself as a nationalist and suggested he might expel Slovakia’s ambassador over its treatment of Hungarians living there. He campaigned in rural areas that Mr. Orban’s previous challengers had overlooked. Mr. Magyar promised not to send troops or weapons to Ukraine. He declined to attend a Pride march in Budapest, making it harder for Orban to paint him as captive to L.G.B.T.Q. activists.

On immigration, which has shaped recent elections around the world, Mr. Magyar called for even tighter restrictions than the Orban government had imposed. He said he would keep a border fence, repeal a guest-worker program and allow no guest workers from outside the European Union. Tisza’s party platform claimed that guest workers “drive down wages, inflate real estate prices and cause social problems.” (Unlike in the United States, crime rates among immigrants in Europe tend to be higher than among native citizens.) Immigration is vital to electability in many countries because it is the issue on which mainstream politicians have most sharply diverged from public opinion, permitting many more arrivals than voters want.

We certainly do not endorse all of Mr. Magyar’s tactics, and we hope no American politician would feel the need to avoid a Pride march. Yet anyone who opposes Orbanism should examine the full Hungarian campaign, not only the convenient parts.

Mr. Magyar is one of many contemporary politicians who have won elections with a mix of economic progressivism and social moderation. Other national candidates have done so in the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and elsewhere. In the United States, as we have documented, congressional Democrats who have won tough races in recent years almost all offered feisty economic messages while rejecting far-left positions on crime, immigration and other subjects. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton each used a similar approach to win the presidency twice. Only deep blue areas tend to elect down-the-line cultural progressives.

The success of the more heterodox approach is no mystery. In the United States and much of Europe, it is consistent with public opinion. Most voters are frustrated by slow-growing incomes and want the government to help. They are also unhappy with an elite cultural progressivism that has moved rapidly to the left on many difficult questions. They are looking for politicians who authentically share their outlook.

If the stakes involved only the outcome of individual policy issues, these debates would have less urgency. But they involve the health of democracy itself. In many countries, a radicalized political right has taken an authoritarian turn and sought to entrench itself in power while using state power to enrich its allies and repress its critics. Too often, the mainstream left has aided the far right’s rise by clinging to positions that are supported by only a narrow slice of the electorate.

Orban’s defeat is not nearly the end of the story, not even in Hungary, where his allies will continue to work in many parts of government. But his defeat is significant. Many people assumed he was unbeatable. He was Vladimir Putin’s biggest ally inside the European Union and the original 21st-century model of Western illiberalism. Mr. Trump openly admired him, and Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary last week to campaign for him.

Mr. Magyar thoroughly defeated this far-right giant. The free world should take an honest look at how he did it.