Borrowing a line from comedian Steven Wright who said, “The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese,” we might classify President Donald Trump as the early bird in his June 2025 bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, as the first mouse, the president is caught in his own trap, as Benjamin Netanyahu sweeps in to claim his prize of deciding who gets credit for initiating the second incursion into Iran — in the planning stages since November. As John Stoehr of The Editorial Board states, our ally put Trump in a no-win situation toward launching an illegal war, though Trump could have condemned Netanyahu after the fact; but, apparently the appeal of being in a war had a greater influence on the commander of the world’s mightiest military. Allowing the foreign head of state to lead him around by the nose has resulted in a plethora reasons for entering into combat, and no matter how unconvincing those reasons put forth by him and his cabinet may be, it still draws attention — in the views of many — that Trump is probably not entirely in charge. It’s like Netanyahu told him, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”

That viewpoint is problematic for many in Congress who declare that if Trump was not acting in our self-defense, then this is a war of choice which did not receive the consent of that governing body. Now, Trump will have to explain himself, risking his being held accountable for consumer prices, the rocky Wall Street situation, and chaos and destruction all around the Middle East as the war spreads. The best White House rationale for the war is that the US was forced to attack, because if Iran was forced to defend itself against a lone Israeli attack, they would also launch attacks on US facilities in the region. Trump asserted to CNN that in his opinion “Iran was going to attack first if the US didn’t.” If the MAGA crowd has faith in this lie, Trump will have affirmed his dominance. If he’s seen as Netanyahu’s puppet, this will be problematic far beyond the abstract debates in Congress over war powers. The problem the president has initiated for himself is not rooted in high-minded principles like freedom and national sovereignty, but in conspiracy theory and antisemitism — terms given the veneer of respectability by right-wing intellectuals and gullible reporters.

The largely ignored isolationist group, America First Committee, has an unshakeable belief in a global Jewish conspiracy against America, which was beneath the drive to release the Epstein files in the 2024 presidential campaign. Trump represented the God-sent hero to fulfill a prophecy to save America from a secret cabal of powerful Jews involved in sex-trafficking young girls to untouchable elites, with Jeffrey Epstein heading this syndicate. John Stoehr says, “Once reelected, Trump was supposed to bring them all to justice. When he didn’t, he triggered a crisis of faith that can be registered in polling that lumps him in with the rest of the ‘wealthy elites’ who act with impunity for the law — the so-called ‘Epstein class.'” However, these supporters can shift from anti-war to pro-war as smoothly as has the president; but not being rooted in high-minded principles — only Jew-hate — supporters are not going to warm up to the appearance of an American president seeming to take orders from the leader of a Jewish state. Instead, they might see Trump doing to believers in America First what he has done to supporters who demanded the release of the Epstein files. Thus, the president’s lie that he forced Netanyahu’s hand. Yet, this assertion of dominance is compounded by his heel-turn in the Epstein files case — the crisis of faith within MAGA leaves a growing suspicion that instead of destroying the global Jewish conspiracy against America, he has joined it.

The host of Anchor Watch on Lincoln Square, retired Navy commander Bobby Jones, offered his opinion on a week’s worth of warfare with Iran: “It’s important that people understand this is not going to be something that is a shot-term or easy operation to get out from under. If we’re not careful, it’s going to make Afghanistan and Iraq look like a church picnic.” To emphasize the lack of leadership, Jones says, “Depending on which one of the three — Trump, Hegseth, or Rubio — you’re talking to, you get a different justification for why these actions are taking place, which is a telltale sign that strategically, people are not aligned across the board.” Donald Trump’s claims of an imminent Iranian threat are so unbelievable that the Associated Press had given him personal ownership of the fiasco, reporting that Republicans in Congress stopped a war-powers vote last week concluding efforts to end ‘Donald Trump’s war against Iran.’ Pete Hegseth, obviously replaying one of his favorite video games, said, “This was never meant to be a fair fight. And it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

The Raw America blog reports that as President Trump was threatening Iran with annihilation on Truth Social, the “White House was quietly doing something that should alarm every mayor, police chief, and sheriff in America: blocking the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center from warning local law enforcement that his war has raised the terror threat on American soil.” The Daily Mail reported that the three agencies had prepared a five-page joint intelligence bulletin entitled ‘A Public Safety Awareness Report: Elevated Threat in the United States During US-Iran Conflict’ to send to state and local authorities. Detailed were elevated threats from Iranian government operatives, Iranian proxies, threats to Jewish and Israeli institutions, and the danger that radicalized individuals of varying ideologies might use as cover for their violence. Local law enforcement will never know how to respond because the bulletin never went out — Department of Homeland Security gave the White House a heads-up beforehand and Trump’s cronies put it on hold.

The White House didn’t deny killing the bulletin, with spokeswoman Abigail Jackson offering that the administration was “ensuring information being disseminated is accurate, up to date, and has been properly vetted.” A senior DHS official slammed the decision with, “They don’t want anything getting out that says what they’re doing in Iran is raising the threat level at home.” Such bulletins are meant to be politically untouched — neutral, fact-based, and issued without White House input. Such speculation was borne out in an Austin, Texas bar after Operation Epic Fury was launched, when a gun-toting supporter of the Iranian regime opened fire, killing three people and wounding fifteen before law enforcement dispatched him. Following the incident, FBI Director Kash Patel placed counterterrorism teams on high alert nationwide. As Raw America says, “The threat is real. The bulletin was real. And the White House sat on it.”

Hegseth’s accusations against the Islamic Republic that it is “hell-bent on prophetic Islamic delusions,” and Rubio’s statement that the country needed to be attacked now because “that entire regime is led by radical clerics who make decisions based on their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one,” stand in contrast to the executors of the war which phrase the conflict in apocalyptic terms of their own — that they are fulfilling the promises of their own holy books, and that their justice is in fact God’s. As Séamus Malekafzali, journalist and writer focusing on Middle East politics, writes in The Nation, “Both the US and Israel have long asserted the right to commit imperial violence with impunity, while expecting other countries to pay a high price if they do the same. Now that double standard is being applied to the idea of holy war itself. Theocracy, it would seem, is wrong only when some people do it. To play an old trope: ‘The apocalyptic prophecies are coming from inside the house.‘”

The Raw America site exposes the central horror of this moment: “Plainly, we are fighting a war under the direction of a man whose motivations nobody — not his allies, not his Cabinet, not the people who work for him every single day — can fully explain. Trump has made something of a brand out of this. He brags, openly, that nobody knows what he’s going to do because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. In a previous life, in a different kind of man, that might be strategic ambiguity. In Donald Trump, it is simply the truth.” As for the people around him, Marco Rubio wears the expression of a man who has realized the building is on fire. JD Vance has pivoted so many times he’s lost track of which direction he’s facing. And even Benjamin Netanyahu, after wanting American military action for decades, has the energy of a man attempting to cash a check before the bank changes its mind.

It comes down to one person who understands Trump most clearly — Jared Kushner — who is not in the government but is likely running foreign policy for his father-in-law. Jared collecting a $2B investment from a Saudi-backed fund after leaving office in Trump’s first tenure, earned Trump’s respect, despite not being a pART of the DEAL — or was he? The Donald’s reaction was  blissful unawareness in his expression of satisfaction: “Jared can really work the Arabs. They like Jews to handle the money.” For some — who question what Trump sees in this war — it has nothing to do with strategic interest, security, or regional stability, but something far simpler: what’s in it for him! The oil in Iran (which the Israelis are burning, to his horror), reconstruction money, and Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds looking for a post-war landscape to invest in. Perhaps Trump can’t explain why he’s taken us to war, but his son-in-law will figure out what it all means and how to profit from it.

As Steve Schmidt tells us in The Warning, “Only a fool would be surprised to discover that Jared Kushner is at the center of a growing scandal around highly sensitive national security matters — a torrent of corruption that follows in the footsteps of Kushner and Trump’s Middle East negotiator, Steve Witkoff.” Schmidt says it is stunning, with no words to adequately describe the depravity of the theft and their betrayal of the USA, as the full details of the sale of America’s most sensitive computer chips to the UAE become known. It is estimated that the Trump and Witkoff families pocketed $187 million and $31 million, respectively, in the sellout of American security, not in a corrupt business deal, but in an act of espionage. While The New York Times detailed Kushner’s $2 billion deal in April 2022, no one seemed to care, but Schmidt calls the corruption so gargantuan that it is beyond comprehension.

Trump has shattered every convention and tradition that requires dignity and integrity, while obliterating the law, duty, responsibility and obligation. Even the honor of being twice-elected to the presidency only bolstered his belief that his temporary power was a license to take, steal, smash, punish, destroy and avenge, with the current term experiencing his unleashing of cruel Gestapo-like secret police to terrorize the American people. Kushner has been an abhorrent contributor to American decline and division over the last eleven years, a sinister and corrupt figure who perfectly represents the fantastical levels of corruption that have engulfed Washington, DC in the Trump years. Schmidt describes Kushner as a soft-handed and fragile-boned child of privilege, whose only skill is the flattery of sociopathic egos. His family’s wealth obscured his mediocrity as he entered Harvard University, before diving into the “jungles of Manhattan” where he continued to prove that any child of an indulgent billionaire parent can make it anywhere…’New York, New York!‘

Kushner’s failed business decisions found him drifting into the Oval Office with Donald Trump, where they have done more damage to the US than any people since Secession, adding $6.7 trillion to the national debt, but parlaying $2.4 billion in personal income into their pockets. Anything and everything was for sale, with the American people being cut out of the equation, as the government was only for the Trump Crime Syndicate and the MAGA movement, with Kushner serving as an “informal advisor.” The ‘advisor’ was denied a security clearance, failing background investigations, as security officials deemed him untrustworthy and not to be trusted with classified information. Not a problem for father-in-law Don who then gave him the highest level security clearances, leading the classified-briefings-loving Jared to request them more often than any staff member as he began his flitting around the world as an architect of Middle East ‘peace.’ Both Jared and wife, Ivanka Trump, were “mediocrities who were unread, inexperienced, sheltered, arrogant beyond measure, and surprisingly simple fraudsters who didn’t know very much about anything except where to look for money,” says Schmidt.

Understood by most, that the US Congress is a thoroughly broken institution, though shining through is the January 6 Committee which showed what is possible when honorable men and women come together, putting America ahead of political parties and cults of personality. Schmidt says that in this vein, the Kushner payoff deserves scrutiny by Congress, counter intelligence officials, and the media until every detail comes out. Extremist movements are always corrupt and corrupt movements always become extremist movements — the NRA and CPAC being perfect examples of this circumstance. We should all care about knowing the details of what Jared Kushner did to get this money, as well as the reasoning behind Director of National Intelligence’s Tulsi Gabbard locking away in a safe a whistleblower’s report about Kushner.

President Trump has been insisting that he must be personally involved in the process of selecting a new leader in Iran, and that the Iranians are “wasting their time” in considering the 56-year old son of the late Ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the likely replacement. Trump said, “We want someone that will bring peace and harmony to Iran — Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. Potential future leaders keep dying — everyone who wants to be leader ends up dead.” There was some political dissension among leaders in Iran about the hereditary selection of the Ayatollah’s son, which resembled a clerical version of the rule of the shah who was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but the leadership of the Assembly of Experts were in favor of this appointment for prosecution of the war. So, in the end Mojtaba was chosen to be in charge of Iran’s armed forces and any decision regarding pursuit of Tehran’s nuclear program. The successor has never held any governmental post, either elective or appointive, and he is said to be even more hard-line than his father, which will put him directly in the gunsights of the Israelis, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon’s Hezbollah both issued statements of support.

Trump’s pronouncement insisting on his involvement in choosing a successor was likely to complicate efforts to end the ongoing conflict, but now that Mojtaba has been selected, our president will view him as a “transitional figure” with a bullseye on his back, even as some Iranians are “chanting for his death.” The Trump administration may be willing to keep the Iranian regime in place if they accede to US demands involving the enrichment of uranium, ending their ballistic missile program, and an end to terrorist proxies around the world. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria termed Mojtaba’s appointment “a very bad sign for the war” in that Iran’s hardliners now have the upper hand, “showing that the Iranian regime is dug in.”

So we’ll just have to wait for a slithering Trump to provide us with an answer or justification for going to war, even as he demands “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” from the Iranians. Satirist Andy Borowitz offers his take on the new Iranian leader with this: “In a blistering takedown of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, on Sunday Eric Trump claimed that the late Ayatollah’s son was an incompetent idiot who only attained his position through nepotism. ‘The last thing the world needs is yet another total bonehead getting a leg up just because of who his dad is,’ Trump said. ‘If this dope’s last name was Henderson instead of Khamenei, he wouldn’t even be in the conversation.’ He added that giving someone control over massive sums of money just because he had a powerful father is ‘a recipe for disaster.’ ‘What kind of backward country showers someone with riches because of who his dad is?’ Trump asked. ‘All I can say is, congratulations, Iran: you just chose a member of the Lucky Sperm Club.'”

LAP DOGS, WATCHING A CHILD, PILLARS CRUMBLING

President Trump received his comeuppance from the Supreme Court last week, when they handed back to him his unlawful tariffs on a fool’s gold platter. As Bill Maher joked on his show, the court told him not to mess with the money and he took it very well…NOT! The president called the ruling a disgrace, cursing at the courts. Maher mused, “He’s such a Karen. You know, I mean, everything he does. Everything is always, ‘I want to speak to the manager.’ And the Supreme Court said, ‘We’re the manager.’ After this whole year of tariffs we’ve been going through, have you been thinking to yourself, ‘why didn’t other presidents think of doing this and not confiding in Congress when the Constitution says they have to?’ They did think of it. They thought it was illegal, so they didn’t do it. Now, the president says there are other ways he can get what he wants with the tariffs. I don’t know what they are, but…if you’ve ever been to Washington, DC, and you’ve seen that majestic Supreme Court building, it’s going to make a lovely ballroom.”

David McAfee writes on Raw Story that the Supreme Court justices may be fearing for their lives after Donald Trump’s response to their legal smackdown. The impending danger possibility was broached by Temidayo Aganga-Williams, an attorney who served as an investigator for the House J6 Committee, in his appearance on MS NOW, when he was asked about Trump’s response to the court ruling against his acting on a whim. The attorney says the president went personal because he nominated two of the justices, and there could be dangerous consequences. “It’s always about the person. And I think what’s stark is that he cannot hide behind who appointed them. These are folks that he appointed, that he picked, that he shook hands with, nominating them, and espousing how great they are. And even they came down against him. So he has to go down to attacking them personally, which I think is incredibly, incredibly dangerous because it’s one thing to say a judge got it wrong, but when you attack the person, you suggest that the way to rectify this is with that person. And in a world of political violence, I think we get closer to teaching the American people that what they have to do to rectify their needs is not to go through institutions, but instead something far more dangerous. And I think that’s the path we’re down.”

Trump continues to be filled with rage at the six court judges who ruled that he exceeded his authority by imposing tariffs based on a “national emergency,” which then prompted him to immediately institute a global 10% tariff, before he decided to increase the rate to 15% the following day. He lashed out at justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett in particular, saying their “families should be ashamed” of their decisions, calling them “lap dogs,” “a disgrace to our nation,” and “disloyal to the Constitution.” Joanna Coles of The Daily Beast  said that watching Trump’s news conference was like “watching a child,” threatening to do tariffs anyway. “It absolutely is the mad queen from Alice in Wonderland. ‘Off with their heads, off with their heads.'” Author Michael Wolff commented that “he wears it all on his sleeve…done that for years now,” noting that his erratic strategy can be hard for the opposition to combat. Trump now has a new enemy in Chief Justice John Roberts, in direct contrast to the friendliness seen between the two following last year’s State of the Union speech when all seemed to be peaches and cream.

Attorney Neal Katyal, who successfully argued against Trump’s tariffs before the Supreme Court, argues against the new 15% global tariffs the president wants to impose as problematic. The particular statute Trump wants to use has “no obvious application here,” and, “If he wants sweeping tariffs, he should do the American thing and go to Congress. If his tariffs are such a good idea, he should have no problem persuading Congress. That’s what our Constitution requires,” said Katyal. Democratic strategist Jon Cooper responded that “Trump CANNOT legally impose a global tariff because the US doesn’t meet the clear emergency economic conditions envisioned by Section 122, and if  he tries to invoke it, it would certainly face immediate legal challenges, economic pushback, and potential congressional scrutiny.” Author James Surowiecki called the imposition of global tariffs “just ridiculous,” since Trump has made it clear that his action is for ‘retribution.’ Journalist David Stockman had the most observant solution, saying, “Help…the man needs his meds!!”

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PROTRACTED DISTRACTION, OPEN BETRAYAL, COLD WAR MOMENT

Last Monday, NPR’s revelation that their investigation into Trump’s Justice Department showed removal of Epstein files that contain allegations of sexual abuse against Donald Trump — at least 50 pages of FBI interviews with a woman who accused the current president of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old — gone! She was interviewed four times, resulting in documents with cross-referencing serial number stamps, which proved to NPR that those pages had vanished. Representative James Comer agreed to investigate and, remarkably, both political parties wanted answers about why the files were hiding Trump’s name. A few days later, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department was investigating in an internal review to determine if the missing documents were wrongly withheld — Trump’s walls were closing in.

Hillary Clinton, after much fanfare back-and-forth, relented to sit for a closed-door House Oversight Committee deposition last week regarding her ties with Jeffrey Epstein, and the GOP’s attempt at humiliating her was handily turned around by her six-hour ordeal. With The New York Times‘ news that Trump, Melania, Mar-a-Lago and related terms appeared in the Epstein files more than 38,000 times, Clinton accused the committee of using her to distract from Trump’s ties to the accused pedophile/trafficker. The committee scheduled Bill Clinton for his closed-door session on Friday, with not much to show for that deposition, either. But things were working in the background with the Trumpers, and even with Oman’s foreign minister’s statement that negotiations between the US and Iran were making progress, the president later announced that he was “not happy” and would allow more time for discussions. Just hours later, he wagged the dog — he chose war.

Military strikes on Iran began early Saturday morning, as millions of Iranians were commuting to work or dropping kids at schools, without warning. Trump’s video statement calling on Iranian citizens to shelter in place accomplished little, as the first confirmed civilian casualties were at a girls’ elementary school in Minab, near the Strait of Hormuz. Initially, Iran’s state media reported 40 students killed, then 53, and by day’s end 85 killed and 63 wounded, as the detritus was scoured by rescuers. The death toll by morning was over 150. Of course, none of these actions were authorized by the US Congress, and curiously a vote on war powers resolutions had been scheduled to restrict exactly what Trump’s unconstitutional bullying had wrought. So now we are in a regional war caused by a president who is in cahoots with a Justice Department who chose to hide his presence in the Epstein files.

President Trump now faces a political minefield with this second strike on Iran, particularly after his claim that the Iranian nuclear threat was destroyed in June of last year. Conservative and MAGA voters were promised no new foreign wars during his ’24 campaign, and this new adventurism has created a firestorm within his base. According to Politico’s Erin Doherty, “The political damage is substantial and immediate action is necessary.” This global news and information company found in a recent poll that only half of Trump voters would support military action against Iran, with 30 percent opposed. Doherty wrote, “Those fractures, combined with largely unified Democrats, meant Americans broadly did not want an attack on Iran.” An Economist/YouGov poll also confirmed broad public opposition to action in the region. The future seems particularly dire for the GOP as they head into the midterm elections, and even small rebellions within the 2024 coalition will carry hefty consequences. Trump’s support within this coalition was tepid before his decision for war, resulting in a volatile situation depending on the aftermath. Republican strategist Jason Roe said, “The political risk depends on the outcome. If we break Iran without terrorist attacks coming to America or harm coming to allies in the region, it will be a political win for Trump. If this expands into a protracted conflict, or ends up with troops on the ground, it will be a liability.”

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