You’ve probably heard the Toddler says he doesn’t think about what the Iran war is costing Americans. Scott Lemieux: “Republican midterm messaging is being hampered by the facts that 1)Trump’s policies are directly responsible for making things more expensive after he won on a promise to make things cheaper, 2)nobody likes them on their own merits, and 3)as his inhibitions decline even further he can’t even pretend to care at this point:” All that matters is that everyone acclaim him as a great war leader who also negotiated a better agreement than the black president. Even though he won’t succeed at either goal.
JD Vance goes with the administration’s usual lie: inflation caused by the Iran war is all Biden’s fault. The Toddler is employing another favorite tactic, whining: Democrats who oppose him are traitors. He’s also started saying “Dumocrats” because the press were soooo impressed in 2016 that he’d make up mean nicknames for his opponents. I don’t think it’s going to help this time. Rubio is doing his duty as a Toddler Toady, brushing off Republican criticism of the latest cease-fire. Or alleged cease-fire — I suspect this is as much vaporware as all the other deals the Toddler thinks he’s made with Iran. And it appears he’s pushing them and every other nation in the Middle East to sign on to the Abraham Accords with Israel. That might well sink the deal.
Fox news is following the party line, lying that “He is restoring American strength on the world stage and he is disarming a terrorist regime of the possibility of getting a nuclear weapon.” Being confounded by a third rate military power is not restoring American strength, neither is running up a $29 billion bill to do it. and Obama’s agreement, which the Toddler tore up, was doing just fine keeping them from going non-nuclear. The Toddler, of course, lies about this; it’s bad enough people aren’t gushing over him as an awesome war hero but to say he’s not handling Iran as well as the Black President? Mike Johnson, who had to table a vote on the war because he couldn’t guarantee Republicans voting against it, has also lied that nobody but the Toddler could have brought Iran to the negotiating table.
As for negotiating, remember back in early April the Toddler was going to rain destruction on Iran if they didn’t reopen the straight? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want us destroying another Middle Eastern country so our president can strut and declare “mission accomplished!”, but it drives home that the Toddler is doing the opposite of restoring American strength.
Paul Krugman says some of this is that for all its technological sophistication, the military is unprepared to fight a drone war — and this would be a problem even with good leadership. That said, it doesn’t help that our Secretary of War is ignorant, unqualified and a shitty human being: “Extreme though Hegseth may be, he is a recognizable type: a jockish, puerile white man, a boy you knew in your public high school, if you went to one. He is the Jersey Shore as much as he is Kansas, Florida, Texas, and Oregon. You may recall him as the guy who shoved queer kids into trash cans in the cafeteria and said things about girls like “You’d need a crowbar to get her legs open.” As an adult, Hegseth is a man whom people have described leaving a bar, shit-faced, chanting “No means yes!” and “Kill all Muslims!”
“So how will Trump and his party respond to their string of high-profile policy failures, from Iran to inflation? Trump may find a way to accept defeat in the Persian Gulf while claiming victory, although that’s looking harder by the day. But there’s no reason to believe that policymaking will get any better, that the experts and the grownups will be let back into the room. The beatings — and the willful ignorance — will continue until morale improves.”
