This friggin’ moron
It’s difficult to parse what Donald Trump is trying to do with regard to Iran right now, primarily because Trump himself appears to have no idea what he’s trying to do. His poll numbers are in the gutter, millions of Americans are taking to the streets to protest against him, he’s broken the economy, he’s lost his Elon Musk security blanket, and he’s become as weak as a United States President has ever been. So naturally, he wants to change the narrative. And that brings us to Iran.
But here’s the thing about Trump. For all of his unhinged rhetoric over the years, he’s always seemed to very clearly understand that invading another nation is a good way to destroy a presidency. It didn’t used to be that way. But suffice it to say that George W. Bush used up that space on the bingo card when he invaded Iraq under false pretenses, got a temporary boost from it, but by the end of his presidency was historically weak because of it. If a U.S. President invades another country for brazen political purposes now, that unpopularity and weakness is going to come near immediately. And Trump, addled as he may be, seems to know it.
For now Trump is getting what he wants. The media is talking nonstop about his absurd attempt at essentially waging war against Iran by proxy via Israel. Just a week or two ago, Netanyahu was making himself look strong by leaking to the media that Trump had unsuccessfully begged him not to attack Iran, and now Trump is suddenly… in favor of it?
This is what Trump does and has always done. He’s weak, tepid, and indecisive, and he has more flip flops than a beach in summer. But even as Trump does this, the media ignores it and portrays his idiotic actions as if they were normal, even as far too many people on our side start reflexively yelling “Oh no, Trump is going to attack Iran, we’re doomed.” It’s exactly what Trump wants.
You see, if Trump can make the entire national conversation and media narrative about whether he’s going to attack Iran, then he doesn’t actually have to do it. He gets the distraction that he desperately wants and needs, and doesn’t have to deal with the ugly fallout of actually going to war. Too many people are, as always, playing right into Trump’s hands by unwittingly helping him craft the narrative that he wants out there.
Of course there’s no way to know how this will all play out. Trump is now far too deep into dementia to necessarily even remember that he’s spent the past decade hyping the idea of military action while trying to stay as far away from it as possible. And when an unstable idiot like Trump starts making these kinds of threats against a possibly unstable Iranian regime, you never know what can go wrong. But no matter how this plays out, we need to not let Trump control the narrative. “Oh no, he’s going to attack Iran, we’re doomed” is what Trump is praying you’ll run around yelling. It’s crucial that we use a smarter approach. Our prevailing narrative should simply be that Trump is a friggin’ idiot who’s bad for our nation in every way.
