No, the elections are already underway. But he is hoping for that spike in popularity that Bush got. That hurt his huge ego- and the pundits are saying the Dems will win the House, and no more “Big beautiful Bills”.
Only up to the point where many Americans hate and fear the religion in Iran. But if you are gonna gives lists about reasons, that might be down there at #10 or lower. They make a good target politically, is what I mean.
Bibi may be corrupt, but it’s at a different scale than Trump and his milieu - he has an eight-figure fortune rather than ten or eleven. There’s no way he’d be able to afford Trump’s rates.
Now, MBS on the other hand…
I don’t really believe what I am about to say, but I throw it out there for your speculation. Apparently Putin has benefitted greatly since the countries in Europe that were trying to boycott Russian oil and natural gas now suddenly need it and even at a higher price. So could Trump have been egged on by his buddy Vlad?
That said, I wonder if his outrage at the SCOTUS tariff decision wasn’t another motive.
Could the sun rise in the East tomorrow?
If it was not Putin directly, it was one of the Republicans that Putin controls.
I doubt that he started the war because somebody bribed him, just because Trump doesn’t return value for money. He’d happily accept a bribe for that or for anything else, but he’d just pocket it and not keep his side of the deal.
For those who had “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia” on their battle Bingo card, you can blot that square now.
If by “at war with” they mean “said mean things about us” then yes, I guess we’ve been at war for a long time.
By any other definition, no, we haven’t been at war since 1979.
Gift link to an Ezra Klein (NY Times) audio interview and its transcript.
Nadia Schadlow, a deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, explains how the U.S.-Israel war with Iran fits in with an “America First” agenda.
Sample quote from Schadlow: “I think [Trump] would put it as: In the four years that I was gone and I was out of office, certain key threats grew over time. The Biden administration watched these threats grow, and now that I’m back in office, I have to do something definitive about them.”
…. “And part of deterrence, and I think part of what President Trump is doing now in his actions, or at least the effect of them, will be a seriously strengthened deterrent posture for the United States. No one is going to think that we’re not going to act when we say we’re going to act. I think he saw it as his mission to restore red lines that had not been respected.”
A conservative writer in 1992 once said that every so often the US should pick a country and throw it at the wall to show the rest of the world how far it’s willing to go to enforce its will. It likely isn’t the main motivation but Iran is just the latest example of this and one that’s been targeted for attack since Reagan.
True.
Here’s another relevant resource: a 20-minute interview by the always excellent Brian Lehrer (WNYC-FM) with a Wall Street Journal-ist about how Lindsay Graham may have coached Netanyahu on how to goad Trump into this war (and Graham warned that “Cuba is next”).
Before the interview, Lehrer quickly runs through other rationales submitted by listeners, including “to please our ally Saudi Arabia, which always competes with Iran for regional dominance,” and “to satisfy the financial interests of the military-industrial complex.”
Trump latest attack on Iran and “plan” to attack Cuba are based on the same rationale he’s previously accused Democratic leaders of having - to distract attention from their failed policies and unpopularity. He thinks that he’s drumming up a wave of patriotic fervor that will carry his party to victory in November.
The cult is uneasy and upset, but the hardcores will fall in line.
Today is supposed to be the most intense day of Iran strikes. Now while that probably means that Trump has reached his TACO moment and figured out that gas prices are way worse for his political future than any scandal, it’s interesting to see what this day of bombardment coincides with:
I wonder if Trump is planning on nuking Iran today. That’ll stop those nasty Epstein headlines for a day at least.
Probably planning on nuking Mexico. Or New Mexico. Whatever.
/sarcasm. I think.
Michael Ledeen: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
Evil as that was, now they don’t even know what the hell it is they’re doing.
According to this substack, he attacked only because he was told to by Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Pete Kegseth.
As usual, I find the methodology of using his words to get at reality to be suspect. Why assume that
I think it’s much more likely that those names are the ones he can remember off the cuff, and gives us a partial window into who feeds him information.
Certainly possible, but I think if he’d spoken with anybody with actual rank and gravitas he’d be bragging about it nonstop. And I’m doubtful that anyone military who’s not in his little toady circle would have approved of starting a war with Iran.
You mean Woman, Man, TV, Camera told him to attack? And he did?
Yes, now you mention it, that is probably the case. And I mean that, this is not irony or sarcasm on my part.
Netanyahoo, Kushner and MBS probably pushed a bit in that direction too.
I’m convinced this is all a continuation of the bombing started in June last year. Trump announced at the time that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” However, if you recall Iran had like half a day warning beforehand and it’s widely believed that in those hours they evacuated all essential personnel and some critical equipment. It appears their nuclear program was far from being ‘totally obliterated’. They had to do an intelligence assessment after the bombing and then they needed several more months to get all the assets in place to start bombing in earnest. If you look at the chessboard, the pieces were being moved towards this position the entire time.
Earlier today, news media reported, I believe via anonymous but authorized sources, that the U.S. was sending 2,500 Marines by ship from Japan to the vicinity of Iran. This would take two weeks. Widespread speculation was that they were headed to Kharg Island.
Now Trump says we heavily bombed Kharg Island.
It is hard to reconcile these other than by saying U.S. policy is in disarray.
I wonder if the bombing is because Trump was frustrated about the two week timeframe.