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Why Trump’s war speech failed: Declaring victory but still bombing Iran back to the ‘Stone Ages’
There was something about President Trump’s prime-time address that didn’t add up.
Several things, actually.
But what struck me immediately was his low-energy delivery. He backed into it, first talking about the Artemis moon mission and then the oil we’re seizing from Venezuela. After that he was just reading words off the prompter.
No one could argue with the president’s core message. Iran is the world’s leading terror state. Something should have been done during its 47-year history of violence and murderous proxies like Hamas. Iran can never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. The dictators killed 45,000 of their own people (though Trump played this down when he was trying to negotiate a deal).
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But the 19-minute speech was a jumble of contradictions. Trump kept saying we’ve won, we’ve decimated Iran’s military, which is true. And yet he said the U.S. will intensify its bombing campaign for the next two to three weeks, targeting Tehran’s energy facilities.
Why is that necessary, if America has already won? And will it really last less than a month?
It was clear heading into the speech that Trump knows how unpopular the war is. He knows that soaring gas prices are hurting him at home. He knows he is dropping like a rock with young men who bought his no-foreign-wars rhetoric.
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He knows – and this is critical – the stock market has tanked since U.S. and Israeli warplanes attacked Iran on the last day of February. Trump is extremely sensitive to the market, as we saw when the Dow hit 50,000, and that often spurs him into action.
Having boxed himself into a corner with an Iranian regime that refuses to seriously negotiate, the public expectation was that he would declare victory and get out. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Trump declared he’ll be bombing Iran back to the “Stone Ages.”
What about the president’s own goals?
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He said the war’s goal was never regime change. But he spoke about regime change the morning after the initial attack. In any event, Trump now claims it’s been achieved because several levels of leadership, starting with the Ayatollah, have been killed,
But the new sheriff in town, the Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Ghalibaf, lashed out yesterday.
“When it comes to defending our homeland,” he said in a posting, “each and every one of us will become a soldier of this country. If you look askance at our mother’s house … you’re up against the whole family, all of us. Armed, ready, and standing. Come on in, we’re waiting.”
So much for regime change.
Again and again, Trump said the war could not end until Iran stopped blockading a fifth of the world’s oil traffic at the Strait of Hormuz. But in Wednesday night’s speech, he washed his hands of the matter. We don’t rely on the strait, so who cares? It will “open up naturally,” on its own.
The president then scolded our onetime European allies, saying they should show some “delayed courage” and “just take” Hormuz–as if it were that easy.
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As for Trump’s declaration that our country is now “free of the specter of nuclear blackmail,” Iran still has nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium–and further enrichment could lead to a nuclear weapon.
In a CNN poll released just before the speech, 66 percent of those surveyed said they strongly or somewhat disapprove of the decision to attack Iran, a 7-point jump since the conflict began.
Most network pundits criticized the address as a rehash of things that Trump has said before.
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“There was nothing new in that speech,” said ABC’s Jonathan Karl, adding: “Not a lot of optimism.”
His colleague Martha Raddatz: “It added to the confusion of why we are there.”
European leaders felt blindsided by the war. “When we’re serious,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, “we don’t say the opposite of what we said the day before every day, and maybe one shouldn’t speak every day,”
Austria and Switzerland yesterday joined Italy, Spain and France in banning U.S. warplanes headed for Iran from their skies. They don’t want any part of this war. Britain’s prime minister had done the same but reversed himself after Iran retaliated.
In the first sign of intensified bombing yesterday, Iranian authorities said an airstrike had destroyed a Tehran research facility called the Pasteur Institute.
I don’t know if the timing was deliberate, the day after the speech, but the president dramatically changed the subject yesterday.
The media are already moving on to Trump’s decision yesterday to fire Pam Bondi as attorney general, because she hasn’t been aggressive enough in prosecuting his political enemies, and for her mishandling of the Epstein files.
In the end, the speech may matter less than what happens for the rest of April.
If Trump ends the assault on the timeline he’s suggested, voters may breathe a sigh of relief and move on. They’ll remember that Trump went after the Mideast terrorists and be mollified if gas prices start declining.
The problem is that the damage to the world economy may be far more painful, and much longer lasting, than if the president had not launched his war of choice. And no single speech could change that.
There’s a lot out there that can really be disturbing. A friend calls with some scary medical news; I start wondering about my own health. I check the stock market and become obsessed about money — will we ever have enough for retirement? I read a news story and see only suffering in the world. My whole sense of well-being gets out of whack.
What I need to remind myself — what is right there in the celebration of Easter — “Give it some time. Give it three days.” Change is happening. Good things can come after complete horror. Give it three days.
Let me circle back to an old story, surely apocryphal, but sweet and helpful.
A woman goes to church on Easter Monday and as she leaves, she pauses to chat with a disheveled woman sitting on the steps selling corsages and boutonnieres — a meager means of making a living. And yet, despite her appearance, the old lady is full of smiles.
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“How is that even possible?” the woman coming out of the church wonders. She stops and talks with the lady.
No denying it. The flower seller has suffered. She reveals that. But Easter has just happened. What comfort there is in that. The pain and horror of Good Friday were turned into the power and mystery of the Resurrection. The magic of three days. “Whatever has happened to you,” she says, “just wait three days.”
As has often been pointed out, it’s the women in the Bible who witnessed the horror first-hand; Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, Mary the mother of Jesus, other women. It depends on which gospel account you’re reading. None of Jesus’s disciples are depicted as witnessing the crucifixion. It’s the women who stick it out, as awful as it must have been.
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But then, who are the first ones to witness the empty tomb, as they go there on the first day of the week, bringing spices to anoint the body, and find that the huge stone guarding it has been rolled away? It’s the women. An angel tells them that Jesus was raised from the dead. They were supposed to go tell the men. As the Gospel of Mark puts it, “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them…”
(In the Gospel of John’s account, Mary Magdalene, sitting there weeping, actually sees the risen Jesus, but doesn’t recognize him until he says her name, “Mary.” Wow, isn’t that powerful? We know who Jesus is when he calls us by name.)
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Every year our church does a three-hour service on Good Friday. Ugh. I go and hear the gospel story. Sometimes fellow parishioners act out the passion story. It is all so sad. Must we retell it, re-live it, year after year?
And yet, in all of this, there is a helpful lesson. Yes, we do go through pain. We do witness terrible suffering. It’s important not to run away from it and hide. Recognize it. Take it in. Deal with it. See if and what it might be teaching you. As the wonderful priest and teacher Richard Rohr puts it, we learn from two things: love and suffering.
Note to self: Be aware of your own suffering and the world’s suffering. For there is something profound on the other side. You will see truth in all its wonder and beauty. What do you have to do? Just wait. Go for a walk. Sit in quiet meditation. Put away the phone for a while. Talk to a caring friend. Pick up a book. Put it down. Whatever. Wait a few days.
Wait three days. No telling what you will see.
There is an old joke that scientists switched from lab rats to lawyers because you do not get as attached to lawyers. President Donald Trump has shown the same tendency to avoid becoming attached to either private or government counsel. Attorney General Pam Bondi is only the latest in a long line of lawyers let go by a president who was made famous with the tagline “You’re fired.”
There is no evidence of bad blood between President Trump and Bondi. The attorney general has been attacked over her loyalty to the president and has been by his side in some of the most precarious moments, from impeachment to criminal defense. As his “apprentices” learned, this is not personal. It’s business.
Jeff Sessions. Rex Tillerson. Bill Barr. Mark Esper. Kristi Noem. Trump’s Cabinet picks are known more for shelving than storage.
Indeed, being a cabinet member in a Trump administration is about as secure as being a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.
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Trump has always viewed terminations as a way to spur higher performance levels.
There is a reason why Trump may have wanted to move now in swapping out attorneys general. There are growing predictions that the Democrats will lose the House and could now lose the Senate.
Democrats are running on pledges to unleash a new spasm of investigations and impeachments, targeting not just President Trump but anyone who supports him.
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Figures like Susan Rice, top policy adviser to both Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, have promised “revenge” against all those who pushed Democrats out of power and warned that “it’s not going to end well for them.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pledged that, as soon as they regain power, they will start throwing Trump people in jail when they retake Congress.
Democratic strategist James Carville previously threatened that “collaborators” may be treated in the same way as they were after World War II.
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Trump’s ability to secure confirmation of a successor will become far more challenging as he approaches the midterm elections.
Trump has to decide who will be the best hand on the wheel in those choppy waters ahead.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has the street cred that Trump values. An accomplished litigator and former prosecutor, Blanche is neither flashy nor gregarious. He is a lethal litigator who can gut you like a trout without breaking a sweat. He has been at the president’s side in and out of court. While he will be a lightning rod for Democrats who have attacked him for his role in the release of the Epstein files, his firmness in dealing with a hostile media likely appealed to the president.
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Blanche offers a seamless transition for the department. He literally only has to walk down the hallway to take the reins from Bondi.
Another name reportedly under consideration is EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who would likely be the easiest to confirm and the most popular with members of Congress. Zeldin transformed the EPA in short order, including clearing away barriers to increasing energy production. Almost elected governor of New York, Zeldin has cross-over appeal in Washington as someone who cut his teeth in this town.
Other candidates include state attorneys general, as well as wild cards like U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a former judge with a tough-as-nails reputation in Washington, D.C. It is a deep bench.
There will be no shortage of applicants for the job. The office of the attorney general in the Trump administration has everything that one could want in Washington. Everything, that is, except job security.
1. What B-52 bombers bring to the Iran fight
2. Acting AG addresses reports Pam Bondi ousted over botched Epstein files
3. Iran gives chilling retaliation warning after US airstrikes collapse key bridge
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DIGITAL’S NEWS QUIZ — What happened to Tiger Woods and who faced an investigation over military helicopters? Take the quiz here …
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Tune in as we explore Good Friday traditions and the surprising rise in religious interest among younger Americans. Check it out …
What’s it looking like in your neighborhood? Continue reading…
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