Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
TUCSON — We know about tacos here in Baja Arizona, and Donald Trump is no TACO. True, he always chickens out and has a high grease content. But I've never heard of a folded filled tortilla capable of destroying a planet by sheer hubris and insanity.
In America's name, he threatened to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, imperiling 92 million people of different ethnicities along with diplomats, foreign technicians, visitors and Iranian Americans who return regularly to see families.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he posted on "Truth Social," his own anti-social stream of lies through which he addresses the nation and the wider world. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” It didn't.
Trump declared a two-week cease fire, already tenuous. So far, his $2 billion a day war has achieved little beyond civilian misery and destroyed cultural treasures from an ancient world that belong to our progeny, if any survive his jihad against climate action.
But his threat alone is against Geneva Conventions drafted mostly in Washington after World War II. "Genocide" does not begin to cover what that would mean. Airstrikes have already killed thousands of civilians, including hundreds of school kids.
His indifferent approach to wanton slaughter, combined with everything else we have seen since 2017, defines the man who personifies a dis-United States.
This is brief(ish) Report with a plan for suggested action below. There is not a day to lose. This is no time for despair, confusion or apathy. Trump needs to go now. And, later, so does J.D. Vance, a chameleon manipulated by billionaires and ideologues.
TUCSON — The Tomahawk missile that pulverized a girls' school killed perhaps 170 kids and their teachers the day a megalomaniac president set Iranian targets ablaze and plunged a woebegone world into crisis because of heedless hubris.
Obvious facts were immediately clear, but Donald Trump doesn't do truth. He planned the onslaught far in advance and struck during productive peace talks. A weakened Iran posed no immediate threat. Still, stoked after Venezuela, he wanted a perfect war.
"Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran," he said, adding, "they are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran."
Two weeks later, Pete Hegseth, his gung-ho toy soldier "secretary of war" says investigations continue into what generals watched happen in real time on secure monitors.
That one tragedy in what Trump now recasts as "an excursion" is among countless acts of self-focused folly that define him. From his Covid denial in 2020 to slashed foreign aid last year, he is responsible for needless deaths already into the millions.
We should be clear as elections approach. A dissembling government for sale to the highest bidders at home and abroad is no democracy. When faux "journalists" parrot its leader's palpable lies via propaganda "news media," it is a brothel with borders.
For nearly a decade, Americans have watched a malignant narcissist wreak havoc. At first, he was an unknown quantity with an uncommon gift for selling snake oil to the gullible. By now, there are no excuses. We are out of time.
A world threatened by climate collapse and unstoppable conflict needs law-bound, empathetic global leaders with integrity who want something better for their own families and everyone else's.
"Stupid" is an unkind and indefinable term. I'll go with Forrest Gump's mother: stupid is as stupid does. But "ignorant" defines us all. It only means lack of knowledge about any subject we have not taken time to understand.
Elections this year are about power, not politics. America needs a two-party system. But Trump's perverted brand of Republicans, cowed and cowardly, are committing crimes against humanity. Anyone who votes for them is complicit, inadvertently or otherwise.
