A Brothel With Borders
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.
Trump says America sells lots of Tomahawks around the world. That would make sense to someone all about money, devoid of morality and untroubled by details.
Raytheon builds those $4 million cruise missiles 10 miles from where I write. Only four allies are entrusted with them, and Israel is not one of them.
That "collateral damage" was likely not deliberate. A commander-in-chief with a gram of integrity would own up and apologize. Trump never does that. Instead, Karoline Leavitt, his Goldilocks Goebbels press secretary, assailed reporters demanding facts.
A New York Times team documented the errant strike in exhaustive detail. Leavitt told a room full of sycophant ringers: "We're not going to be harassed by the Times that has been putting out a lot of articles making claims that have not been verified."
Ten days into the war, the Times' lead story said preliminary findings blamed a targeting mistake, quoting only anonymous official sources. Investigators still wanted to know why the Defense Intelligence Agency had not rechecked outdated data.
For one thing, FBI Director Kash Patel axed a specialized team that monitored Iran, questioning their loyalties. More, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, was otherwise occupied. Trump had her snooping into possible past election tampering.
Last March, Gabbard told Congress the intelligence community believed Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Trump scolded her, so she "clarified" that in June. She agreed that Iran could build a nuclear weapon within weeks. Fake news got it wrong.
Lawrence O'Donnell got to the heart of America's turmoil, eviscerating Trump on his MS Now nightly hour. He was a senior congressional aide before writing much of "The West Wing," a television classic about how a principled White House ought to function.
Trump said that crews held up at the Strait of Hormuz should "show some guts." There is nothing to fear, he said. "They have no navy, we sunk all their ships." At the time, fast gunboats, shore batteries and mines paralyzed traffic.
A draft-dodger president was born in New York because his grandfather fled Germany to escape military service. "Now," O'Donnell said, "he wants noncombatants on ships to do what no member of the Trump clan has ever done. Enter a war zone."
That breaks a longtime tradition. Lincoln's son enlisted, and so did Franklin Roosevelt's four sons. Lyndon Johnson had a daughter, but her husband went to Vietnam. Beau Biden deployed to Iraq in 2008 and died in 2014 from the consequences.
O'Donnell ran down the full list, then tossed out a suggestion for Melania Trump: "How about 19-year-old Barron?"
In World War II, he said, nothing was more loathsome than war profiteering. That segued to a Wall Street Journal report that Don Jr. and Eric had formed a company to make drones, now a Pentagon priority, after their father banned purchases from China.
The corruption is breathtaking. Son-in-law Jared Kushner accepted billions from a Saudi slush fund in 2020. He justified that by pledging no involvement in Trump's new term. But he is back, top negotiator along with fellow real estate shark Steve Witkoff.
When reporters revealed that Russia helped Iran target weapons against U.S. forces, Witkoff said that could not be true because Vladimir Putin told him it wasn't. Kushner is laying plans for a luxury seaside playground atop the ruins in Gaza.
Trump could have brokered a fair deal for Ukrainians a year ago as he promised he would. Instead, he kowtows to Putin, forces Europeans to pay high prices for arms to defend Ukraine and exacts a hefty chunk of the crippled country's mineral riches.
He shunts Ukraine aside to concentrate on Iran. Volodymyr Zelensky supplies U.S. forces with drones and expertise in hopes of gaining Trump's fickle favor.
As Iran plays out, a U.S. flotilla blockades Cuba, cutting off food and fuel to starving people. At Marco Rubio's urging, he says he will give the island back to exiled conservative oligarchal dynasties that fled Fidel Castro's revolution.
This could go on for pages. To define Trump, just recall his visit to Arlington National Cemetery in 2017 with Gen. John Kelly, near the grave of his son, Robert, a Marine killed in Afghanistan.
"I don't get it," Trump said. "What's in it for them?" Later, Kelly confirmed The Atlantic account of the president at American war graves in Europe. He stayed in his limousine because it was raining. Soldiers, he remarked, are "suckers" and "losers."
The key to staying informed is to find sources who understand what they are talking about. When some TV anchor confuses Ruhollah Khomeini with Ali Khamenei, stop listening.
Even a New York Times news quiz named Khamenei the elder as president of Iran. That is Masoud Pezeshkian, one of a dizzyingly complex skein of authorities and councils. The supreme leader and a million or so men with guns are the ones who matter.
The attached Jon Stewart podcast with Christiane Amanpour and Wendy Sherman, lead negotiator of the 2015 Iran accords, belies popular notions that reduce a 2,500-year-old society to 47 years of zealots chanting, "Death to America."
In 1979, when I edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, correspondents wrote about a mesmerizing mullah whose sermons on cassettes circulated in Tehran bazaars. Suddenly, he pitched up outside Paris near my country place as de facto ruler of Iran.
While still In France, Khomeini promised a democratic political system. A horde of journalists covered his return. Soon after, he grappled with moderate political leaders to shape a theocracy.
The shah, Reza Pahlavi, was abroad during that period ailing from cancer. Jimmy Carter granted him medical asylum. A small crowd outside the U.S. Embassy began chanting whenever camera crews appeared. That grew into the 444-day hostage crisis.
After Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei decreed Iran would limit its missiles to a 2,000-mile range to make clear it had no hostile intentions beyond the neighborhood. He declared Iran wanted nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.
But he also funded proxy militias and terrorists. Barack Obama applied the Reagan formula: trust but verify. The United States, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany signed that accord, which Trump, true to form, called the worst agreement in history.
Trump's double talk defies belief. He says "Midnight Hammer" last July obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Yet as peace talks were making progress, he ordered "Epic Fury." He said instinct told him Iran was days from being able to strike America.
It was not anywhere close. The massive assault with no reason infuriated hardline leaders, who are now incited to bring pain within U.S. borders with sleeper cells and saboteurs.
Trump demands a more moderate leader than Mojtaba Khamanei yet says he might be willing to work with him. Not likely. The new supreme leader was wounded in the onslaught, which killed his father and mother, his wife and a son.
Leavitt says "unconditional surrender" means whatever Trump decides since he has already scored a heroic, historic triumph. Iranian analysts say hardliners are going for a Quranic version of Armageddon. Few see signs of any popular uprising.
Dennis Ross, a masterful U.S. diplomat who knows Iran well, warns that unless the war stops soon, ripples from it threaten global calamity. Trump muses aloud about sending special forces on a mission impossible to seize enriched uranium hidden deep in mountain terrain.
A conversation between Heather Cox Richardson and Paul Krugman added frightening dimensions. Trump did not replace the strategic oil reserves Biden tapped when Russia invaded Ukraine. He wanted to boast about falling gas prices.
Now he is taking 172 million barrels, the most in decades, as part of a coordinated action by 32 International Energy Agency members to draw 400 million barrels from their emergency supplies. The IEA reckons its members now have 1.2 billion barrels.
Besides oil, chemical fertilizer vital to producing food no longer make it through the straits. Climate collapse and tariffs have forced many growers to give up the ghost. Iran has hit key refineries. Now it targets desalinization plants, as dire as as calamities get.
Trump boasts that America has more oil than it needs. But petroleum is fungible in a world market. When it is scarce, prices skyrocket everywhere. Some countries have already depleted their own emergency reserves.
He tried to enlist Kurds to fight Iran. They declined. Many died in the frontlines to defeat the Islamic State caliphate, a victory for which Trump claims sole credit. Later, seeking closer ties with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he stood by as Turkey attacked them.
“Sometimes you have to let them fight," he said. "It’s like two kids in a lot, you got to let them fight and then you pull them apart.”
The good news is much of America is finally catching on. It is hard to convince people about economic miracles when their savings plummet, if they have any at all. The gap between rich and desperate yawns wider by the day.
I'm still delaying my promised guide to credible news. There is just too much. One smart university professor told a friend that Iran was hitting back by flooding America with all the shielded Epstein files. It seems she didn't know Andy Borowitz was satire.
Those who tune it all out, overwhelmed, might just stick with the late-night comedians while they still manage to stay on the air. Stephen Colbert, the most popular, will be off CBS in May. Their jokes are laced with closely researched facts.
He will still be Colbert. But leaving a broadcast network means losing a large persuadable audience not yet motivated to cast a vote. Especially CBS.
David Ellison and his father, Larry, already own CBS. They muscled aside Netflix to add CNN to their Paramount Skydance empire. Trump backed that deal, expecting them to cheerlead for him in exchange. Expect the worst.
Jimmy Kimmel stayed on ABC after a brief lapse because so many Hollywood luminaries forced its owner, Disney, to relent. But major ABC affiliates, including Sinclair and Nexstar, refuse to air his show. They reach 20 percent of the country.
John Oliver is a star on HBO. Unless antitrust suits and a public outcry block the Paramount deal, HBO will also belong to the Ellisons.
Colbert and Kimmel outdid themselves this week when official numbers shed light on Hegseth's wild extravagances. In use-it-or-lose-it accounting, money not spent cannot be carried over and reduces the next year's budget.
In September alone, the Defense Department paid $6.9 million for lobster tails, $15.1 million for ribeye steaks, $12,540 for fruit-basket stands and nearly $140,000 on donuts. The Air Force chief of staff got a Steinway grand piano worth $98,329 for his residence.
But the shocker was $225 million for furniture. That was more in one year than the DOJ spent on that budget line during the past decade. If sanity prevails, Hegseth and his staff won't be sitting on and around it for long.
"Can you imagine the egg Sean Hannity would lay if a Democrat spent that kind of money on lobster tails and a sushi preparation table?" Kimmel asked. "He would never get up again."
Colbert mentioned mine-laying operations in the Hormuz strait and offered a riposte. Americans could set up giant screen aimed into Iran and loop the Melania movie.
In sum, Trump wants it all. He owns his top aides to the point of giving them his preferred Florsheim wingtips, which they are too scared not to wear. It is a simple sign of domination. He also wants to co-own Earth, sharing it with China and Russia.
His Board of Peace was meant to govern Gaza, but its charter goes way behind the unholy land. He is chairman of a back pocket United Nations composed of two dozen countries that pay him a billion-dollar entry fee to court his favor.
In Europe, only Hungary, Bulgaria, Belarus, Armenia and Kosovo have signed on.
These are the stakes abroad along with so much pain and lunacy at home. Trump's poll numbers sink like stones, but his hardcore remains firm, no matter what. Republicans outspent Democrats five to one. That pays for untold backroom dirty tricks.
November, it seems, will come down to a clearcut showdown. Either enough formerly apathetic or still wavering voters step up to thwart election tampering. Or plutocrats and ideologues will rule a brothel with borders for what could be a very long time.
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Jon Stewart with Amanpoour, Wendy Sherman