Oil hit $100 a barrel today, and stock markets tanked. President Trump shouted at aides in a four-letter-word tirade about the situation in Iran. He also levied a new round of unwarranted tariff increases.
The president is also brokering a deal with the country where 9/11 was spawned — Saudi Arabia — to give them nuclear power in exchange for their diplomatic recognition of Israel.
All in a day’s work for the world’s most powerful person.
I wanted to use the word “unhinged” to describe how Trump is going about his business as president, but I thought that might be a slur too far, so I asked AI for a softer version. The result was “untethered.” I’ll go with that. It works fine.
I previously wrote about how Trump has become almost drunk with the sense that America is militarily invincible. His overnight — and stunning — success in Venezuela set the stage for Benjamin Netanyahu to convince Trump to carry out an operation in Iran. That operation has, sadly, proven to be mostly unwinnable without a full-scale invasion to depose the IRGC and everyone else in power.
We’re left with a Middle East — and a world dependent on oil from countries bordering the Persian Gulf — that is worse off than before the war began. The Strait of Hormuz is closed, courtesy of the IRGC, and now the Houthis in Yemen are closing down the Red Sea.
Trump, who in June conceded Iran the right to have missiles and get back their money currently held through sanctions, is now once again threatening to bomb the country back into the Dark Ages (when they were pretty powerful as well).
As for tariffs, what have they gotten us except the enmity of countries we deal with economically?
A final question: Is there any end in sight for war or tariffs? That’s a troubling dynamic. The voting public will have the final say come November and the midterms, and it doesn’t look pretty for the GOP.
A famous line from “Oedipus Rex” seems to sum up what Trump faces in a war he should have never agreed to: “How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be when there’s no help in truth!”
