How to think about what’s happening with Trump on Iran
What to think and feel when the president of the United States threatens Iran, as Trump did on Tuesday, that its "whole civilization will die tonight?” (The Associated Press describes how he backed down and agreed to a two-week cease-fire later that day.)
I wouldn’t presume to suggest how others might respond, but I’d like to share with you my reaction since Trump initially began making wild threats on Sunday, with his Truth Social Post: "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
I’ve started my mornings since then with some very helpful sobbing over two things — the news that the Iranian people were preparing for destruction and the fact that Trump is making our country the world’s most dangerous. He has the nuclear codes.
I’m finding that Elvis Presley's “If I Can Dream” song is helpful to cry to right now. He recorded it in 1968, another difficult time, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and amid Vietnam War and civil rights protests.
Another oldie from that era that touches me right now is “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”
Getting my feelings out and doing 4-4-8 breathing (inhale for four seconds, hold it four seconds, exhale 8 seconds or longer — the long exhale is the key) to calm my nervous system usually takes me from anxiety to gratitude. Gratitude to be with you on this cute — at least from a distance, as the Artemis II photos remind us — little planet.
As Iongtime readers know, I studied politics and economics in college and subsequently worked in Congress and in political journalism because I wanted to understand at the broadest level the factors that determine our human experience.
But none of the political principles I've learned over these many years apply to Trump because he’s doesn’t know anything about politics or economics.
Trump does remind me of my father, another man whose reactions were those of a small, frightened boy who would say anything to get his own emotional needs met. When my dad was 87, he told me that if I didn’t do what he wanted, he would destroy my small publishing company.
I’ve also been feeling guilty. Some of you readers have said you’re getting your news only from my blog these days, and I’ve been thinking I should be writing something during these days I’d taken off.
In the future if I’m not around, the best summaries and context I’m aware of are from Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, the former Republicans at The Bulwark, and AP.
Here’s what they’ve been saying:
"Trump’s threat was so broad it did not seem to account for the harm to civilians, prompting Democrats in Congress, some United Nations officials and scholars in military law to say such strikes would violate international law,” AP reported.
Richardson wrote early Wednesday morning: “The American people spent the whole day [Tuesday] wondering if their mad king would destroy the world, only to find out he was terrorizing them in order to protect his ego after starting a disastrous war. Throughout the day, Democratic members of Congress have called for Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to recall the Senate and for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to recall the House of Representatives from break to end the war in Iran and start the process of removing Trump from office.
”Trump’s threat that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again’ was not just a reference to Iran,” Richardson said. “If he had destroyed Iran in our names, unhampered by the Republican Congress members who have vowed to defend the U.S. Constitution, it would also have been an epitaph for the United States of America.”
Reich’s post Wednesday builds to this conclusion: “There’s now a clear blueprint for how to defeat Trump, available to any country, organization, or person on which he seeks to impose his will: Reject his demands and then use your own asymmetric power — a form of jujitsu — to turn Trump’s power against him.”
William Kristol at The Bulwark: “All we can do in the short term is prevent further acts of gratuitous damage to our country and the world. The public can punish Trump’s Republican party this fall. Democrats can try to check Trump through the legislative and appropriations processes.
”But the warning is this: thirty-three more months of an increasingly reckless and unhinged Trump in control of the executive branch of the United States poses too great a risk,” Kristol says. The Founders set up a mechanism to deal with such an unfortunate eventuality in the presidency: impeachment, conviction, and removal from office. So Congress should heed the words of the young prince Guiderius in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: ‘Come on then, and remove him.’”
I’m sending you gift links for the articles below that have paywalls and hope the links will work:
NYTimes: How Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran
”In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here’s the inside story of how he made the fateful decision.”
Experts say Trump threats to destroy Iran's infrastructure could be considered war crime
Former military lawyers on when war crime rhetoric becomes battlefield reality: The slippery slope to total war on Iran
After Trump’s threats, Iranians on Tuesday formed human chains to protect power plants
Eclectic, bipartisan group calls for removing Trump using the 25th Amendment
Roll Call: Trump rhetoric galvanizes congressional Democrats and even some Republicans
How The Wall Street Journal covered Trump’s 12-hour Iran ‘civilization’ countdown
”Some U.S. officials said they were worried Iran wouldn’t fully meet Trump’s demands, potentially bringing both Washington and Tehran back to the brink in two weeks.”
You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer
Senate Majority Leader John Thune
Also in the news since we last chatted
Cambodia honors minesweeping hero rat who cleared 100 landmines
Congo will receive third-country deportees from U.S. under new deal
Vance says EU is meddling in Hungary election as he backs Viktor Orban in Budapest
Trump-Iran ceasefire already is under strain
Trump tears into NATO after ‘frank and open’ meeting with alliance leader Mark Rutte
Company backed by Trump's sons looks to sell drone interceptors to Gulf states being attacked by Iran
Second airman in F-15E shot down over Iran is rescued safely
Trump proposes budget with $1.5 trillion in defense spending and cuts in domestic programs
Only Trump knows why Pam Bondi was fired, says Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
DOJ says Pam Bondi won’t appear for House deposition next week in Epstein investigation
Senate to vote on resolution to curb Trump's Iran war powers
Roll Call: Right now, Democrats are favored to win House majority in November, could win Senate as well
Georgia Republican wins runoff to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat, but Democrats post largest swing yet in special House elections
EPA proposes to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time
Education Department terminates agreements to protect transgender students in several schools
Judge halts Trump effort requiring colleges to prove they aren’t considering race in admissions
White House scales back plan to dismantle CFPB but still wants to slash staff by two-thirds
Supreme Court remade by Trump ushers in historic defeats for civil rights, analysis conducted for WPost finds
Federal government sues Connecticut, Arizona, Illinois over their regulation of prediction markets
Florida GOP Gov. DeSantis signs law to label groups as terrorists and expel student supporters
Florida, Mississippi enact voter citizenship checks, sparking a lawsuit in Florida
Liberal judge Chris Taylor cruises to victory in Wisconsin Supreme Court race
Small Wisconsin city passes nation’s first anti-data-center referendum
Margaret Sullivan: ‘How the media should cover this deranged president’
Robert Reich: The truth about Harmeet Dhillon, likely Trump pick for attorney general
Heather Cox Richardson on the April 9 anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant in 1865, effectively ending Civil War
Politico: Newly created Polymarket accounts bet big on U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours before Trump’s announcement
AP euology for the CIA Factbook, the free standard for world facts that’s now gone
Google is letting users change e-mail addresses they regret choosing
Sixteen inspiring Artemis II photos of our home planet and previously-unseen part of the moon
WPost personal finance columnist: Trump labor plan is a massive 401(k) greed grab for Wall Street
ProPublica: RFK Jr. may reverse a peptide ban he says is ‘illegal’; former FDA officials say he mischaracterized their work
RFK Jr launching podcast to expose ‘lies’ that have made Americans sick
KFF: Trump personnel agency is asking for federal workers’ medical records