***. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria…it’s time to bring our great young people home!”…It was contrary to what had been recommended to him…”People are going to fucking die because of this,” a top aide angrily remarked. We all scrambled to figure out what had happened and what Trump’s plans were….In a normal White House, decisions of this magnitude receive sober deliberation….None of these questions were answered. Not only was the decision reckless, but administration officials had been testifying under oath that ISIS was NOT yet eliminated…Now the president was falsely declaring ISIS to be finished, because he just decided it was true one day.” [ “Anonymous: “A Warning.” He was a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security ] [ Do YOU want “your” president making a major decision. “..because he decided it was true on day.”?????? ]
This post is the 9th in a series examining the conduct of Donald John Trump, unfortunately president of the United States. His character and judgment have often been declared deficient. He has been described as being “transactional.” He is THE anti-George Washington, THE anti-Abraham Lincoln.
This post presents excerpts from: “When A Narcissist Goes to War” [ Jamelle Bouie; New York Times; 3/29/26]:
8] “This gets to the real problem. Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him. He is the consummate narcissist, and he is, without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office…Like Trump, the White House does not seem to understand that other people have agency too. It sees itself the same way the president sees himself: as the protagonist of the universe, with everyone else acting as a supporting character or a non-player one. – extras with no will of their own.”
1] “If you can set aside both the unconstitutionality and the immorality of President Trump’s unprovoked war on Iran and focus on the operation itself, it is hard not to be bewildered by the utter lack of real planning or even basic strategic thinking that has gone into it.”
2] “Trump and his aides, according to recent reporting, did not plan for Iran to target shipping and close the Strait of Hormuz. They also do not seem to have planned for serious and sustained retaliation against America’s gulf state allies. They did not plan for an energy crisis and the potential disruption to the global economy, and they did not plan for America’s European allies to, by and large, reject their call for support.”
[ NOTE: reread the three sections above. This is a summary of. TOTAL. INCOMPETENCE!!! A question in YOUR mind should be; what exactly DID they plan for??? Leaving aside other things – the Strait of Hormuz is THE question of this war – how could a responsible government going to war NOT plan for this???? If America wants to retain allies and friends – don’t you plan to protect them; don’t you consult with them??? ]
***. “As president, Trump’s decisions were often made in an instant… Esper warned that President Trump had also brought the United States to “the brink”. of war many times…Former secretary of defense James Mattis had been so worried that Trump would have a nuclear war with North Korea during his watch that he had slept in gym clothes.”
[ Pulitzer prize winner Bob Woodward: “War” ]
3] “It appears that both the president and the White House expected token resistance, followed by the collapse of the Iranian regime, the installation of a pro-American government. – or at least one we could tolerate. – and a return to the status quo ante; a replay.. of the president’s first intervention of the year, in Venezuela.” [ !!!!!!!!!!!!!! ]
4]. “Now that this replay fantasy has collided with a more complex, indeterminate and difficulty reality, Trump is unable to explain his objectives or even give the country a sense of when the war might end. he told Fox News radio that he would ‘feel it in my bones.” [ NOW – are YOU more comforted ????!!!??? ]
5] “If anything, Trump is caught in a classic escalation spiral. When one approach fails. [in this case, the initial airstrikes], he moves to the next. When that fails, he bids higher. And when escalation still doesn’t produce the desired result. – when he faces the choice between accepting defeat or stalemate or going even further – he goes further.”
6]. “What’s striking is how familiar this pattern feels. The administration did not expect the public to be repelled by DOGE. It did not expect outrage over the treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It did not expect Democrats to respond to threats of partisan gerrymandering with their own push to wring as many Democratic seats as possible out of so-called blue states.”
7] “Which raises another key question: Why can’t the White House see what others could have easily predicted? None of this should have been a surprise. Anyone capable of thinking through the actions of other people. – of imagining their perspectives and recognizing that they have agency. – should have been able to anticipate these outcomes and plan accordingly.” [But – maybe not when you are a narcissist?]
*** “Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but Matttis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas…stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history, and even with the map of the world…the president wasn’t reading any of his briefing books, or even the concise three-page version…”I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for half a page.” [Philip Rucker, Carol Leonnig: “A Very Stable Genius”] [NOTE: read this again. they are NOT the first to say this. Aren’t YOU delighted that this man has HIS finger on THE bomb’s trigger???!!!???]
[NOTE: Now – don’t YOU feel better!!! Aren’t you reassured about Trump’s fitness for office? This is a small smidgen of the volumes of reports by more competent human beings about Trump’s uninformed, IGNORANT, impulsive, whim-driven conduct to EVERYTHING. If we are lucky, on January 20, 2029, America will still exist, American democracy will still exist, and the world hasn’t been involved in some highly destructive war, some economic catastrophe. The odds are against us – because the true American patriots who restrained Trump’s worst impulses in term one. – have been replaced by “loyalists” and various Rasputins, some of whom reportedly have Trump “woven around their finger.” Others, like Putin, have learned how to manipulate him. A so-far unanswered question: what “kompromat” does Putin have on Trump?
With Justice For All 