In 1980, the year that Donald Trump turned 34, a group named Vince Vance and the Valiants released a song called “Bomb Iran.” A Weird-Al-style parody of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” (except of course Weird Al would never record a song this mean-spirited), it had its moment in the sun, and some people seemed to enjoy it a bit too much. We can’t say for sure, obviously, but somehow I imagine that Donald Trump was one of those people. And now, 45 years later, he’s finally achieved that dream. Heaven help us all.
So, this is, perhaps, how World War III begins. On the run up to this armageddon-adjacent move, Trump was playing very coy. In one interview, he said:
I mean, you don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.
Various punch lines have been attached to this clip, the most common being “nobody knows what you’re going to do ... including you.” Or, in the Seth Meyers A Closer Look segment I linked to, Seth retorted “Yeah: and that’s bad.” But no one seems to have had my reaction, which was: no, of course the reporter doesn’t know what you’re going to d
And this news has not been without controversy. First and foremost, it seems to contradict everything Trump has been saying about war in the Middle East for the past 20 years or so. (If you need a refresher on exactly what that was, Brian Tyler Cohen has a montage for you.) Secondly, there is zero evidence that Iran is actually any closer to getting nukes now than it has been for the past 30 years; Jon Stewart eviscerates Netanyahu’s constant wolf-crying in a Daily Show episode from all the way back on Monday, not to mention Tulsi Gabbard testifying that Iran wasn’t close, only to have Trump proclaim that he knew better than her (although where he’s getting this information if it’s not from his intelligence experts is a bit unclear). And even some of the most loyalist MAGA-ites have been making rumblings: Marjorie Taylor Greene opposed the move, and Tucker Carlson even took Ted Cruz to task in a completely hilarious interview. (If you want to see a fun take on Tucker and Ted’s little spat, I recommend the Even More News crew’s.)
But the most infuriating thing is that we had a deal with Iran: Obama made it ten years ago. But then Trump blew it up because it was something that Obama had done, and we never made a new one. Jon Stewart covers this very well in this week’s Weekly Show with guests Christiane Amanpour from CNN (whose father was Iranian) and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor under Obama. Not to mention that the entire reason Iran hates the US is that we overthrew their democracy way back in 1953. We’ve been trying to topple the government we directly caused to come to power ever since, and we’ve never succeeded ... not there, and, realistically, not anywhere else either. TIME has a good article outlining why this current effort will also fail.
But that, of course, is logic, and common sense, and understanding of history, none of which our current president has. He announced the bombing via social media (because of course he did) and ended with an all caps screed that “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” The cognitive dissonance is palpable. As Mehdi Hasan said in his interview of Iran expert Trita Parsi:
I mean, Trump is posting tonight on his post “now is the time for peace,” which is a typically Orwellian American imperialistic position: we get to bomb you, and then say now is the time for peace.
But I suppose this is what bullies do.
Other things you need to know this week:
- There were no shortage of people contrasting Trump’s very sad birthday parade with the No Kings Day protests; probably Seth Meyers provides the best one on A Closer Look.
- Some More News had a great explainer video on ICE: its history, and why it’s so problematic.
- The Supreme Court banned gender-affirming care in Tennessee; the ladies of Strict Scrutiny had an emergency mid-week episode to discuss the decision and its repercussions.
- Hank Green goes into a rabbithole of how Congress sneakily uses budget reconcilation to change laws, using an actual example in Trump’s idiotically named budget bill, still currently in the Senate.
Hope is a precious resource right now, so I think you’ll have to settle for schadenfreude this week. As BTC puts it in his video title, “Mike Lindell hit with multi-million dollar defamation judgment.” If you ever got tired of the My Pillow guy blathering on about all the evidence he had of the fraud in the voting machines, this may put a smile on your face.
I hope that we don’t proceed further down the path to World War III. Not holding my breath on it, but we can hope. Till next week.