THIS IS THE END
The War in Iran is Trump's Waterloo ...
We are less than 100 days before early voting starts in America’s crucial midterm elections, and there will be two certainties during and after the vote is counted:
The Democrats will win back the House of Representatives convincingly.
The anti-American Donald Trump will once again do whatever he can to throw out our vote so he can get on with finishing off our country.
Less certain is which party will prevail in the Senate, but every day Trump’s war in Iran drags on toward nowhere, it is looking increasingly likely he will be busy trying to throw out those results, too.
Welcome to war-torn America.
In addition to taking a terrible toll on the United States’ standing in the world, and signaling yet again how little Republicans really value life, Trump’s idiotic war is a political gift to a Democratic Party that is struggling to define itself, but does have a clear understanding of right and wrong.
Of all the dangerous and idiotic things Trump has done during his 11-Year War on America, extending his battle against good and decency outside our borders and finally into Iran is easily his politically shoddiest. That takes into account his horrific Epstein coverup, but I am not sure even that has shaken the faith of his MAGA cult as much as this smoldering manmade disaster underway in Iran.
You see, Trump could get away with turning our troops against us in our cities — his cult LOVES that — but turn those troops loose into a known quagmire in the Middle East? Well, now you are stretching the bounds of their previously unlimited loyalty. Especially if it results in an increase in gas prices that they previously found completely intolerable during Joe Biden’s term.
They so desperately want to stay with their America-attacking action hero no matter what, but he is making it very, very hard for them ...
The rest of the American electorate is roundly against this war. Most polling shows about 33 percent of America support this nuclear-powered stupidity, 60 percent oppose it, and the remaining seven percent coalesce to represent the very worst of America, because they apparently have no opinion whatsoever, while they busy themselves taking selfies on their phones while walking through traffic, and complaining that nobody understands them.
Among Independents the war is about as popular as Stephen Miller in the front row of a Bruce Springsteen concert with only 13 percent saying it was the right decision to attack. In a political world where Independents vote with Democrats at even a modest 60%-40% clip there will be a Blue Tsunami in November.
To borrow overused phrasing: Iran is increasingly looking like Trump’s Waterloo.
After using America’s military to wreak havoc around the world with little to no pushback from his feeble party, the draft-dodger got even more cocky, and overplayed a bad hand in Iran, while Israel’s despicable Bibi Netanyahu slid him some very bad cards underneath the shaky table.
Going after Iran was always going to be stupid, but going after Iran with no plan, and no definition of what winning looked like was dangerous, and American lives would once again be claimed in a region where Republicans have proven over and over and over again they value oil more than American blood ...
There are no good options in Iran, except the one Barack Obama made in 2015, and Trump blew to pieces.
If Trump really wants to win this war — assuming “winning” means toppling Iran’s government — he will have to put U.S. boots on the ground in the country, and that is fraught with obvious difficulties, risk, and the certainty that caskets bearing our dead, will become our second-largest import from the region.
That also means occupying the place, which we should know after hundreds of years of screwing this kind of thing up in the past, will never work.
And don’t forget: We will also be doing this alone, because Trump has successfully alienated us from other democracies across the world and inside NATO, whose countries aren’t run by impetuous morons.
He can continue to bomb the bejesus out of the place, of course, but that will also be seen as a continuing and costly escalation with no end.
In fact, as too often happens these days, he continues to escalate right before our eyes, because here is an AP alert that just flashed on my screen as I was building this piece:
U.S. President Donald Trump has warned Iran that the U.S. will destroy one bridge or power plant each time Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Such a clever guy …
I guess you wouldn’t expect a dullard who treats history with the same respect he shows women to know that wars kill presidencies faster than he kills truth.
Ask Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush about that.
On Tuesday his overmatched Secretary of Defense — I’m sorry, WAR — was sitting in front of the Senate and insulting them, his country and our troops while wagging his crooked finger and demanding more money for a war without an end, or a definable mission.
Pete Hegseth is the definition of a big asshole.
He is a blaring warning sign for the dangers of toxic masculinity — a walking, talking billboard for what is most wrong in America right now.
I’ve seen these weak, obnoxious guys my whole life. They are incredibly insecure and take it out on everybody else. They are always the loudest guys in the room because they have nothing to say worth listening to.
Hegseth is rude ...and incapable of growing up. Needy.
He is a little man’s idea of a big man.
Just ask Speaker Mike Johnson …
Hegseth appeared before the Senate Tuesday with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. I suppose this was done to help him look like a more sympathetic cause, but only made the farmers Rollins represents look even more pathetic themselves. It seems Rollins was asking the American people for an additional $10 billion in farm aid, and that sickening irony demands 30 column inches alone.
Really farmers? The guy YOU voted for proceeded to predictably screw you with HIS moronic tariffs. Now YOU want the same government aid you deny others? You do see how phony, disingenuous and racist this makes you look, right?
Things went so badly for Hegseth, that even Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the committee, was back to showing her public concern, saying she found it “deeply troubling” that the Pentagon has blocked or denied promotions to various officers, particularly women and minorities.
We have to know by now that she gets off on all of it, because nothing excites her more than spanking a Republican man publicly, while holding his hand privately.
Right Brett Kavanaugh?
Do not fall for this and elect this evil woman again, Maine. A weary country is begging you …
If nothing else, Collins’ slobbery balancing act served to underline the dangers Republican politicians are in as General Bone Spurs throws bombs against so many walls in Iran and hope they somehow stick.
He is a man without a plan, and America is bleeding out because of it.
Instead of turning his attention to the myriad problems he has caused at home, he is bogged down in Iran with no way out and no good options.
So now we dig in, vote like hell, and wait for him to implement the bad ones.
That will most certainly include assaulting our vote.
Because we know that while Trump has always been a violent man, attacking America is the thing he relishes most ...
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)
I love every word you wrote, Earl. Keep up the great work!
I hope to God that this is his Waterloo moment and he will finally get the” comeuppance” he’s so deserves, which will be him going down! But his followers are just narcissistic as he is! He’s a megalomaniac they all are and they can’t accept defeat!! Let’s just hope that cooler heads do prevail and he goes down!!!