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The Mistake Tearing Apart the MAGA Base

We may never know if the Felon launched his ill-conceived war of choice against Iran as a distraction from the Epstein files, due to false promises and assurances of Benjamin Netanyahu, or because he foolishly thought he could easily reprise his outward success in Venezuela.   Whatever the Felon's true motivation, the war against Iran is proving to have been a huge mistake from which the Felon has no viable exit strategy other than de facto surrender.  While the military situation is largely at a stalemate with Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, on the domestic political front the war is even a bigger disaster as gas and diesel prices soar and consumer goods across the board, including food prices, are taking a toll on the budgets of American families.  Most of the time the MAGA base appears to be detached from objective reality and the truth and the base is only too happy to believe the lies coming from the Felon's mouth and the propaganda streaming from Fox News. Yet, now with high gasoline prices, rising consumer costs and a war of choice against Iran going nowhere, the MAGA coalition, if you will, appears to be belatedly realizing that not only has the Felon broken his 2024 campaign promises, but their lives are materially worse off than on the eve of the 2024 election.  All because of the Felon's incompetence. A piece at the New York Times looks at the Felon's costly mistake:

It’s been six months since [the Felon] President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked Iran. There are now street protests over fuel costs around the world. But the price of oil is down below $100 again, as it has been for much of the war. In America, we are dealing with higher gas prices and some additional inflation, but given the loud warnings of economic catastrophe we heard in the spring, the economic impact looks relatively modest. As with the tariffs, the war has hurt the economy, but you could also be forgiven for whistling into the fall thinking the panic back in March was a story of the boy who cried wolf.

In politics, though, it’s a different story. There, the war has registered quite conspicuously, right from the start, and now hangs like perhaps the most obvious albatross among many around Trump’s neck. Only one-third of the country approves of Trump’s handling of the war, according to recent polling. But even worse is the effect Americans believe it has had on what they say is their most important issue — and what has become Trump’s worst one. Eight in 10 Americans say the war has raised the cost of living.

[W]hat we see in the polls from the first weeks of September is very clear: a big blue surge on top of what looked already like a big blue wave. Polling averages now put Democrats further ahead this cycle than in the major wave election in 2018. To me, the evidence suggests that Senate seats in Kansas, Iowa, South Carolina and Florida are in play.

The election is still weeks away, Republicans have oceans of cash to spend, and the path to a Democratic Senate always looked from afar like a tightrope walk. But Trump is unpopular, and trending downward. There is no sign of the much-hyped realignment of young, Black and brown voters this cycle — in fact it’s now an open question whether that realignment was really a blip or a mirage. And Democrats don’t even look like a party with a brand problem anymore, steadily surging upward in generic polling and doing even better when candidates are named. Yet what is perhaps most striking to me about the lay of the political landscape heading into the midterm homestretch is the way that among all of Trump’s vulnerabilities — his naked corruption, his malice on immigration, his paltry legislative achievement and his siding so blithely with A.I. accelerationists against a large majority of the country — the Iran war stands out.

The conflict has been a military humiliation, the world’s most expensive and imperious fighting force held at bay by the disposable drones and cheap missiles of a much lesser power. Eighteen U.S. soldiers have been killed, officially, and recent reporting suggests the number may be higher. Regional bases have had to be evacuated to protect American lives, the country’s missile and interceptor stockpiles are now woefully diminished, and conditions on U.S. ships have become a global embarrassment.

The war seemed needless at the outset — at best. Now it looks potentially endless, too.

That’s just the military side of things. At home, in six months of war, Americans have already paid more than $100 billion more for fuel than they would have in the absence of conflict — a Trump-branded surcharge that when annualized is equivalent to nearly 1 percent of G.D.P. The C.B.O. estimates that more than one-third of the increase in American inflation this year is the result of the war, . . . the Iran war may prove just as politically damaging for dramatizing his broken promise to lower prices.

This is new, and not just for Trump. For decades, even if the U.S. wasn’t very good at fighting remote wars, it seemed to feel confident embarking on them without worrying too much about domestic political blowback . . . The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has marked a profound shift of that dynamic, a lesser power expected to duck and cover quickly finding ways to impose costs on the American home front, as well. Look at the president’s approval ratings, and the pattern is remarkably clear. Overall, there is a step down in the spring of this year, coinciding with the beginning of the war. More telling is his approval rating on inflation and the cost of living. Inflation itself jumped in March and has stayed elevated since. And Trump’s net approval on those issues dropped off a cliff . . .

In January, 72 percent of Republican voters said they thought the economy had gotten stronger over the previous year. In September, the number is more than 40 points lower, at just 29 percent.

Not that long ago, liberal commentators in the Biden era spent years racking their brains to explain what was often called the “vibe-cession” — the reality that public sentiment about the economy seemed so much bleaker than the conventional measures suggested. The vibes have collapsed on Trump, too, and quite a lot of that collapse looks tied up with Iran.

Things may be about to get worse still. For six months, the economic effects of the war were muted by a lucky conspiracy of factors: fuel rationing across Asia, growing renewable capacity around the world, political jawboning of markets and the draining of global oil stockpiles, especially by China, whose cut to imports at the start of the war was so significant in this story that it’s been called the demonstration of a new geopolitical weapon. Even so, the gas price signal — that cartoonish standby of American politics — broke through. The price of gas has risen by 50 percent since February. Diesel is now at $6.50 a gallon.

The world’s oil reserves, many of which are already at historic lows, are rapidly approaching their floors. Last week, J.P. Morgan published a research note warning that it had no way to map the chaos of the fall to come. The election is little more than a month away.

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What Are Trump and Hegseth Hiding?

The Felon's war of choice against Iran remains at a stalemate with the Felon speaking of "annihilating Iran" - and committing war crimes - while a defiant Iran says it will not be forced to surrender.  As a result, oil prices are drifting higher again and average Americans are struggling with higher gasoline and consumer prices. Meanwhile, the Felon and the equally deranged Pete Hegseth are trying to hide from both the media and the American public just how severe the damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East has been.  A column in the New York Times looks at some of the destruction:

On Feb. 28, Iranian missiles and one-way attack drones rained down on food, fuel and ship repair depots at the base. High-tech command facilities were demolished. Living quarters were deemed virtually uninhabitable. No deaths were reported, but roughly 1,500 service members and family members were evacuated, leaving behind their vehicles, pets and belongings.

Nearly seven months later, the base that the military once called the busiest 152 acres in the world remains effectively off limits to nonessential personnel. “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, told one displaced sailor during an Aug. 31 global town hall held from Fort Meade in Maryland. “I just want to be completely honest with that.”

It’s not just Bahrain. American bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan have been damaged by Iranian drone and missile strikes. . . . The bloodshed and destruction, a harbinger of America’s future fights, show the need for a long-overdue correction: The Pentagon must revamp how it positions its troops and equipment amid the proliferation of low-cost drones and precision missiles by America’s enemies.

Despite such widespread and severe damage, information on the scale of the damage has come not from the Felon's regime but rather satellite imaging and photos anonymously submitted by service members seeking to get the public to understand the magnitude of the mess the Felon and Hegseth have created.  That piece also notes that with the rise of drone warfare, America may need to rethink its approach to bases and technology.  A second piece in the Times looks at the regime's attempts at covering up it self-created debacle:

On Sept. 15, CBS News published a truly meaningful scoop. It obtained pictures of the extraordinary damage done to American aircraft and American bases by Iranian drones and missiles.

The photographs were astonishing. During my own deployment, I spent many days at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, and now parts of that sprawling base are in ruins. Places I recognized have been blown to pieces. And it’s particularly jolting to see the destroyed remains of American aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

It’s an image that would have been unthinkable during the previous phases of our long war on terror.

While we’ve undoubtedly inflicted tremendous damage on Iran’s conventional military (its air force and navy barely exist, for example), the war has not been as one-sided as the administration has claimed. This was not supposed to happen because we are not supposed to be that vulnerable.

I strongly recommend reading my colleague W.J. Hennigan’s piece on the military impact of Iran’s attacks to better understand how much Iran has exposed American military weakness — a weakness that’s based on perhaps an outdated understanding of the nature of modern war.

I’m wanting, however, to talk about something else — something revealed in the second paragraph of the CBS story: “The images were sent to CBS News by active service members on condition of anonymity because of rigid media restrictions within the military.”

As one deployed service member told CBS News: “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public. We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.” The fact that these pictures were leaked by active service members is significant — more significant than many readers might realize.

First, it’s important to note a few things. The Trump administration has waged this war differently from the patterns established by previous presidents. Not only did it attack Iran without any real public debate, without congressional authorization and without a U.N. Security Council resolution, it went to war in the midst of a campaign against the media unlike anything we’ve seen in recent American history.

As The Columbia Journalism Review reported this past summer, “Press conferences are rare. Pete Hegseth, the so-called secretary of war, takes questions only from friendly outlets. No mainstream news organizations have reporters embedded with U.S. military units in the Middle East. Pentagon sources are increasingly reluctant to talk to journalists for fear of retaliation from the administration.”

As a result, during the opening weeks of the war, Americans were robbed of any way of assessing its progress apart from the dueling news releases and statements from the two combatants. And given the administration’s propensity to lie, we had no way of discerning the course of combat.

The fog of war is always thick, and it’s made thicker by the need for secrecy to disguise combat operations. In this conflict, however, we’ve seen a level of secrecy, deception and outright propaganda that has made knowing the truth virtually impossible — until, at long last, the combination of leaks and commercial satellite photos made it impossible for the administration to maintain its spin.

Americans who were dissatisfied with government news releases and Hegseth’s boasts were reduced to chasing rumors and watching snippets of video on social media. You’d see clips and wonder: Is our naval base in Bahrain on fire? Did Iran destroy a number of American planes on the ground? Are its missiles and drones really getting through? And why is it continuing to fire so many missiles and launch so many drones if our military efforts have been so successful?

An administration that violated the Constitution and evaded democratic accountability in launching the war was now evading democratic accountability for its conduct of the war. Even if you support military action against Iran, it’s hard to argue that either its decision to start the war without Congress or its extreme deception and secrecy has benefited the war effort.

It’s a simple matter of common sense — and something that President Trump may soon learn this November — that beginning a war without public support (much less conducting it behind a veil of secrecy and lies) makes it much less likely that the nation will possess the will to prevail.

But Hegseth’s secrecy betrays a bigger problem — he’s breaking faith with the men and women who’ve volunteered to serve. By robbing them of the ability to tell their stories to the nation and the world, he’s not just silencing them, he’s further separating the military from the civilian population it serves.

The good reporters want to report the truth, and — crucially — good soldiers want the public to know the truth. In fact, it matters a great deal to them that other people know the truth and know their stories.

To hear Pete Hegseth describe the ideal soldier, you’d think of a special forces operator (think of a SEAL or member of Delta Force) in a MAGA hat. He’s a “high-T” bearded man who’s wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt that’s a size too small, all the better to show off his ink and his biceps. And this guy absolutely hates the media. To him, it’s weak and woke.

There are certainly people like that in the military, but in my experience they’re a minority even in the special forces community. . . . . And as citizens we need to hear soldiers’ stories. We need to know, as much as possible, what it is like to be on a patrol, wondering if and when the next blast is going to come. Or what it’s like to be under missile fire, hoping and praying that the interceptors can hit their marks or that the bunkers are strong enough to withstand a direct hit.

I am concerned that one side effect of the 25-year war on terror is the further creation of a warrior class of Americans, people who live largely separate from the rest of us, increasingly as disconnected from civilian life as civilians are from the military experience.

The side effect of this separation is that — for all the respect and honor we give them — we’re not cognizant of their sacrifices because we simply can’t grasp their experience.

That’s why good reporters matter, not simply because they can tell us the truth about military campaigns free from government propaganda but also because they connect soldiers and civilians. They allow us to understand one another. And when Hegseth cuts off soldiers from reporters, he isn’t just silencing reporters, he’s silencing soldiers. He’s suppressing the stories of the most meaningful and dangerous and traumatic moments of their lives.

[A]s we watch Trump flounder and fail, the flaws of rule by decree are obvious. He has no lasting legislative legacy. Many of his most important policy priorities are the legal equivalent of vaporware — they’ll be repealed the instant a new president is in office.

His war is floundering and failing as well, at least in part precisely because he skipped the constitutional process (the war would be difficult under any circumstances; Trump made it more difficult). A disgruntled nation (and disgruntled allies) are unwilling to bear the burden of a fight they didn’t ask for and that was imposed on them without their consent.

When I saw that CBS report, I heard the voices of men and women in uniform who wanted their stories known. They wanted us to see and know what they’ve endured, even if it doesn’t reflect well on the administration that sent them to war, or even on themselves.

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Is Trump’s Latest Press Attack Just Another Distraction?

One of the most exhausting aspects of the Felon's occupancy of the White House is the never ending chaos that the Felon foments, often many believe to distract from media coverage the Felon finds unflattering or too focused on the Felon's failures. Before the Felon insanely launched his war of choice against Iran, media coverage was drifting back to the Epstein sex traffic scandal in which the Felon appears to be immersed up to his eyeballs. The war and the huge adverse impact on energy prices and consumer prices across the board has quickly become an albatross around the Felon's neck that he cannot escape. His poll numbers are the lowest ever and some Republicans are belatedly recognizing that the Felon is becoming radio active with voters other than the hard core Kool-Aid drinking MAGA base.  Hence the need for a trade war with Canada that neither Americans nor Canadians want to distract the media.  Now, as piece at The New Yorker lays out, the Felon has declared war on major news outlets whose main offense has been to accurately cover the Felon's disastrous policies and war of choice.  Here are article excerpts:

In November, 2018, the day after midterm elections that went badly for the Republican Party, Jim Acosta, then a White House correspondent at CNN, questioned President Donald Trump about his messaging on immigration. Things quickly got heated. “I think you should let me run the country—you run CNN,” Trump interjected. “If you did it well, your ratings would be much better.” Trump tried to move on, but Acosta wouldn’t yield, even as an aide walked over to take away the microphone. Trump wasn’t done insulting him yet, either. “When you report the fake news, which CNN does a lot,” he said, “you are the enemy of the people.”

Hours later, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, announced the suspension of Acosta’s press pass, and, for good measure, falsely accused him of manhandling the aide who wanted the mike back. The episode was a big deal—a veteran Times reporter said that he’d not seen anything like it in more than two decades on the beat—but some pundits argued that Trump had manufactured it as a distraction, not only from the midterms, but from his decision, earlier in the day, to fire Jeff Sessions, his first Attorney General.

Late last week, just shy of another round of midterm elections that seem poised to go badly for the Republican Party, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would be barring all of CNN from the White House, along with MS NOW and Politico, “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” (“Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” he added.) This, too, was a big deal, but, once again, various observers suspected that Trump was trying to shift focus from more pressing problems, such as the war in Iran.

History repeats itself, each time as farce—though, of course, some things do change. Back in 2018, MS NOW was still MSNBC and Truth Social did not exist. Acosta, for his part, has since left CNN and struck out on his own, taking advantage of the fragmenting media landscape to cultivate audiences as a commentator on Substack and YouTube; indeed, it was he, in this capacity, who warned New York about Trump laying the groundwork for a constitutional crisis. And, if Trump’s latest media ban is in part a distraction tactic, Acosta suggested that a looming constitutional crisis might no longer be the thing he’s aiming to distract from. As we have learned since 2018, Trump doesn’t fear crying havoc from center stage, klieg lights on.

Hindsight is 20/20, and the perception of Trump as the distracter-in-chief has, perhaps, always been an oversimplification; he may get too much credit for his powers of misdirection, or, at least, for their deftness and intentionality. In places, this framing persists . . . and yet, increasingly, it feels as if the attentional capture that should trouble us most is his own. Over the summer, “Regime Change ,” a book by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, portrayed Trump as stuck inside a warped information bubble. Natalie Harp, an aide known as the “human printer” for reasons that should be clear from context, has been identified as a key conduit to the President, and, sure enough, it was reported over the weekend (by, who else, CNN) that Harp had been showing Trump news clips—including, apparently, a displeasing graphic from Politico—right before he brought the hammer down.

Whether the ban was a masterful gambit or an unsupervised temper tantrum, its most revealing consequence—and, perhaps, point of contrast with Acostagate—has been in the strong reaction of the targets’ colleagues in the media. The response to Acostagate wasn’t tepid, exactly: CNN quickly sued to get back his press pass, in what the Times called “perhaps the most aggressive action yet by a news organization against a president,” and rival outlets—including, notably, Fox News—filed amicus briefs. The subsequent legal wrangling was a little convoluted, but a Trump-appointed judge, Timothy J. Kelly, preliminarily sided with Acosta, and the White House essentially backed down.

CNN, MS NOW, and Politico are now suing on similar grounds—citing the First Amendment, as well as failures of due process—and Kelly has been assigned to the case again. Trump has already pledged to appeal his ruling, which doesn’t convey much confidence, given that Kelly hasn’t issued one yet.

This time around, though, other news organizations have entered the fray with greater speed and force. CNN is one of five outlets in what is known as the “TV pool” that records and shares footage of Trump’s day-to-day movements; following the ban, the other four—CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox—announced an effective boycott of their duties.

Given Trump’s recent habit of putting his foot in his mouth and the “let them eat cake” vibes of opening a new helipad amid spiralling gas prices, the networks may have done him a favor. Still, as Erin Burnett, a host on CNN, put it on Monday night, Trump “feeds off being covered by the very press he says he loathes” and “cutting his mike is akin to cutting the air he breathes.”

The inaudible helipad footage was, at least, an on-the-nose metaphor for this idea, and for the broader impression that Trump’s grip on power is weakening. The very fact of the pool boycott strengthens this impression, too; it’s hard to imagine such resolve being shown, say, a year ago. I’ve argued before that seeking to accommodate Trump’s unreasonable behavior is a mistake, as he simply pushes and pushes until his targets eventually fight back. The line, apparently, has finally been drawn.

So far, so welcome. But even if Trump backs down on the ban or loses in court, his threats to the free press will persist. . . . This second Administration is taking other, more insidious steps, too: systematically restricting critical coverage of the Pentagon; detaining and deporting immigrant journalists in enforcement sweeps; aggressively seizing reporters’ data and electronic devices in leak probes; flexing once obscure arms of the administrative state, not least the Federal Communications Commission, to create a hostile climate for anti-Trump speech.

[A] victory for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico would be significant. But Trump probably has more paths to winning than does the press. The bans may or may not be a distraction tactic. Either way, they’re just one more thing to worry about. 

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