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Trump Is Caught in the Trap He Set

Three more servicemembers have lost their lives in the Felon's war of choice and the Pentagon is not forthcoming with information concerning troops injured as the war heats up - also concerning, the Pentagon wants to hide spending - as the price of oil inches up more everyday.  Should Iranian allies in Yemen close the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, prices could skyrocket and $4.00/gallon gas might look appealing compared to what Americans and others might face.  Meanwhile, the Felon continues to lack a consistent rationale for the war and seemingly has no way out of the mess of his own creation, having dismissed warnings of how Iran might respond.  Who knows how many lives may yet be lost or how much damage could be done to both the U.S. and global economies. Obviously, Iran's military capabilities have not been destroyed or decimated as the Felon has claimed and Iran's drones are a far less expensive means to inflict damage that America's incredibly expensive fighter jets and missiles.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at where the Felon and the country find themselves and the lack of an apparent exit from the war that will not count as a defeat. Here are highlights:

You could, if you were so inclined, tell a story of the Donald Trump era via memes. Pepe the Frog, “This Is Fine” Dog, “Covfefe,” Leopards Eating People’s Faces—things of that nature. One of the essential examples would be an October 2016 Twitter post by Jesse Farrar, parodying the enduring belief that the walls were closing in on Trump . . .

The conviction that Trump was on the brink of final collapse remained popular in some quarters for years after Farrar’s post—as anyone who remembers the fevered anticipation around Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and the subsequent letdown can attest—but at some moment, the tweet transformed from a riposte to naive pundits into a shorthand for the strangeness of American politics.

During the previous decade, Trump weathered a series of scandals that would likely have been career-ending for any other politician: the Access Hollywood tape, in which he boasted that he would “grab” women “by the pussy” without consent; the firing of then–FBI Director James Comey; his indiscreet sharing of intelligence with Russian officials in the Oval Office; an impeachment for attempting to extort Ukraine; an egregious approach to COVID-19, followed by a bout with the disease that reportedly nearly killed him; a series of attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, culminating in the January 6 insurrection; his absconding with sensitive documents to Mar-a-Lago after his term ended; and 34 felony convictions. Despite all of this, Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. The notion of his invincibility became canon. Perhaps Trump himself came to believe it.

But the war in Iran has dealt a serious blow to the idea that Trump can slip out of any bind easily. Over the past three days, three American service members died in that conflict: two in Jordan, where Iranian missiles struck a military base, and a third in Iraq, killed by debris during the intentional destruction of an Iranian drone. The official American death toll in the Iran war now sits at 17.

That number is low—still less, for example, than the toll from the 1983 invasion of Grenada—although the military appears to have been keeping quiet just how many troops have been injured. . . . “Trump has offered no comprehensive explanation about why his administration is ordering U.S. military personnel to put their lives on the line.”

And the death toll may begin to rise, because Trump appears to be on the verge of being drawn into a larger war. As the defense analyst Brynn Tannehill wrote in The Atlantic last week, the president faces only bad choices. The United States could effectively cede control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, accepting a fee system that breaks global precedent and centuries of American policy and granting a hostile power the opportunity to close an important shipping lane at any future moment. Or the White House could embark on a major ground war, because fighting over the past few months has shown the limitations of relying on air power. That would be politically hazardous, likely lead to more American deaths, and suck the U.S. into a long-running presence in the region, and it might still fail. Meanwhile, the conflict threatens to grow even larger as Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen threaten to close some traffic to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

He’s offered different answers about whether one goal is regime change, and whether that has been achieved. He has suggested that the purpose is to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, even though it was open before the war and even though that may no longer be manageable. The administration has also struggled to explain to skeptical members of Congress why it needs more war funding.

In short, Trump’s misadventure in Iran is a story of hubris. The president didn’t bother to plan or consider the dangers before he started a war, and now it has spiraled to a point where even he seems unable to find a way to wriggle out of a jam. For the first time in a very long time—to some extent, the first time in his life—Trump appears to be facing the consequences of his actions.

The costs are measured not only in the blood of American service members but also in the deaths of Iranian civilians and of merchant mariners trying to sail through the Persian Gulf, in the damage to the global economy, and in the erosion of American alliances and a long-standing global order. Being confronted with a snare that he can’t escape must be unpleasant for Trump, but people around the globe will face misery because of it.

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The Felon's War with Iran Is His Biggest Economic Blunder

During his 2024 campaign the Felon promised to lower consumer prices "on day one" and  that under his regime there would be no more foreign "forever wars."  Since retaking office, the Felon has broken both promises, first through his insane - and illegal - tariffs and then by launching a war of choice against Iran. During the brief cease fire with Iran, oil and gas prices dropped closer back to normal, but with the resumption of open hostilities (and more service member deaths) those prices are again rising and will further aggravate the affordability crisis harming so many, many average Americans.  The Felon's solution? Spew lies about the economy and the Iran war and, on Thursday, do a prime time address whining about the "stolen 2020 election."   Not surprisingly, voters are not amused and recent polls show the Felon with a 32% approval on the economy and only 27% on the Felon's handling of inflation.  With the Iran war seemingly moving toward more open conflict, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and Iran hitting oil infrastructure in Gulf states, things will likely only worsen as the 2026 mid-term elections approach.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the Felon's foolish war with Iran which will likely only further hurt Republican candidates.  Here are highlights:

As far as President Donald Trump is concerned, the summer fun is already over. He outraged Atraditionalists by staging a U.F.C. fight night at the White House for his eightieth birthday, celebrated the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the country’s founding by branding the Democrats as “communists,” and flew to a NATO summit in Turkey, where his fellow-strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rolled out a turquoise carpet for him. Now it’s back to the hard stuff: the lingering conflict in the Middle East, the economy, and the midterm elections, which are less than four months away.

These three phenomena are interlinked, and not in a good way for Trump. At the start of this year, the White House and Republican leaders were hopeful that, come summer and the midterm-campaign season, they would have some positive economic developments to point to. “Growth is exploding,” Trump told the Detroit Economic Club, in January. “Productivity is soaring. Investment is booming. Incomes are rising. Inflation is defeated.” Trump is an inveterate bullshitter, of course, but his Administration does employ some economists who have at least one foot in reality, and they, too, were feeling hopeful.

Although the U.S. economy certainly wasn’t exploding with vigor, it had defied fears that his blanket tariffs would plunge it into a recession. In 2025, G.D.P. grew by 2.1 per cent—below the growth rates from the Biden years, but respectable enough. The inflation picture also seemed benign.

This convergence raised hopes among Trump’s advisers that the central bank could soon resume cutting interest rates. Meanwhile, buoyed by enthusiasm for A.I., the stock market was hitting records on a regular basis, and Big Tech companies were making huge investments in chips, servers, and software. In the first three months of the year, these expenditures boosted G.D.P. by roughly 1.3 per cent on an annualized basis.

Unfortunately for G.O.P. politicians who are on the ballot this fall, this optimism turned out to be largely wishful thinking. To be sure, the mania for A.I. investments continues unabated. Taken as a whole, though, the economy seems to be plodding along much as it did last year. In May, inflation rose to the highest level in more than three years—4.2 per cent—and last month job growth slowed sharply.

Not surprisingly, many Americans are still in a funk over the cost of living, and Trump’s outlandish claims, which he still insists on repeating at every opportunity, ring hollower than ever. In a recent Harris poll, just sixteen per cent of respondents said the economy is getting better; fifty-seven per cent said it’s getting worse. . . . Given these sentiments, it’s hardly surprising that Trump’s job-approval rating on the economy is in the cellar: thirty-two per cent, according to an Economist/YouGov survey released last week. In the same poll, his approval rating on inflation was even lower: twenty-seven per cent.

Surely, the Trumpian economic scenario was wildly overoptimistic to begin with. (In January, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, predicted that G.D.P. growth would hit more than five per cent in the first quarter.) But the A.I.-investment boom is genuine enough; how long it can last is another matter. Conceivably, 2026 could have been a year of decent G.D.P. growth, falling interest rates, modest inflation, and rising real wages. But then Trump, in concert with Israel, decided to bomb Iran. As the war expanded, the price of a barrel of crude oil rose from about seventy dollars to more than a hundred and ten dollars. The cost of a gallon of gasoline, which had been under three dollars, on average nationwide, jumped to $4.50. And the prices of other oil products that play a crucial role in the economy, including fertilizers and plastics, also spiked.

These developments amounted to a “self-induced supply shock” for the American economy, Lavorgna, who left the Trump Administration in March, told CNBC, last month. He went on: “The problem is this war . . . from a forecasting perspective, it changed things, and changed things monumentally.” The pickup in inflation didn’t go unnoticed at the Fed, which has a legal mandate to insure price stability. At a policy meeting last month, nine of the eighteen officials on the Fed’s policymaking committee indicated that they expected at least one rate hike by the end of the year.

It was in this context that the Trump Administration reached a provisional agreement with the Iranian government, formalized in a memorandum of understanding, to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. After the deal was announced, the price of crude, which had already fallen significantly in anticipation of an agreement, dropped further: by the start of last week, it was close to its prewar level of some seventy dollars. Later in the week, however, after hostilities resumed and Trump declared the ceasefire “OVER,” transit in the strait came to a virtual stop. . . . . The price of gasoline, after dropping below four dollars in June, has started to creep up again.

Even before this uptick, Trump had been complaining that the cost of gasoline hadn’t fallen as far as the price of crude had, and he accused Big Oil companies of price gouging. They will certainly pad their profits if they can. But it was Trump’s reckless decision to start a war with Iran that threw the industry into turmoil and upended global supply chains.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the June Consumer Price Index. Reflecting the drop in gas prices last month, it will likely show the headline rate of inflation falling below four per cent. . . . it’s unlikely to change the mood of ordinary Americans, who want to see the prices of groceries and other essential items falling—not merely going up at a slower rate. The crisis of affordability was, arguably, the biggest factor in Trump’s victory in 2024. But, since reëntering the White House, he has only accentuated the problem: by imposing hefty tariffs on countless imported goods, and by starting a needless war. Adopting the Red Scare tactics of the last century seems unlikely to save Republicans from the political consequences of this folly.

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America's Divide Is Moral, Not Political

Time and time again, Republican "friends" will contend that they and I should not allow "politics" to drive us apart and that we need to simply "agree to disagree." Anything rather than face the reality that differences in morality are what really divide us, not merely political differences. This is particularly true in the era of the Felon and his MAGA base where hatred of others due to skin color, national origin, sexual orientation or differing religious beliefs and a near revelry in cruelty towards those deemed "other" are the defining nature of both the MAGA base and the larger Republican Party.  A desire for paying less in taxes does not excuse closing one's eyes to cruelty and the hate spewed by the Felon on an endless basis.  True, America has much ugliness in its past - think slavery, Jim Crow, genocide against Native Americans, and racial bigotry - but  we appear to be at another low point in national morality in part because the Felon has given a green light to behavior and policies that once would have been unacceptable.  Perhaps most ironic is the embrace of the Felon, a thoroughly immoral individual, by evangelicals and "conservative Christians" who endlessly wear their religiosity on their sleeves even as they totally betray and ignore Christ's gospel message. A piece by a pastor looks at this moral divide  that underlies so-called political differences.  Here are highlights:

This mess we’re in? It has nothing to do with politics.

The current President is a court-adjudicated rapist who recently paid nearly 6 million dollars in damages for sexual assault and defamation. His name appears tens of thousands of times in the Epstein Files, and he has been credibly accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and harassment. He is a 34-count felon, indicted four separate times, with 88 charges, ranging from fraud to election interference. The only reason he is not in prison right now is that he has assumed the Presidency and marshalled the vast resources of the office to pervert our judicial and legal processes.

Despite all of this, we still have family members, friends, former friends, and neighbors who would vote for him again right now.

In what universe, in what iteration of this nation over the last 250 years, would a being this bereft of human decency have been tolerated in office, let alone passionately embraced? In what legitimate political movement would rape and treason not be dealbreakers? The answer is none. This isn’t a political fracture. I wish it were, though, as that would be relatively easy to navigate.

We are not a nation, as we’ve often thought, simply positioned on either side of the aisle working to craft reasonable, good-faith compromise somewhere in the humane middle. Sadly, that ship left the port a long time ago.

We aren’t even contending with a blind political tribalism that sees party over country, as the GOP of a decade ago has long since been rendered unrecognizable, abandoning its calls for a limited Government in exchange for unabashed authoritarianism.

The prevailing narrative of the last decade is that America has been fractured by political ideologies, bunkered down in disagreement on what path will most serve the common good. This is a dangerous fiction we need to discard once and for all.

The dividing lines in America have nothing to do with party affiliation anymore.

Just open up your phone, eavesdrop at the checkout line, or talk to your neighbor, and you’ll see the lines along which we now find ourselves:

One side celebrates innocent people being assassinated in front of their children, without due process. One side rejoices in strangers going without food or medical care or housing, without knowing a single one of their stories. One side applauds the bombing of foreign school children and the destruction of entire populations. One side blindly despises other people for their gender identity, despite it having no impact on their lives whatsoever. One side reduces an entire population to terrorists and drug dealers to justify their swift eradication. One side conflates whiteness with righteousness. One side defends the protection of pedophiles. One side steadfastly worships a felonious, treasonous rapist.

And none of this is about politics; it’s about when faced with the suffering and injustice in our path, whether we will default to compassion or to cruelty. America’s present divide reveals the orientation of our hearts as we move through the world, the story we tell ourselves about other people, and what we want our lives to be marked by. . . . Will we see empathy as our highest calling as human beings, or as a character flaw needing to be discarded?

One of the greatest lies we’re asked to accept as gospel is that all opinions are valid, that every position is somehow equally worthy of merit and deserving of consideration. We’re often led to believe that in every situation where an impasse is reached, the most humane response is to “agree to disagree”.

Of course, we can disagree on all sorts of issues without that disagreement being a relationship killer, but there are some things that, as people of faith, morality, and conscience, we simply will not allow—and these things transcend politics.

Refuse to be gaslit and guilted for allowing “politics” to get in the way of your relationships because that’s not what’s happening here. This is an effort by people around us to sidestep conversations that call them to accountability for their beliefs, choices, and alignments.

It’s time we stopped pretending that our current national crisis is political, as that only serves to distract us from the far more worrisome truth that we need to reckon with:

We’re not politically divided; we are morally fractured.

We are not fighting legislative battles but a war to stay human or abandon our humanity altogether. No election result will change that. No power balance in Congress will remedy it. No dictator’s expulsion will heal the brokenness of the people around us. The question is, what will?

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