Trump: Iran’s Newest Hostage

I won't comment as yet on the gunman who reportedly rushed a security position at the White House correspondent dinner last evening, other than to note some memes on the Internet are suggesting the scene was faked - an extension of the growing belief among in MAGA world that the Butler, Pennsylvania "assassination attempt" was staged. One can understand why in some ways given the Felon's desperation to change the conversation from his cratering poll numbers, the stalemate in the Iran war that sees Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz (oil is currently at $95.00/barrel), and growing reports of corruption and insider trading by the Felon and his regime. Time will tell whether or not the chaos witnessed last evening was staged or not - Viktor Orban had contemplated a stage assassination attempt during his losing election campaign in Hungary.  Meanwhile, a column in the New York Times looks at how the Felon has set himself up to be Iran's latest hostage with not clear way out of the quagmire of his own creation. With negotiations currently canceled and the world still reeling from the loss of oil that would normally transit the Strait, the Felon is increasingly in an untenable position.  Here are column highlights:

“It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.” That’s the opening of the classic O. Henry short story “The Ransom of Red Chief.” The tale, written in 1907, is the ultimate parable about the perils of trying to seize and control a hellion so devious, so maniacal, so awful that the captors become the captives.

[The Felon] President Trump went along with Bibi Netanyahu’s Panglossian case for slamming Iran. It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.

After nearly two months of tangling with the demonic Iranian leadership and its allies, [the Felon] Trump looks desperate to run for the hills. He constantly says he has defeated the mullahs and “obliterated” their military power, and yet Iran refuses to be subdued.

Trump says there’s a new regime that’s easier to deal with, but actually it’s the same regime but worse — run by hardened, fanatical generals. Iran has not turned over its enriched uranium, and negotiations are touch-and-go. The Strait of Hormuz, which Trump keeps insisting is open, is closed. Trump is blockading the Iranian blockade.

“Iran has proven to be far more resilient and resourceful than he was prepared for,” Richard Haass, a foreign policy adviser for President George W. Bush, wrote in his newsletter, “Home & Away.” “Almost all the administration’s assumptions have been proven wrong.”

Aside from the weakening of Iran’s conventional military capability, Haass said, “virtually every other metric shows the United States, the region and the world to be worse off.”

The Iranians are tormenting Trump — even as they out-troll the master troller, viciously mocking the president as a “L.O.S.E.R.” and Bibi puppet who wants to distract from the Epstein files.  One viral Iranian rap addressing Trump calls the conflict “a trap you couldn’t see. Welcome to the graveyard of your vanity.”

Now that Iran has flexed power in the strait, [the Felon] Trump has to bargain with it to get back to where things were before.

He is pinioned in a weird nook and cranny of the planet that seems almost medieval, sitting next to a backward, villainous theocracy. And yet ships carrying over 20 percent of the world’s oil must traverse the narrow passage to get to the Arabian Sea.

[The Felon] Trump, who grew overconfident after his adventurism in Venezuela, is being driven to distraction.

He got so rattled when the two American airmen were shot down, Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey reported in The Wall Street Journal, that he “screamed at aides for hours.” Last month, Trump talked about the danger of becoming another Jimmy Carter, spiraling amid the hostages and a failed rescue with eight helicopters lost.

Trump tried to scare the Iranians with a profane post on Easter and a wild threat to destroy their civilization. But Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. The Iranian mullahs and generals are the terrors of the strait.

[The Felon] Trump has forsaken the one good Middle East policy he had: avoiding the mirage of quick wins while getting sucked once more into “blood and sand,” as he dismissively called it during his first term.

But, seduced by the detestable Bibi, he got suckered into the blood and sand. Unlike W., who had the good grace to trump up a case for war, Trump let Bibi lead him by the nose into this one, blowing off Congress, our allies and many furious MAGA acolytes.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal in their forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” that the [Felon] president brushed aside Gen. Dan Caine’s warnings that a war with Iran would drastically deplete our weapons stockpiles and jeopardize the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. . . the United States has burned through half — around 1,100 — of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China.

The president with the attention span of a gnat posted on Truth Social that “I have all the Time in the World, but Iran doesn’t — The clock is ticking!” But he is the one who has lost control of the timeline, and himself. . . . now, in frantic Truth Social posts, in calls with reporters and in interviews, he employs hyperbolic wishful thinking. His staff is resigned to a midterm electoral disaster brought on by higher gas prices and a lack of focus on the economy.

And he keeps returning to his gargantuan ballroom. According to a Washington Post analysis, “Trump has invoked the ballroom on about a third of the days this year.” It’s a pleasant mental escape, now that he has tied himself into a Gordian knot with Iran.