Trump TACOs again

Trump did it again.One day he was threatening to bomb Iran. The next, he was announcing that he’s “holding off” because Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE had supposedly asked him to wait while “serious negotiations” were taking place.That’s Trump’s usual routine: threaten Armageddon, scare everybody, then climb down and pretend the climbdown was some masterstroke of diplomacy.And the bigger problem is that everyone else is now supposed to clean up the mess Trump created. There’s an argument out there that NATO should rush navies into the Persian Gulf to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Thomas Friedman made it this weekend in the NYT. I get the logic. The Strait matters. Oil matters. Global commerce matters. But the problem is, Trump started this. Trump escalated it. Trump’s the one continuing to make a clusterF of this entire situation. So why exactly should Europe rush in to save him from the consequences of his own chaos?And that’s the broader theme here: Trump’s weakness is not keeping us out of war. It’s making war more likely. Look at Taiwan. At his China summit, when asked for a concrete win, Trump said his win was that he has a good relationship with Xi. Great. Meanwhile, Trump sure made Xi ecstatic by talking about Taiwan like it’s a small island too far away to defend, blamed previous presidents for the problem, said Taiwan stole our chip industry, and suggested companies should just move chip manufacturing back to the US.That’s not deterrence. It’s an engraved invitation for China to invade. Trump is telling hostile powers, yet again, that America doesn’t really want to fight for its allies. And the irony is that this kind of weakness doesn’t prevent wars. It encourages them.Then there’s the corruption. Trump’s financial disclosures show more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter alone -- tens of millions of dollars, more than 40 trades a day, involving companies with business before his administration. The details are breathtaking, and yet not surprising. Trump praises a company publicly, and around the same time there are stock purchases. This isn’t normal. This isn’t “business as usual.” This is a presidency that increasingly looks like a hedge fund with nuclear codes.And while that’s happening, we’ve got the rest of the Trump circus: an ICE agent charged after allegedly shooting an immigrant in the leg; Trump’s attorney general still pushing election-rigging claims while admitting they’re having a hard time finding proof; the EPA moving to weaken protections against “forever chemicals” in drinking water (yeah!); Kash Patel getting a VIP snorkel near the USS Arizona, where more than 900 US sailors and Marines are entombed; and Trump’s public-health team including a penile implant expert connected to something called “Erection Connection.”Because of course.The polling is brutal too. Americans are angry about the economy. Trump’s inflation numbers continue to be terrible. His support among white non-college voters -- the core Trump base -- has dropped sharply. And on Iran, the public is not buying what he’s selling. Most Americans don’t think going to war with Iran was right. And even Republican support for the war is below where it should be. Meanwhile, Ukraine may finally be seeing sustained territorial gains against Russia for the first time since late 2023. That matters. Putin’s entire strategy depends on grinding Ukraine down and convincing the West that time is on his side. If Russia is losing ground, getting hit at home, and facing new pressure, that theory starts to crack.And then, because apparently the news wasn’t already stupid enough, Elon Musk melted down over Lupita Nyong’o being cast as Helen of Troy. His argument was that Helen is part of “European literature,” and therefore she simply must be portrayed as white. But Helen’s claim to fame wasn’t that she was white. She was Greek. Mythological, yes, but Greek. The daughter of Zeus, for God’s sake. Elon turned Homer into a white-pride grievance session, because that’s what these guys do. Everything becomes a culture-war tantrum. Everything has to pit us against each other, when sometimes a movie is just a movie.So tonight’s show was really about one thing: The chaos is not accidental. The weakness, the corruption, the incompetence, the fake victimhood, the religious sycophancy, the endless threats followed by retreats -- that’s Trumpism. And sadly, it’s becoming America. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aravosis.substack.com/subscribe