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The World's Most Powerful Man, Still Stuck In America's Most Stupid War

The World's Most Powerful Man, Still Stuck In America's Most Stupid War

As the "memorandum of understanding" that was supposed to herald the end of Donald Trump's war on Iran expires, so may the American public's patience with his tragic clowning on the global stage. The world's leaders lost patience with Trump long ago, except for American adversaries like Vladmir Putin and Xi Jinping, who benefit enormously from his incompetence and malice.

What the expiration exposes, as if everyone had not already worked this out, is that Trump's impetuous warmaking has boxed the United States into a diplomatic and military cul-de-sac, leaving us and our allies in a worse position without achieving any of his stated goals.

The only initiative that Trump appears capable of accomplishing is to make a truly historic debacle even worse — by threatening, as he told a Fox News reporter, to "bomb the shit" out of our allies in the Gulf state of Oman, who have tried to serve as a negotiating conduit with Iran. Evidently Trump is frustrated by the Omani inability to solve his self-imposed conundrum, and angry that, like our other allies in the region, they feel growing pressure to find a way to open the Strait of Hormuz. They were probably not comforted to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth puffing himself up to declare that we can keep the strait blocked "indefinitely."

Hegseth's vow would appear to contradict Trump's frequent public lying about that waterway, which he has described as "open" thanks to the U.S. military presence. Neither Hegseth's boasting nor Trump's prevaricating has assuaged the pain of rising energy costs for everyone, including American consumers. As voters, they must be wondering how best to punish this feckless and foolish leadership, whose pitiful record now includes their failure to provide decent living conditions for our sailors on the ships patrolling the Mideast waterways on extended missions.

Bereft of any strategic capacity on his own, and surrounded by clowns and frauds in top national security positions, the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, can find no way out of the ongoing crisis that he alone created.

The end of the ceasefire, according to the White House, will shortly result in additional "crushing" sanctions against Iran, which will feel familiar to the Iranians and seems unlikely to accomplish anything beyond that same tactic's failure so far. Nor are any of the other choices available to Trump very promising.

He can start bombing Iran again, which doesn't seem to move the regime toward meeting any of Trump's demands. He can try to resume negotiations, with the full knowledge that the Iranians are not going to meet his maximal demands on their disarmament and nuclear program. Or he can simply walk away, as Nate Swanson, an Iran expert at the Atlantic Council, hinted Trump might do — and then try to explain to the nation and the world why we wasted the lives of Iranians and Americans, as well as a vast treasure and a military stockpile, for nothing.

Like Trump himself, we have no idea what will come next in this disastrous misadventure. We do know that the Russians and the Chinese, our authoritarian adversaries, have profited mightily from this president's bumbling, stumbling, megalomaniacal conduct of foreign and economic policy.

What we also know is that this diplomatic dead end was perfectly predictable by anyone who has paid attention. Without any particular expertise in Iranian or Gulf affairs, I predicted it last April, when an earlier ceasefire expired and Trump sent his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to negotiate with the Iranians.

"Even if Donald Trump had actually written The Art of the Deal' (he didn't write a word of that bestseller, his first big fraud), it would be foolish to expect that the president or his hapless envoys can deliver a viable agreement with the Iranians anytime soon. Taken together, they lack all the qualities required to achieve the complex diplomatic resolution required in this crisis — like the (nuclear) agreement that Trump so cavalierly discarded in 2017...

"The problem isn't only that Trump and his team of morons neglected to fashion any plan for their sudden urge to attack a faraway country with a million men under arms, a big weapons arsenal, and a long history of ideological resilience. That was a historic and particularly stupid mistake, characteristic of Trump's shallow intellect — but now, after inflicting massive damage on Iran, the world and our own economy, he and his government are evidently stuck in the quagmire they created."

In these circumstances, being right is seriously overrated. I would far rather have been wrong.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is available wherever books are sold.

Peggy Flanagan

Progressive Wins Minnesota While Moderate Takes Wisconsin (And DSA Flops)

Progressive Democrats notched another significant victory in Tuesday’s Minnesota Senate primary when voters chose Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, an advocate of Medicare for all, over the more moderate Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN).

Flanagan was also backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), but notably was not endorsed by the Minnesota chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America. She will square off against Michele Tafoya, a former sideline reporter for NBC’s Sunday Night Football who won the Republican Senate nomination.

In neighboring Wisconsin, meanwhile, DSA suffered a stinging defeat when Francesca Hong, its candidate for governor, narrowly lost the Democratic primary to David Crowley, the more moderate Milwaukee County executive.

Hong had led by double digits in pre-primary polling, unnerving Democratic leaders who believed that her far-left positions and social media history had made her unelectable against Rep. Tom Tiffany, who easily won the GOP gubernatorial primary. Although Hong had tried to walk back positions calling for abolition of police, prisons, and the Thanksgiving holiday, her halting turnabout only made matters worse.

Meanwhile, Crowley had rescinded an earlier decision to suspend his campaign after other Democrats dropped out – and at the last minute, incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers delivered a crucial endorsement of him.

Both Crowley and Flanagan would make history if elected – the latter as the first Native American woman in the United States Senate, and the former as the first Black candidate elected to statewide office in Wisconsin. In the hours following the final result, Hong immediately endorsed Crowley, promising to campaign with him across the state, while Craig likewise strongly backed Flanagan after congratulating her on the victory.



His Name Is Kennedy But His Character Is Trump -- And He Sells Us Out Every Day

His Name Is Kennedy But His Character Is Trump -- And He Sells Us Out Every Day

At the core of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s rise as a political celebrity is the enduring American reverence for his family. Decades ago, during his career as an environmental advocate, that lingering aura inspired admiration and even hope.

Yet the longer Bobby Jr. remains in the corrupting orbit of this regime and its maximum leader, the more he has come to reflect the degraded values and morals of the Trump family rather than his own.

Flawed as the legendary but human Kennedys were, nobody has ever thought of Jack, Robert and Teddy as low-rent grifters seeking to scam the government or the public for personal gain. Quite the opposite, since they devoted their political careers to protecting the American people from crooks like Roy Cohn -- the late Trump lawyer and moral mentor who was twice indicted when Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was attorney general.

On the current record, it is clear that RFK Jr. has long since abandoned the illustrious example of his forebears and embraced instead the grabbing-with-both-hands ethic of his new political family. During the past year alone, Bobby has abandoned all the environmental and public health principles that supposedly animated his career for the past 40 years, strictly to enrich and promote himself and his dear leader Donald Trump (a man his father and uncles assuredly would have scorned).

Consider just one of the many abuses of power perpetrated by Bobby for his own personal and political gain. As disclosed earlier this summer in The New York Times, he went out of his way to protect the distribution of Kratom, a highly toxic, mind-bending drug, mostly sold in gas stations and convenience marts, that has been linked to thousands of deaths.

Exercising his authority as Health and Human Services secretary in the fall of 2025, he called the governor of Ohio in an effort to stop a state ban on the dangerous substance. Among the Kratom producers who benefited from this action -- the opposite of what any public health official should have done -- was a man formerly known as Jerry Cash, an oilman who had served time in prison for embezzlement and upon release changed his surname to Ross.

As Jerry Ross, the Kratom mogul poured $162,000 into the defunct RFK Jr. 2024 presidential committee after Trump named Bobby as health secretary. And several months later, after Food and Drug Administration granted additional favors to boost kratom, Ross wrote another million-dollar check to Kennedy's MAHA PAC.

Kennedy's brazen favor-mongering on behalf of himself and Trump -- which also extends to his misregulation of the tobacco and vaping industries -- has now drawn the attention of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. On August 3, Wyden opened an investigation of Kennedy's misconduct and how it has greased him, Trump, and other cabinet members with a stinging letter to the health secretary:

It has come to light in recent weeks that you are paving a yellow brick road to lead kratom and Big Tobacco into more American homes. Both industries will flood gas stations and convenience stores with products that pique the curiosity of kids and teens and launch them into addiction, and both industries obtained the right to do so by paying millions to you and to President Trump. Big Tobacco has been running this playbook for decades, but now they get to do it with the Secretary of Health and Human Services on their side.

Like Trump, Kennedy has profited from blatant conflicts of interest while refusing to divest himself of those deals and arrangements. He still stands to profit from his consulting contract with a Los Angeles personal injury law firm that is suing vaccine makers such as Merck. When he was confirmed, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others objected, noting that at HHS he could use his power to increase his legal bonanza (which has brought him millions of dollars over the past few years).

And like Trump, Kennedy banks big money from his "patriotic" sloganeering, by personally licensing "Make American Healthy Again" as a brand - while he uses government resources to promote that brand. When Dr. Anthony Fauci came under fire in a Senate hearing in July, Kennedy used the opportunity to promote his scurrilous book attacking the former federal science official -- despite his previous pledge not to run that particular sleazy grift.

How much longer Kennedy will be able to exploit the naivete of the "MAHA Moms" who form his political base remains to be seen. Many of them have grown restive as he repeatedly sells out their ideals to back Trump's pay-for-play arrangements with pesticide producers, tobacco firms and other industries whose depredations he swore to fight. For the MAHA movement, a bitter realization is coming: They followed a leader named and packaged as a Kennedy, but underneath he was just another shoddy Trump.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is available wherever books are sold.


el-sayed

Michigan Democrats Urging Unity After El-Sayed Wins Close And Costly Primary

Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won Michigan’s Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, defeating Rep. Haley Stevens in a major victory for the party’s progressive faction.

Stevens conceded in a congratulatory call to El-Sayed and immediately endorsed him after a bitter race that featured more than $60 million in spending on her behalf by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She joined other Democrats critical of the insurgent candidate’s position on Israel, Gaza, and the Mideast conflict -- including State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the primary, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin – to call for unity in the general election against Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers.

“Congratulations to Abdul El-Sayed for winning the Democratic nomination for Senate.,” Slotkin posted on social media. “It’s been a long primary, but now it’s time to gear up to beat Mike Rogers (again) and win up and down the ticket. There is nothing more important than the mission of the next 90 days: uniting, keeping this seat blue, flipping the House and Senate, and providing a real check on President Trump.”

After noting that his upset victory “shook up the world,” El-Sayed reciprocated with an equally conciliatory tone, noting the “great conversation” with Stevens, whom he described as “one of the most committed public servants that you’ll ever meet…whatever differences that we might have had in the primary, they pale in comparison to what unifies us.”

In other Michigan primaries, Sunrise Movement co-founder Will Lawrence defeated former Ambassador Bridget Brink and former Navy Seal Matt Maasam to face GOP Rep. Tom Barrett in the state’s Seventh District, while State Rep. Donovan McKinney, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member, beat incumbent Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar in the 13th District. Observers regared McKinney’s victory over Thanedar as determined more by ethnic solidarity in a Detroit community – the winner is Black, the loser Asian-American – than ideology.

Aside from the DSA-flavored results in the Great Lakes State, there were few triumphs for the left. In Missouri, Rep. Wesley Bell overwhelmingly defeated former Rep. Cori Bush, a DSA stalwart supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and highly critical of party leadership. Centrist or moderate candidates also won primaries in Virginia, while the more progressive candidate won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Kansas.

Missouri voters also rejected a Republican initiative to abolish the state income tax by a margin of four-to-one – a sign that middle America is in no mood to entertain the GOP’s oligarchic platform.

Are Kennedy, Musk And Trump To Blame For America's 'Exploding Diarrhea'?

Are Kennedy, Musk And Trump To Blame For America's 'Exploding Diarrhea'?

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr tells us he has anything “under control,” panic may be the only logical response.

The health secretary has long seemed unable to control even his own impulses, let alone the massive government apparatus under his and his relationship with the truth has been strained, to put it politely, for decades.

On Tuesday, Kennedy assured the nation that the Department of Health and Human Services has record-breaking outbreak of cyclosporiasis infections – that explosive diarrhea illness – “under control.” Exactly what he meant was unclear, since the number of cases recorded by authorities across six affected states are continuing to rise rapidly.

Rather than clarify this dire situation, Kennedy’s remarks only further muddied contradictory reports from the agencies under his control.

“We have the outbreak under control,” Kennedy said at a press briefing on Tuesday. “We have done extensive forensics, epidemiological forensics, and we’ve identified the source of the outbreak. And the companies that are involved have all implemented a recall.” Yet despite his frequent promises of transparency, he failed to identify those companies and did nothing to explain why the FDA had named the outbreak's source as tainted lettuce from Taylor Farms in Mexico, only to withdraw that "false positive" identification hours later.

Still more confusing was the FDA's subsequent social media statement: “To clarify, this false-positive lab sample DOES NOT change the basis for FDA’s ongoing outbreak investigation or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”

Only someone with a truly twisted sense of humor could begin that tweet with the phrase "to clarify."

So despite Kennedy's claim that the government has found the source of the outbreak, it should be obvious that neither he nor his subordinates have any idea where the cyclospora entered our food supply, or even whether there is a single source.

But we can name the probable cause of this scourge, just as we could have predicted it more than a year ago, as many did. The United State has become vulnerable to worsening outbreaks of communicable disease, including parasites like cyclospora and viruses like measles, because Kennedy, his boss Donald Trump. and former Trump "co-president" Elon Musk have dismantled and defunded the government structures built to protect us.

"Structures" may be too abstract a term to describe what this trio of vandals has wrecked -- an enormous and delicate complex of scientists, support workers, laboratories, testing, surveillance, and communications protocols required to detect disease outbreaks as early as possible and suppress or at least control them before they wreak havoc. Most of the time, as Ryan Cooper observed in The American Prospect, we had no idea how this vital public service operated because everyone involved was doing their job successfully. When it worked, nobody noticed.

Over the months since Trump returned to the Oval Office, however, we have seen how quickly that protective shield could be compromised. Musk's misnamed Department of Government Efficiency dismissed thousands of essential employees in Kennedy's HHS, without so much as a peep from their putative leader, whose promise to "make America healthy again" turned out to be the sickest of jokes. Among the many functions "decommissioned" in this supposed drive for efficiency was the FDA's Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory, which conducted food safety testing. ”

That left the FDA "no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis,” according to an internal agency email obtained by Reuters. It is hard not to wonder how Kennedy would have any idea where a parasitic outbreak began when the relevant labs were shut down months ago.

We know exactly what Kennedy and his fellow idiots have inflicted on our public health infrastructures. As of last winter, the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service had lost nearly 1000 staff, with another 19,000 dismissed from USDA over the past year. As The American Prospect reported:

The Centers for Disease Control, whose primary task is understanding and combating disease outbreaks like this one, has lost nearly 3,000 staff under Trump, while the Food and Drug Administration has lost more than 4,000. Food safety inspections have been going undone as a result. In February 2025, FDA Deputy Commissioner Jim Jones angrily resigned from the agency’s Human Foods Program, which monitors food safety, after dozens of his workers were sacked. And in July that year, Kennedy directed the CDC to cut six out of eight pathogens, cyclospora among them, monitored as part of its FoodNet program.

First measles, now cyclospora, and what next? We have been fortunate so far that the number of deaths in the measles outbreak have been low, and that so far nobody has died from cyclosporiasis, despite hundreds of hospitalizations. But don't give up on a truly bloody denouement to Kennedy's tenure. He and Trump will surely keep doing their worst.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

Populist Jackson Likely Democratic Choice As Maine's Senate Nominee

Populist Jackson Likely Democratic Choice As Maine's Senate Nominee

Even as Republicans mocked Maine’s “chaotic” process to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic Senate nominee, hundreds of local activists were lining up behind Troy Jackson. Rival candidates for the nomination dropped out over the weekend as the former Maine Senate president and Platner ally seemed certain to win over the delegates selected by Maine Democrats for a statewide convention on July 25.

Every registered Democrat in Maine was eligible to vote for those delegates in what came to resemble a second primary – and could cast their votes from home. As the process unfolded, observers in Maine agreed that Jackson had pulled together an organizing effort, built on Platner’s base and his support in the state’s labor movement, that no other candidate could match.

Although Jackson was clearly Platner’s choice, he carries none of the heavy baggage that ultimately ended the charismatic oysterman’s campaign amid charges of sexual assault. As a fifth-generation logger from the state’s northern counties, he entered public life in 1998 leading protests against the exploitation of his fellow lumbermen, won a state assembly race in 2002, and spent the next two decades rising in the legislature to lead the Maine Senate from 2018-2024. He ran third in the Democratic gubernatorial primary this year.

Platner’s voters chose Jackson over a throng of candidates, most prominently Nirav Shah, a former public health official known for guiding Maine through the Covid-19 pandemic, and Shenna Bellows, the Maine secretary of state, who withdrew from the contest to focus on her role overseeing midterm elections. Jackson presented a platform that echoed many of Platner’s positions, including Medicare for All, taxing billionaires, restricting aid to Israel, and improving access to jobs, housing and education.

Not surprisingly, the Republican oppo against Jackson is already surfacing – with hypocrisy no obstacle as usual. The principal lines of attack concern his earlier positions on issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. His objections to both, which date back more than two decades, were hardly surprising for a rural politician raised in the Catholic Church. But his views shifted markedly more than 15 years ago, and his legislative record has won him strong endorsements from pro-choice and gay rights organizations in Maine.

Most recent polls show Jackson running within the margin of error against Collins, who appears vulnerable in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and where Trump remains deeply unpopular. A poll taken a few weeks ago by Platner’s own committee showed Jackson beating Collins by five points.

Maine Democrats pointed to Jackson’s intense organizing effort in the post-Platner process and his previous electoral victories in more conservative, Republican-leaning counties as indications that he can indeed defeat Collins in November. Her campaign has collected big donations from over 100 out-of-state billionaires, while Jackson can rely on the massive grassroots funding that boosted Platner.

And as frustrated Maine voters suffer the depredations of ICE and the slashing of Medicaid – Trump policies that Collins has enabled – it will be Jackson’s turn as the voice of change.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

Stupid On Steroids: Trump, Testosterone, And The Iran Disaster

Stupid On Steroids: Trump, Testosterone, And The Iran Disaster

Pete Hegseth may have terrible judgment, but his comic timing is vaudevillian.

The former TV host who bills himself as America’s “secretary of war” chose the perfect moment – as his enraged presidential boss resumes the fruitless bombing of Iran – to announce an ambitious new Pentagon program of testosterone injections for our troops. Announcing that all male service members will be tested annually for possible deficiency, he said that remedial steroid shots will be optional.

“While we invest heavily in our weapons systems platforms and gear, our most decisive tactical advantage will always be the individual warfighter,” noted the defense secretary in a video captioned “High T Department of War.

“We have a sacred duty to maintain that advantage, which is why we must constantly look for new ways to optimize your performance, your resilience and your long-term health,” he continued. “And to meet that commitment today, I’m authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members, ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best.”

As the nation confronts the dismal prospect of President Trump’s continued warmaking, his dim but hotheaded “warrior-in-chief” is again busily imposing a solution where there is no problem. Hegseth cited no evidence that our soldiers, sailors and airmen suffer from “low-T,” as the TV ads put it – a suggestion that many of them would probably find insulting. But there is, unfortunately, a hefty catalog of posts, photos, policies, and remarks that indicates Hegseth’s own insecurity about his male status – a neurosis he appears to share with other members of the Trump administration, not least the president himself.

If a satirist wrote a script featuring a defense chief who urges a program of testosterone therapy amid a failing war, nobody would believe it. Much too Dr. Strangelove! Only in the reality of the Trump regime are such outlandish plot points even imaginable.

America’s nasty predicament in the Persian Gulf assuredly did not arise from insufficient aggressiveness on the part of the Trump war cabinet, let alone our officers and troops. Our country is again on the cusp of a “forever war,” as the veteran New York Times correspondent Steven Erlanger warns today, most likely due to an excess of macho hostility and a dearth of impulse control in the Trump White House. Those characteristics are typical, as any doctor will confirm, of an excess of testosterone, all too often the result of self-administered injections by men hoping to feel more manly.

Which calls to mind a strange remark not so long ago by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another public figure whose shirtless displays and constant reckless behavior provoke suspicion of what feminists sometimes call testosterone poisoning. On a podcast last spring, the health secretary reported that “Dr. Oz looked at [Trump’s} medical records and said he’s got the highest testosterone levels that he’s ever seen for an individual over 70 years old.

“I know the president will be happy that I repeat that,” he added obsequiously.

Without testing administered by qualified physicians, of course, there is no way to be sure that Trump – or Kennedy, or Hegseth, or any other MAGA cartoon characters – are examples of testosterone overdose. But the president does show clinical symptoms: apparent insomnia, with those endless predawn posting sprees; an enlarged prostate and spreading bald spot, indicated by his use of finasteride, a drug prescribed for those conditions; and most of all his irrepressible impulsivity, aggression, and fluctuating moods -- which lurk behind his wild swings in war policy and jut-jawed, blundering diplomacy.

Reaching an honorable end to this ruinous war will require less blustering and clearer thinking. With all due respect to Pentagon Pete, his testosterone obsession won’t help.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump with make iran great again cap

American Amnesia: Why Did We Ever Listen to Lindsey Graham?

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said my father whenever a political adversary passed away, repeating the ancient admonition to speak only good of the dead. So, in assessing the career of Lindsey Graham, lately deceased senator from South Carolina, let's note in fairness that he spoke passionately and often in support of Ukraine's struggle against its Russian oppressor, a righteous cause he shared with liberals and progressives in the opposing party.

However much Graham did for Ukraine, what his career shows most clearly is how powerful conservatives routinely escape the memory of their ruinous decisions — and go on to promote further destruction with every breath. Most of them never express regret for the chaos and death they help to cause, and instead persistently attempt to justify the wreckage left behind.

Today, and no doubt for years to come, America will continue to live with the consequences of Graham's blundering and blithering — and our failure to ignore him after the first time around.

Very few American politicians would still seek to justify or excuse the momentously bad judgment that led us to invade Iraq more than two decades ago. Many of the senators who voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution in 2002, including Democrats and Republicans, have expressed at least a degree of remorse for that lethal error. More than once, Hillary Clinton has said it is her deepest regret.

But on that ill-fated vote's 20th anniversary, Graham waved off any pangs of guilt for the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. "Intelligence was faulty," he dismissively told a reporter, referring to the comic-book depictions of an arsenal of mass destruction hidden somewhere by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the late senator, we should be grateful that Iraq — now governed by Iranian-backed warlords and militias — is a "democracy," kind of. Freedom House still rates it as "unfree."

Keep that troubling history in mind as we turn our attention to the present, in the months before Graham passed away. Contrary to the promises of President Donald Trump — who wanted everyone to believe he had opposed the Iraq fiasco — the United States is again enmeshed in a kinetic Mideast conflict with no discernible strategy, no end game, no possible gain for American interests, and a vast and wasteful expenditure of money if not yet lives.

The Trump White House entered this grossly stupid war of choice for a number of reasons, from the president's animus against former President Barack Obama, whose nuclear deal with Iraq he scuttled, to his childish confidence in his own infallible instincts. But somewhere in that policy miasma lurked Graham.

It is now widely understood that in starting his war on Iran, Trump acceded to years of lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and that the chief conduit for Netanyahu's message was Graham, who surely slathered every argument with obsequious praise for the president. The senator boasted that he had "coached" Netanyahu in moving Trump toward war and — where have we heard this before? — said that it was "intelligence" from Israel that ultimately drove the U.S. to begin bombing.

Nor did Graham publicly hesitate to offer terrible hawkish advice for Trump. "When this regime goes down, we are going to have a new Middle East, and we are going to make a ton of money," he crowed shortly after the war commenced last February. "This regime is in a death throe now; it is going to be on its knees, it's going to fall, and when it falls, we're going to have peace like no other time. We're going to have prosperity unlike anyone could ever imagine."

The regime in Tehran did not fall. We have squandered a fortune and will spend a lot more before this debacle ends. Worse, we may yet lose more brave Americans. And what's hard to imagine is a decent outcome that serves American interests or world security.

I suppose the nation will miss Lindsey Graham, as his colleagues keep telling us, but at least we still have Trump to tell us all those blustering lies.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

Whose National Interests Are Served By Trump's Global Bullying? Not Ours

Whose National Interests Are Served By Trump's Global Bullying? Not Ours

With Donald Trump as president, international humiliation has become a condition of being American.

Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Ankara fresh from his gross interference with World Cup officiating. His bullying call to the FIFA chief evidently resulted in the suspension of Folarin Balogun's red card, restoration of the star player to the US National Men's Team roster, and a poor outcome in their Monday match against Belgium -- eliminating the United States from the tournament amid imprecations against the "Trump curse."

As usual, Trump instantly set to work insulting America's traditional allies, renewing his absurd demand to annex Greenland and denouncing NATO, which he said "is never there for us" because its European leaders have no use for his war on Iran. He knows that he is lying about the all iance's fidelity to its parnership with the US, proved with blood and sorrow during the war in Afghanistan, the only time in history when NATO's Article 5 requiring mutual defense has been activated.

Trump's principal complaint against NATO is the reluctance of its member states to support the war that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been waging on Iran. But while preparing to depart Turkey, he demonstrated again why our allies won't join in that idiotic endeavor, when he declared an end to the Iran "ceasefire" that had scarcely been in effect. Like his initiation of the war, that announcement came without consulting the allies whose cooperation he has demanded. Of course, this was exactly how Trump behaved during his first term, when he ended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that President Barack Obama had negotiated -- with the assistance and participation not only of our European allies but China and Russia as well.

Having dismissed European interests and views back then, only a president as arrogant as Trump would assume that they would join in lockstep when he attacked Iran amid this year's bilateral negotiations. No doubt the Europeans were as shocked by that perfidious strike as the Iranians themselves -- and they just as certainly were appalled by the absence of strategic planning that has led to the Strait of Hormuz closure, destabilizing the Mideast, many thousands of deaths, and the pointless disruption of the world economy.

For the moment, Trump reaffirmed the US commitment to NATO with today's unanimous declaration by its leaders of “our ironclad commitment to our collective defense under Article 5." He even offered a vague commitment to allow Ukrainian production of Patriot missiles, although it will be the Europeans and Canadians who provide $80 billion in new military aid to Kiev.

Trump probably knows that US law prohibits him from simply quitting NATO, and he may not want that fight with Republican senators on the eve of midterm elections. Nobody should be surprised, however, when he returns to spiteful attacks on the Western nations that have been our faithful friends for decades. He will keep undermining our relationships with those countries for as long as he is president. His ego and ignorance won't allow him to act in our real interest -- and those countries won't serve up the corrupt deals to enrich him that he has come to expect, as he flies around in the "Air Force One" that landed in Washington as a Qatari bribe.

If too many Americans don't grasp these realities, be advised that the Europeans, and people around the world, assuredly do. They look upon the United States and its leadership with a mixture of scorn and pity. Yes, "America is back," as Trump and his stooges bray -- back to the disgrace inflicted on our reputation by atrocity and misadventure in places like Iraq and Indochina.

Who is served by all of the chaos and ill feeling that Trump exacerbates with every dim utterance? That would be our adversaries in Moscow and Beijing, who despise NATO as a beacon of democracy in a dark time.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.


While Fascist Goons Hide Behind Masks, Republicans Pretend They Don't Exist

While Fascist Goons Hide Behind Masks, Republicans Pretend They Don't Exist

Whenever members of the white nationalist Patriot Front organization march in Washington, as they did again on July 4, they hide their faces behind white gaiters – as if aware of the shame and revulsion that their drum-beating theatrics inflicted on the United States during our 250th birthday. With a paranoia that matches their racist dogma, the fascist marchers fear the social ostracism they would suffer on social media if their true identities became known.

But Patriot Front’s habitual masking also offers a convenient excuse for the most extreme Republicans to disclaim these ideological mutts, whose militant expression of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant and white supremacist ideology constantly embarrasses MAGA figures in politics and the media. Patriot Front is too close for comfort, so the MAGA right constant attempts to blame its existence on Antifa, the “left,” or the FBI – all conspiracy theories with no basis but plenty of purchase on the right-wing brain.

Consider Mike Lee, the ultra-right Republican senator from Utah, who posted a clip of Patriot Front’s DC demonstration on X/Twitter. “Patriot Front: Brought to you by leftists who don’t know that patriots don’t wear masks.” Lee must have forgotten already about the “patriots” enlisted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who wear masks while carrying out dragnet raids and even while shooting down innocent American citizens. Lee never had a problem with ICE masking.

As many noted in posts roasting him, Lee also appears to have forgotten his own prediction, posted on X at the dawn of the second Trump administration, that Patriot Front would “disappear immediately” as soon as the Senate confirmed Kash Patel as FBI director. “What a coincidence that would be.” In other words, MAGA man Patel would shut down this “false flag” front group as soon as Trump got control of law enforcement.

Like so many Mike Lee posts, that quip has not aged well.

Nor did a similar broadside from Laura Ingraham, who reacted to the fascist marchers in Washington with a dismissive tweet. “I call fake. Looks more like Antifa in costume,” the irascible Fox host wrote. “No one should be allowed to cover their faces.” No one except ICE, she surely meant.

Asked about the fascist demonstrations on CNN, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum declined to condemn them. Burgum saw no need to criticize their noxious conduct, which he depicted as a harmless First Amendment exercise.

“Part of my response to that is that there are protests on the mall that people say things that I think are reprehensible about President Trump, and yet they’re allowed to go on because of free speech in our country,” Burgum replied. He went on to suggest that at least some of those critics are “communists,” the preferred canard for Trump, who has never forgotten what he learned from the late McCarthyite Roy Cohn.

There is no significant cohort of communists lurking anywhere these days, just as there is no evidence that Patriot Front is a government operation or a leftist front (a fact that its maskless founder Thomas Rousseau desperately emphasizes in every media interview). Research organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center have long identified the Texas-based outfit as one of the “most active” neo-fascist groups in the country ever since it split off from another group known as National Vanguard in the wake of the deadly Unite the Right riot in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. There is no question that these fascist formations have grown and prospered in the MAGA era – a phenomenon that ought to trouble the Trump followers, but introspection or even rational thought don’t come naturally to them.

Fabricating conspiracies is so much easier – and more profitable.

On This Special July 4, Celebrate With America's Diverse, Inspiring World Cup Team

On This Special July 4, Celebrate With America's Diverse, Inspiring World Cup Team

Americans seeking inspiration during this anniversary of independence should turn away from the nation’s capital, where Donald Trump’s narcissistic celebration provide only national embarrassment (and perhaps a few laughs). Look instead to the World Cup, where the performance of the US Men’s National Team is renewing the patriotic pride and national solidarity of a free people – led by players whose diversity and citizenship stand against the anti-immigrant bigotry of the current regime.

At a time when Trump and his xenophobic henchman Stephen Miller shriek incessantly about immigrants “poisoning” the nation -- and just vowed to continue their unconstitutional crusade against birthright citizenship – the USMNT is a living testament to true American values.

Under the motto “One Nation, One Team,” their roster is one of the most diverse in the world. The 26 players on the World Cup squad are not only interracial, with 12 Black and three Latino players, but include six born overseas to military families, a dozen with immigrant roots in eight other countries around the globe. Team USA, like the nation it represents, includes an extraordinary global array of languages and cultures, with players who learned the sport both in their home country, like Gio Reyna, who grew up in suburban New York, or team captain Christian Pulisic, raised in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Malik Tillman, who spent his boyhood in Bavaria on a German youth team.

And then there is Folarin Balogun, born by accident in Brooklyn when his Nigerian mother, on her way back to England, was told that her pregnancy was too advanced to fly safely. Like so many of his teammates, the hugely talented Balogun, chose American citizenship and feels a special responsibility. Having scored two goals for Team USA before he got a red card in last week’s victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina, he has said, “To represent the United States means a lot. I just hope I can bring that prestige and winning mentality over into soccer.”

While American fans thrill to the play of Balogun and his teammates, lovers of the beautiful game who have flocked to our shores have found an America starkly different from what Trump’s vulgarity and bile led them to expect. Or what the dimwits at the Department of Homeland Security intended when they post ultra-nationalist “OUR SOIL” memes on social media ahead of World Cup matches.

People from all over the world are discovering a generous and inclusive brand of American greatness – not in the blustering and domineering Trump style, but in the beautiful welcome extended to the global visitors and their teams, from sea to shining sea. It could be seen in the boisterous hospitality encountered by the Scots in Boston, where they emptied the taverns of beer or the huge crowds who greeted the Japanese in Nashville.

But perhaps the most poignant example is the Algerians who found themselves Lawrence, Kansas, a heartland city that welcomed a team from a nation that Trump himself had once stigmatized. The residents of Lawrence embraced Team Algeria with astonishing enthusiasm and grace.

Indeed, it was the Kansans who expressed sincere thanks for a moment on the world stage brought by the visiting Algerians. “We’re very grateful to Algeria,” said one Lawrence resident as the team departed for a match in Canada. “We’ve loved getting to know your country and we wish you all the best.” During their final group-stage match against Austria, the Algerians unfurled a big banner behind their goal, “Thank You Lawrence.”

That is the America of our better angels, the city on the hill we have longed to become in our highest aspirations, the nation of ideas and ideals that the crooks and criminals now ruling us have aimed to suppress. What happened during this World Cup tournament will be remembered long after Trump’s humiliating “Freedom 250” is mercifully forgotten.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

Echoes Of 'Uranium One' In Trump's Kazakh Super-Grift (Except This Scandal Is Real)

Echoes Of 'Uranium One' In Trump's Kazakh Super-Grift (Except This Scandal Is Real)

Even Americans jaded by the Trump administration’s gaudy pageant of sleaze and self-dealing may have been stunned by the latest episode of nepotistic corruption. As the New York Times reported this week, both of the president’s elder sons are profiting from a tungsten mining deal between the United States and Kazakhstan personally negotiated by their father. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons are also getting a cut of the proceeds, along with assorted other White House cronies.

Beyond the unsavory arrangements designed to cram still more billions into Trump family accounts, what this investigation exposed once again is that every Republican accusation is really a confession – even if the proof emeges a decade later. The deal revealed by the Times eerily echoes a pseudo-scandal fabricated by Trump crony Steve Bannon to smear Hillary Clinton, which theTimes dutifully promoted on its front page. Bannon was beyond delighted, of course, and the damage to the nation has been incalculable, including the latest Kazakh scam.

Tungsten is a rare metal of critical importance to US defense and technology industries whose export was restricted last year by China, a major source of reserves. An enormous deposit exists in Kazakhstan, however -- and the US effort to exploit that lode promises multi-billion-dollar paydays for the Trump and Lutnick families, as at least 14 companies connected with one or both families are actively working with the federal government on critical mineral extraction deals.

The agreement between the US and Kazakh governments quietly signed last November 6 -- with no disclosure of the Trump or Lutnick grifts -- involves a company called Kaz Resources. The federal government is also subsidizing that firm, and the Trump sons' investment, with at least $1.6 billlion in government funding. As the Times investigation noted, the Trump and Lutnick gang was “doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history."

But the precedent for this Kazakhstan ripoff is the fake 2015 story, that originated in a "strange journalistic partnership between Bannon and theTimes. Bannon's conspiracy theory, advanced in a scurrilous book by his then-employee Peter Schweizer, claimed that Hillary Clinton had overseen the sale of US uranium assets to a Russian company, as secretary of state, in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation by a Canadian donor. This far-fetched notion -- which ought to have been shot down by any competentTimes editor -- ran aground on a simple fact: Neither Clinton nor the foundation exercised any control over the uranium decision. She couldn't have been bribed because she had nothing to sell.

With the imprimatur of the Times, that flimsy tale nevertheless spread far and wide, inflicting permanent harm on Clinton's reputation, her ensuing campaign for president, and the good name of her family's highly successful charity. It was an entirely fraudulent canard for which the paper of record has yet to offer an appropriate correcton or apology. Perhaps someone on the editorial board or Op-Ed page will draw the comparison noted here -- and thus redeem at least a fraction of the ruin that its pages are now recording.




Zohran mamdani

Mamdani's Big Night In New York Primary Stokes Conservative Political Fantasies

With his endorsement driving three insurgent challengers to victory in New York’s Democratic congressional primaries on June 23, Mayor Zohran Mamdani proved again that his combination of social media and community organizing wields big power – especially in a primary contest. But conservatives who fantasize that the socialist cohort will now seize control of the Democratic Party are likely to be disappointed by the full primary results.

Two of Mamdani’s victorious choices are indeed members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA): Darializa Avila Chevalier, an activist and graduate student who defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat in northern Manhattan, and Claire Valdez, a state assembly member who won the nomination to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez in Brooklyn.

Former City Comptroller Brad Lander, Mamdani’s third pick, is not affiliated with DSA. but was supported by many of its members in his landslide victory over Rep. Dan Goldman, whose district straddles parts of both Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Neither Mamdani nor DSA endorsed any candidate to succeed retiring Rep. Jerrold Nadler in Manhattan, where state assembly member Micah Lasher, a longtime Nadler aide, triumphed over a crowded field that included Jack Schlossberg, grandson of President John F. Kennedy, and Trump critic George Conway.

All of the Democratic nominees in the city are viewed as certain to win election in November.

Despite gleeful Republican claims that gleefully warned that the DSA’s big night in New York will slap a “socialist” label on the national Democratic Party, results in other districts showed no such leftward lurch. Just north of the city in Westchester County, Cait Conley, a military veteran and former national security official, easily defeated a pair of rivals who ran to her left and sought to portray her as the “establishment” choice. Conley will now face incumbent Republican Mike Lawler, a top Democratic target who attempted to manipulate Democrats into nominating one of the “more progressive” alternatives.

In Maryland, Democrats chose Adrian Boafo, a Prince Georges County legislator, from among nearly two dozen candidates seeking to succeed retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer, a longtime party leader in the House. Boafo benefited from heavy spending by cryptocurrency interests and the American Israel Political Action Committee, whose machinations have drawn criticism from many Democrats in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Popular Maryland Gov. Wes Moore crushed a primary bid by a more liberal challenger, and Rep. April McClain Delaney beat back a comeback bid by former Rep. David Trone, with the support of most of the state’s Democratic officeholders.

And in Utah, former Rep. Ben McAdams had little trouble fending off a challenge from a state senator backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s famed socialist Independent. McAdams won the primary to represent a redrawn Salt Lake City district that looks certain to elect a Democrat in November.

The socialist victories in the New York primary provoked some excited comparisons to the House Freedom Caucus, where once-fringe elements in the Republican Party bedevil thir Congressional leadership. But assuming that all of the socialist Democrats nominated on Primary Night join a Democratic majority next January, their ranks will increase to three or four in a caucus of 218-plus members. (They probably cannot count on the increasingly pragmatic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, despite her DSA branding, to support their more exotic ideological excursions.) The Freedom Caucus currently counts more than 30 members, an order of magnitude larger.

Socialism, whatever that may now mean, isn't yet taking over the Democratic Party. let alone America.

Pool Of Slime Reflects The Depth And Breadth Of Trump's Betrayals

Pool Of Slime Reflects The Depth And Breadth Of Trump's Betrayals

Of all the scandals that have beset the nation during the years of the Trump regime, few have so neatly represented the would-be dictator as his despoliation of the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The overgrowth of green slime caused by Donald Trump's idiotic attempt to refurbish the pool evokes the disgust most Americans now feel at the mention of his name.

This episode includes all the varieties of Trumpian scandal we now anticipate in regular rotation. Scheduled for completion by the Fourth of July's 250th anniversary, it is a shambles and yet another Trump-sponsored national disaster.

From its inception, this was a typical instance of presidential corruption, which saw the White House deliver a no-bid contract to a firm called Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which just happened to have done similar work on swimming pools at the Trump Organization's Virginia golf club.

With no controls and little oversight, the cost of the contract keeps rising: having promised to spend no more than $1.8 million, Trump has paid over $14 million, and no doubt the price will continue to escalate.

Separately, but similarly, the White House gave a $1.7 million no-bid contract to another firm, Greenwater Services, to clean up the algae infestation in the Reflecting Pool. Like the initial contractor, this outfit also did work at a Trump golf club, in Bedminster, New Jersey. Naturally, its principal owner is a shady businessman, sporting a greasy pencil mustache, who happens to be a wealthy Trump donor, a Palm Beach neighbor of the president, and a conspirator in various bribery and illicit donation schemes.

Aside from the slime and sleaze, the Reflecting Pool fiasco captures the environmental ignorance and narcissistic vandalism that Trump embodies. While the administration might reasonably have tried to remedy the pool's longstanding drainage problems, Trump hired his cronies to coat the bottom with a substance in "American flag blue" that quickly began to peel off, causing more trouble.

Having failed to consult scientists — whose wisdom he always disdains — the president made the pool's problems worse by increasing the impact of climate change. Turning the pool dark heated it up and made it even more hospitable to algae growth.

As the Cultural Landscape Foundation noted in a lawsuit filed to stop the painting of the pool, it is an "aesthetic injury" — like so many Trump projects — that will "fundamentally alter the existing harmony, solemnity and dignity of the current memorial landscape.

Although Trump and his minions have lied repeatedly about the Reflecting Pool, claiming it is crystal clear when everyone can gaze upon the murky results, he now needs someone to blame. Having botched this entire process with embarrassing stupidity and venality, he insists that the renovation scheme failed because of "vandalism." Indeed, he has claimed that numerous vandals have been apprehended.

On Monday, the president told reporters that five people had been arrested and another five are suspects, while he sought to shift the blame for his own ineptitude. “I can’t help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up," he said, while offering no evidence at all that any such attack has occurred. Nor would cutting the blue lining explain the recurring algae blooms.

As Andrew Egger noted sardonically in The Bulwark, the villainous alleged vandals "were so cunning, so devastatingly dastardly, that they managed to pull off this shocking act of national blasphemy without once being visible on the cameras embedded in the Washington Monument that transmit a 24/7 public livestream of the Reflecting Pool." Or else Trump was fabricating as usual.

The sole named individual man arrested so far — a former Olympic athlete named David Hearn, who merely reached into the pool to touch a detached piece of the coating — is manifestly innocent. Like others targeted by this impulsive and malignant president, he seems certain to be exonerated.

Not so the White House vandal and his henchmen, however. We will spend many millions and many months cleaning up the destruction he leaves behind.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

With Oil Sanctions Suddenly Lifted, Iran Already Banking Billions From Trump's Deal

With Oil Sanctions Suddenly Lifted, Iran Already Banking Billions From Trump's Deal

Not only does President Donald Trump’s “deal” to end the Iran war guarantee profits for the Tehran regime, but the money is already flowing as the United States lifts its blockade of Iranian ports.

Sanctions on the country’s oil sales, which have financed its military and nuclear programs for decades, appear to have been lifted as soon as Trump and Vice President JD Vance electronically signed the “memorandum of understanding” with their Iranian counterparts on June 16. The Iranians also gained immediate access to international banking and insurance services.

According to sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the first supertanker loaded with Iranian crude left the port of Chahabar, sailed past the US naval blockade, and cruised out of the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday. A second supertanker soon followed.

The Journal also reports that a draft of the memorandum of understanding outlined the resumption of oil sales, “along with the promise after further negotiations…of extensive sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and billions of dollars in reconstruction funding.” How soon the regime would obtain those additional funds remains unclear, although senior administration officials have suggested they would be tied to “performance” on issues such as nuclear enrichment and opening the Strait of Hormuz.

Murky as the MOU remains, what is becoming clear is that Iran has won a major strategic victory rather than suffering the “total defeat” that Trump has repeatedly claimed. The Supreme Leader and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps will soon be collecting billions of dollars in fresh oil revenues, having achieved the sanctions relief they have long demanded from the United States. And they will have gotten that benefit, with all its dangers to the West, merely by returning to the pre-war status quo.

So why did we expend hundreds of billions of dollars in military and economic costs, along with more than dozen American lives and thousands of innocent Iranians we were supposedly trying to protect?

If the Journal reporting proves correct, it won’t be easy for Trump and his MAGA propagandists to answer those questions. Indeed, the Republicans who have stooged for the White House on this war and so many other ruinous decisions already appear to see a political disaster looming.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.

Congratulations To All? Trump's Latest Deal Looks Like A Massive Gift To Iran

Congratulations To All? Trump's Latest Deal Looks Like A Massive Gift To Iran

The very first words announcing the Trump administration’s latest “deal” to conclude its war on Iran – which will reportedly be signed on Friday – were entirely false.

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” the president proclaimed on his Truth Social site on Sunday evening. “Congratulations to all!”

But the agreement, whose details remain entirely opaque and disputed by all parties, is far from complete – if “complete” is meant to indicate that Trump has achieved any of the objectives for which he expended hundreds of billions of dollars, at least 13 American lives, an untold number of Iranian civilian deaths, and severe damage to the world economy and this nation’s international standing.

Instead, what Iranian officials have called a “memorandum of understanding” merely extends the current ceasefire (which hasn’t actually curtailed kinetic hostilities) for two months, while the United States and Iran resume negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programs, the alleged reason for war.

No honest analyst believes that Trump or his inept negotiators will achieve more restrictions on Iran than the multilateral agreement he discarded in 2018 merely because it was achieved by his predecessor President Barack Obama. In the leaks and comments about this renewed ceasefire, what can be detected is the strong suggestion that this is in fact a far worse deal from the American standpoint – and a far more lucrative outcome for the Iranians.

Unless the Iranian news agencies are lying just as brazenly as Trump always does, the Tehran dictatorship will collect at least $24 billion in previously frozen funds during the 60-day negotiation period. The Trump administration's response has come in the form of non-denial denials, and it now appears that those previously unavailable billions will be exchanged for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. That reopening is the only aspect of the mooted :"deal" that both sides agree will happen, and merely resolves a crisis that Trump and his Israeli partner Benjamin Netanyahu provoked when they initiated this conflict.

Of course the reopening of ship traffic in the Persian Gulf won't actually resolve anything, because the Iranians will still be able to close the strait whenever they choose -- a commercial and diplomatic superpower that they can now exercise entirely due to Trump's blundering.

Beyond that, we have no idea how or whether Trump's low-wattage diplomatic team will negotiate a credible agreement that restricts Iran's nuclear development with any force, as the JCPOA did. The likelihood of such an achievement within the next two months seems vanishingly small, since the JCPOA talks required many months and skills that the Trump gang simply doesn't possess,

But even now we can measure what Trump is doing against what Obama did: If the Iranians get $24 billion to reopen the strait, without any real restrictions on their nuclear program that will represent more than ten times the amount of money Tehran received after signing the JCPOA. In other words, Trump has sold out cheap to end this pointless war -- and the rest of us will pay the price.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.