Tag: white house
Donald Trump

Fake Man Starts Fake War And Makes Fake Peace

Leave it to Donald J. Trump to come up with a purely performative war, and folks, he’s done it. His big air assault on Iran Saturday night accomplished exactly nothing. The New York Times reported on its front page yesterday that a secret report from the Defense Intelligence Agency has found that the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at three sites around the country set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months. Additionally, the vaunted bunker buster bombs, 30,000-pound projectiles designed to penetrate the surface of the earth before detonating far underground, failed to destroy the underground nuclear facilities at Fordo.

The report contained some new information as well. Israeli sources said that Iran has built smaller nuclear plants in secret locations “so the Iranian government could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities,” according to the Times. This information had not been made public previously. The report confirmed that Iran moved “almost all of its nuclear material” before the U.S. bombed its nuclear facilities on Saturday night, the Times reported on Tuesday afternoon.

Hegseth’s breathless announcement on Sunday morning --- 125 combat aircraft! 14 bunker busters! 75 other bombs and cruise missiles launched from submarines! – was all for show. The administration is so far back on its heels that a Congressional briefing on the attack scheduled for Tuesday has been pushed back until Thursday.

Iran responded Monday night by firing 14 missiles at the U.S. base in Doha, Qatar…after warning the Pentagon the attack was coming so the missiles could be easily shot down. The number of missiles was said to be calculated to match the number of U.S. bunker busters so that Iran’s retaliatory strike would not be seen as an escalation. The U.S. dutifully hit 13 of the Iranian missiles with anti-missile fire. One Iranian missile was said to have hit an unoccupied small building on the American base. There were no American casualties.

Trump went on Truth Social to announce that he had engineered “a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE… when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!” He then mumbled something about 12 hours for this and 12 hours for that, until the “end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.”

On Tuesday morning at 10:50 a.m., Representative Earl A. “Buddy” Carter, Republican of Georgia, formally nominated Donald J. Trump for the Nobel Prize “in recognition of his extraordinary and historic role in brokering an end to the armed conflict between Israel and Iran.” Buddy didn’t mention that Trump was himself a participant in the “war” he ended.

As he departed the White House this morning for the NATO summit, Trump bragged that he was able to get the two nations to stop fighting despite the fact that “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Every television network, broadcast and cable alike, shifted immediately into Full Tape Vault mode looking for another instance that an American president had dropped “the F-bomb” on camera live, and finding none, announced that Trump was first to achieve this momentous accomplishment.

From Air Force One on his way to Europe, Trump continued to brag, “It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR! Both Nations will see tremendous LOVE, PEACE, AND PROSPERITY in their futures. They have so much to gain, and yet, so much to lose if they stray from the road of RIGHTEOUSNESS & TRUTH.”

Trump ordered a major attack on Iran. The bombs dropped. The cruise missiles flew. The satellite photos were published. Trump’s own Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that, “Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.”

Trump’s fake war produced fake peace. Everything is the same as it was before. Israel still has its nukes. Iran is still a few months away from a developing its own nuclear weapon.

Relax. Trump is going for his Nobel. All is well.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. He writes every day at luciantruscott.substack.com and you can follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

'Nothing Is Sacred': Trump Vandalizes White House Rose Garden

'Nothing Is Sacred': Trump Vandalizes White House Rose Garden

First Lady Melania Trump’s renovation of Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden during Donald Trump’s first term drew widespread criticism. Now, President Trump is renovating that space once again—this time transforming it into a Mar-a-Lago-style patio—sparking a fresh wave of backlash from critics.

President Trump defended what Newsweek described as “bulldozing” part of the Rose Garden, saying the change was intended to make the space more accessible for women wearing high heels, according to The Daily Beast. The renovations also involve removing several trees, including a saucer magnolia reportedly planted to honor President John F. Kennedy.

“It’s supposed to have events,” Trump said of the Rose Garden. “Every event you have it’s soaking wet,” he complained.

“The women with the high heels, it’s just too much… the grass, it doesn’t work. We use it for press conferences. It doesn’t work.”

The White House has done little to inform the American people about the construction, leaving critics to ask questions including who is paying for the construction, and is there a federal agency or commission that approves changes to the White House, given its centuries-long history.

“The White House is a national symbol and not the personal property of any president. Permanent changes should be reviewed by preservation experts and consider public sentiment, not be made unilaterally for vanity or political messaging,” wrote Molly Ploofkins, a social media user whose bio says she is a retired Army medic.

“We’ve got money to bulldoze the White House Rose Garden and turn it into a Mar-a-Lago-style patio, but we can’t pay for cancer research for kids or make sure veterans aren’t living off food stamps,” remarked Democratic strategist and former Harris senior advisor Mike Nellis.

“I love how people keep pointing out that private donations paid for it—not the government. I don’t give a s—,” Nellis added later. “The issue is this administration’s priorities. Trump thinks it’s fine to bulldoze the Rose Garden to build a patio so he can relax outside, while doing nothing to improve your life. That’s the criticism. He’s enriching himself, screwing everyone else, and not lifting a g------ finger to help you. That’s the problem.”

Journalist Jane Coaston remarked, “I am increasingly of the view that Trump wants to ‘be president’ so he can watch musicals and manage the rose garden and he just lets other people be co-president for periods of time so he has more time for musicals and rose garden management.”

“RIP to the White House Rose Garden,” observed former Obama White House photographer Pete Souza. “Today the Rose Garden is being ripped apart as construction begins to pave over the entire grass area. A sad, and unnecessary, day for what used to be the People’s House.”

“The White House rose garden was established in 1913,” noted WAMU’s Esther Ciammachilli, before lamenting, “Trump has just paved paradise and put up a parking lot. This is not his house. It belongs to the American people. He is just a tenant. Nothing is sacred anymore.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

With Trump, It's A New War -- And Always Another Lie

With Trump, It's A New War -- And Always Another Lie

If there is one thing we have learned about Donald Trump over the last 10 years – for New Yorkers, over the last 50 – it is that you cannot believe anything he says.

Anything.

If he said he was going to give Iran a chance to come back to the negotiating table and he would mull things over for two weeks, the Iran attack was going to happen in two days. If he called Saturday’s bombing Iran “a spectacular military success,” it was something less than that. If he said Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated,” they weren’t. If he said Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been ended, it hasn’t.

Trump toyed around with whether or not he was going to order the attack, telling reporters on the White House lawn on Wednesday, “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

That was a lie, but it wasn’t a lie lie. It was a strategic feint. Any leader who is planning an attack on an enemy is going to try to seem like it’s either not going to happen, or the planning is in an early stage, when actually it is almost complete. That was the case with Iran.

Planning for the attack had been going on for weeks, and Tehran knew it. They probably started moving the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium, and the uranium they had already enriched, away from their three nuclear weapons development sites when Trump was elected last November. By the time he started bellowing that he would “never” allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, their nuclear material was safe somewhere else.

Trump tells so many lies every day, we only half listen to him. We have gotten used to tucking his lies away in mental rabbit holes so we can get ready for his next bunch of whoppers. But you want to know who has been recording every syllable that comes out of his mouth? The Iranians. They have spent years slowly accumulating enough partially enriched uranium that they have been within a year, or even within months according to some intelligence estimates, of being able to produce a bomb. Do you think they were going to let all that work go to waste just because the Americans were stupid enough to put the international clown, Donald Trump, back in the White House? Not a chance in hell. They were ready. They’ve been ready for months.

With Donald Trump, nothing is ever as it seems. Why does he tell so many lies? Is it because he can’t help himself, that it’s pathological? Not even close. He tells lies to keep his opponents guessing, out of step, off their game.

Even the war he just started with Iran is a lie, in that it has another purpose. I read somewhere over the last few days that all wars are started as much for domestic reasons as for their stated foreign policy goals. Why did George Bush start his war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Did he really believe that Iran had its own secret nuclear weapons program, or that they had developed a stockpile of WMD, weapons of mass destruction? No. He needed a war, and Afghanistan was not enough, so he ginned one up against Saddam.

Domestically, Trump is not in trouble, but he’s not in great shape. He can’t get interest rates down. He hasn’t whipped inflation. His Big Beautiful Bill is in trouble. His attempt to use Elon Musk and his DOGE-niks to conquer the budget deficit and save trillions in spending was an abject failure, with recent stories saying the whole thing is going to end up costing more than it saved. And his big plan to get tariffs to solve everything has failed miserably.

All the stories about tariffs now lead with how Chinese President Xi Jinping has played him like a violin. He can’t even get his big ICE roundup of undocumented immigrants up to speed. There were reports early this month about Trump’s immigration hatchet man, Stephen Miller, “yelling” at Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, ordering them to triple their arrests.

Trump’s war against Iran isn’t just about preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon. Like everything else, the war is about Donald Trump. He was going to drop that gigantic Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb from the moment he learned it existed. He needed that bombing campaign the way he needs golf courses and Diet Cokes and well-done steaks. He needed the White House appearance last night backed up by his war puppies, Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio. He needed his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon this morning giving out the numbers – 125 aircraft, 24 Tomahawks, seven B-2 bombers, 14 bunker busters – complete with map headlined with the mission moniker – this is so perfect, it’s all Trump – “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

You know what he’s doing, because he’s done it so many times before: Hey, look over here! Not only a big shiny object, a big shiny BOMB…which he puts in ALL CAPS every time he uses the word.

Because why? Because Donald Trump. The whole thing was Donald Trump all the time, all the way, from beginning to end. And it’s going to stay Donald Trump. You want to know why? Because now will come the analysis that the attack wasn’t as successful as he said, and he’ll be able to attack anyone who questions his genius. He’s already started, going after the lone Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who strayed off the reservation by claiming that the attack was unconstitutional. Trump started up a new SuperPAC to back anybody who wants to run against the poor guy. And woe be unto anyone who questions Trump’s assertion that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are done for. He’ll be able to throw around the T-word, “traitor,” if you dare point out inconvenient facts like reports that there was no measurable radiation produced from the bombing of the three nuclear sites. Not even a roentgen, according to the IAEA, was emitted from the destruction done to the Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Trump’s war puppy at the Pentagon was jubilant: "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated," Hegseth crowed at an 8 a.m. press conference at the Pentagon this morning. "The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant."

There could be good reasons for the peculiar lack of radiation from the damage done to three nuclear weapons sites. Maybe at Fordo, where satellite photos show six craters that look like someone stabbed the earth with an ice pick, the bombs went off so deep and caused such a collapse underground that they sealed off all the radiation. Maybe the same thing happened at Natanz, where another neat hole has appeared in the middle of an open field surrounded by a curving two-lane road.

We won’t know until the Pentagon does its BDA, battle damage assessment, and maybe not even after that, because which Iranian official is going to allow anyone onto any of the top-secret sites to check out the holes and maybe put a Geiger-counter on the gray dust?

Which is exactly the way Trump likes it. Who is going to question his chest-pounding assertions about his “brilliant” attack that has “obliterated” Iran’s dream of nuclear weapons?

Well, the Russkis, for one. Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, got on his Telegram account this morning and announced that other countries are "ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." He didn’t go into any details, but presumably that would mean Russia and its new war-buddy North Korea.

And then there is this possibility that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, so I’ll just put it out there right now: What if Iran has already succeeded in producing a nuclear weapon? They haven’t let the IAEA near their nuclear facilities for a while, so what if Iran cranked up its 60 percent uranium to “weapons grade” 90 percent, and they went ahead and made one? And having made it, then squirrelled it away far from where they knew the U.S. would come a-bombing-when-they-come.

While we’re at it, let’s throw in this hideous tidbit. What if the Ayatollah, at age 86, is sufficiently infirm and hidden away that some Republican Guard maniac up and decides, hey, let’s lob our nuke at Jerusalem and see what happens?

Every military expert who can get himself or herself on the TeeVee has been yapping about how easy wars are to start, but goodness me, how hard they are to end. Well, I’m not on the TeeVee, but I’ll agree with the experts on that one.

But I haven’t heard many of them talking about what wars have this extra added little tendency to produce every time you start one:

Unforeseen consequences.

Get ready, because we are in for a few, and they come from a place where Donald Trump, no student of history he, has ever spent much time.

Donald Trump will be learning that it’s a brand new thing to lie yourself out of inconvenient facts like dead American bodies.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

Trump And Melania Booed 'Mercilessly' At Kennedy Center Opening Night

Trump And Melania Booed 'Mercilessly' At Kennedy Center Opening Night

Just before the Kennedy Center's opening night performance of the musical "Les Miserables," President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stood to be recognized. They were met with a loud chorus of boos.

Video of the moment shows the boos mixed with some cheering, with Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason observing that some Trump supporters in the audience shouted "USA" chants in an attempt to drown out the booing. In addition to the First Couple, both Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance were also in attendance.

"In an absolutely embarrassing moment, Donald Trump was just booed mercilessly at the Kennedy Center," former Lawrence County, Tennessee commissioner Chris D. Jackson tweeted.

The president and vice president were at the Kennedy Center — which is led by Trump after he appointed himself chairman earlier this year — for the opening night performance of the musical "Les Miserables," which is about a populist rebellion against a tyrannical king. The performance is on the same night of the official arrival of approximately 700 U.S. Marines Trump deployed to Los Angeles to quell protests in the second-largest U.S. city.

Prior to Trump's arrival, New York Times White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh tweeted video of a group of drag queens entering the theater, who were met with cheers from the crowd. The drag queens told the Independent that they were there not only to see "Les Miserables," but to also protest Trump banning drag performances at the Kennedy Center after he put himself in charge (the Kennedy Center went on to schedule multiple shows featuring characters in drag, like "Mrs. Doubtfire").

"Theater is supposed to be a place of community, a place of storytelling, a place of celebration, joy, catharsis and it should be open and available to all," drag performer Vagenisis told the Independent.

Others in attendance also protested Trump's presence at the show. Former Capitol Hill staffer Jason Tufele Carl Johnson tweeted a photo of himself and his date wearing t-shirts that read "democracy has no kings" and "abolish ICE," with the caption: "When you can't change your Kennedy Center tickets cause Trump turned it into a fundraiser for his fascist friends, you make a statement out of it."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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