He’s become even more erratic and irrational than usual—and that’s saying a lot.
On Easter Sunday, a day holy to much of America and, in theory anyway, the president issued a post that was even more unhinged than normal for him.
(And—again—that’s saying a lot.)
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****** Strait, you crazy b*******, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
There are at least two important things to note about Trump’s ranting.
The first is the silence from self-proclaimed Christian nationalists such as Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith following Trump’s obscenity-laden Easter message. If any other president had profaned the sabbath in that fashion, their condemnation would have been swift and loud.
But Trump strikes them mute when he veers toward blasphemy, demonstrating that the “nationalist” portion of their description is far more important to them than the Christian part is, no matter what they say.
The second is that if Trump wanted to signal to Iran that keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed gives them tremendous leverage, he found the absolute best way to do that.
No poker player who sat down at a table with Donald Trump would have to look hard for a “tell” with him. He might as well have flatly informed Iran’s leadership that squeezing the world’s oil supply may cause distress around the globe, but it’s political agony for a president who believes thinking before he acts is a sign of weakness.
Now that it is clear he’s stuck with a mess of his own making in Iran—one that threatens to crater his public support as gas prices soar and increasing fuel costs ripple through the rest of the economy—he’s flailing.
He issues threats to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. Given that Iran’s rulers adhere to a belief that the modern world is corrupt and ungodly, that’s not likely to terrify them as much as it would leaders of more cosmopolitan nations.
This leaves him—and us—stuck in a war that more and more resembles both a huge mistake and a tremendous quagmire.
He wants a way out, but the Iranians realize they’re dealing with an adversary who has the attention span of a flea. They think time is their friend and they’re willing to try waiting him out.
And the rest of the world—convinced that Trump is both a buffoon and a bully—isn’t inclined to help him out of the predicament in which he placed himself.
And, again, us.
But his untethered Easter Sunday post isn’t the only sign Trump feels under tremendous pressure.
A few days before he decided the f bomb belonged in a holiday message, Trump fired U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
She displeased the president by not “solving” the ongoing scandal that is Trump’s troubled history with the late child sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
If anything, though, Bondi followed Trump’s instructions too slavishly regarding the Epstein files and the president’s spurious prosecutions of his “enemies.” She took a Trump-like approach to testifying before Congress, insulting everyone—Republican or Democrat—who questioned her and making any sort of compromise resolution to the scandal impossible.
But that may have been part of her problem.
Like the recently dismissed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem before her, Bondi discovered that doing Trump’s bidding and letting Trump be Trump can be a dangerous practice. He’s a man who always has counted on people around to save him from himself.
That’s part of the game.
Because he’s the sort of guy who never can acknowledge a mistake, when his plans go awry, he needs to find someone else to blame.
Bondi won’t be the last to go.
As his troubles in Iran and at home escalate, this president will look for more aides and subordinates to dispatch. He’ll grow more and more desperate the worse things get because he can’t hold accountable the guy who got him into this mess.
That’s the guy who signed the unbalanced Easter message.
President DONALD J. TRUMP.
