BEFORE READING
Please Note: It is hard to keep up with this unhinged President. This piece was written on the first week of the Iranian war. Events since only confirm the picture painted here.
TRUMP – THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FAILURE IN A LONG LIST OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
The Master Fiddler $$$$$ – at work : Source Cagle Cartoons
Trump has been hugely successful in three areas.
MONEY! MONEY! MONEY – IT’S A RICH MANS WORLD
Even though Trump is less than a year and a half into his second term he has increased his personal wealth (in office) more so than any other President in history. Some believe he has ‘earnt’ (meaning accumulated) more wealth while in office than all other 45 Presidents combined. Trump believes the Presidential oath ‘to serve’ means to ‘self-serve’. He’s achieved that objective with flying colours.
In time, many examples of his and his family’s greed and corruption will emerge as the fear of Trumpian retribution fades. As his power declines, those he’s failed or crossed in business ‘deals’ will feel emboldened to speak out in revenge. There’s much more than meme coins to talk about here, just as there’s more to be revealed about Epstein than we’ve heard so far.
Once someone in power is brave enough to stab Caesar, many more cowardly blades will follow in quick and violent succession. Trump the magnificent will fall to become a mere bleeding piece of earth within minutes.
PUNISHING THE WEAK WHILE COWERING IN FRONT OF THE BIG BULLY BOYS
Second, Trump has been equally successful in destroying the Western Alliance to the benefit of its enemies (Russia and Iran) and America’s principal contender for hegemony in Asia if not the world (China).
Trump repeatedly demeans the leaders, governments and cultures of the UK, France and Germany as well as countries he dismisses as ‘shit holes’. He’s criticised NATO over and over again-and threatened to withdraw from the Alliance. He’s punished Canada and Mexico (the US’ top two trading partners). He abandoned Ukraine. He showed no hesitation in telling the world he might (at other times, will ) takeover Panama, Greenland et al. He rails against Norway for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize.
On the other hand, Trump repeatedly capitulates to Putin and Netanyahu – the strongmen and bomb droppers par excellence of this world. His administration backs right wing regimes in Hungary (Orban) and extreme right-wing parties in Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic. He TACO’s out when it comes to confronting Xi (the world’s Number 1 autocrat).
Trump, the insecure bully boy, seeks the approval of the world’s senior bully boys. He seeks reassurance he truly belongs to their club. And he seeks to do that by demonstrating to his ‘colleagues’ that he too can use force to get his way.
The net result? None of America’s traditional allies trust America anymore. They’re already busy making alternative arrangements to survive. If Trump continues this way (and isn’t impeached, dies of a stroke or assassinated) he will not only take America down, he’ll take the whole free world down with him. No other American President has done that. Another gold medal for DJT.
OPENLY BETRAY THE CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY FROM DAY ONE
Trump’s foundational promise to voters has always been to make it possible for working Americans to realise the (meaning their) American dream. He promised to clear the swamp of a selfish elite that looks down on ordinary Americans, to make American industries great again, to bring back good, worthwhile jobs, curb illegal immigration reduce crime, stamp out drug running – and stop other countries from taking advantage of an overly generous and soft hearted USA. In short he promised a return to the Golden Years, The Happy Days of an imaginary lifestyle of milk and honey. Trump positioned himself as champion of the people, their knight in shining armour.
Given his first-term performance it’s more than surprising (particularly after his base’s attack on the Capitol) he was re-elected for a second term. But he was. Day one of his second term he showed his disrespect of democracy by pardoning around 1500 people charged with offences related to that attack on the Capitol. In this President’s eyes personal loyalty to him trumps democracy.
Trump said the election was rigged. Attack on Capitol January 6, 2021. Source: University of Chicago
Trump MkII used similar logic to marginalise, ignore and castrate Congress, play with the law (an old habit) and intimidate The Supreme Court.
He quickly moved to stop foreign aid, block military aid to Ukraine, encourage DOGE (under Musk) to run riot, fired the Chief of Staff of the combined Services (and 19 other generals and admirals). He fired and replaced the heads of key government departments including the DOJ, FBI and DHS.
Trump does not believe in the separation of powers. He thinks and behaves as an unconstrained despot. He (in his own mind’s eye) is America. What he wants, America is there to deliver. Those who don’t, see things his way, those who disagree, he punishes. As he himself has said “I hate my enemies”. His actions prove he means what he says.
Trump consistently lies to and betrays the base who returned him to office for a second term. His ‘ great big beautiful bill’ saw major cuts in health insurance support, education and numerous kinds of welfare. His crazy tariff war(s) have lifted domestic inflation. His petrol war will do the same. His economic policies have favoured the wealthy at the expense of working Americans. ICE has devolved into a gestapo type terror force. While spending billions a day on his Iranian war, Trump announced that the Federal Government could no longer afford to support childcare or healthcare.
All this might be less scary if Trump were a rational, talented or principled person. He’s none of those.
He’s an insatiable narcissist of limited and declining mental ability. He’s also exhausted. Who wouldn’t be after trying to force the whole world to bow to his will, to recognise him as the world’s el numero uno in so many fields of endeavour.
It’s taken only over a year for Trump to betray his base, all but cripple American democracy and alienate America’s allies. He doesn’t have enough energy and guile left to counter or challenge the ambitions of the word’s other authoritarian leaders. Besides, he really doesn’t want to confront the strong men. He wants to be the senior member of their club, not its nemesis.
Now that the cracks are appearing in Trump’s superman facade many will rush to say they were among the first to notice the President ‘has gone insane’. I don’t think Trump is insane (whatever that term means). If he is insane, then insanity is a much more widespread condition than we laypersons have been led to believe. There’re heaps of people in power who present similar symptoms to Trump’s.
Trump has thought the same way for decades. He was just less visible in his early days because he then played in smaller theatres on smaller stages than worldwide tv and social media networks which he now dominates to an extent no other political figure ever has. Another gold medal for Trump.
The strain of trying to control the whole world, every day (except golf days) across a huge range of complex issues spanning economics, lobbying, law, finance, justice, welfare, industry, gossip, immigration, international relations, party politics and peace/war making etc is massive – even for someone with a Messiah complex.
I think Trump’s blitzkrieg speed involvement in so many different fields at once (plus the mounting opposition those interferences trigger from so many of those he has denigrated, ruffled or attacked) have simply overwhelmed and exhausted him to the point where he’s having a nervous breakdown. A nervous breakdown borne of his overwhelming egoism. Everyone knows Trump throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way – all you have to do is watch the news to see that.
I think making the distinction between ‘insane’ and ‘breakdown’ is important. If someone is insane you can’t be blamed for anything they do. You’re off the hook. Who would have thought?…. ‘nothing to do with me’! ‘Fancy that’.
The reality is half of America consciously voted for Trump twice (2016 and 2024). Many Republican Congressmen/women and Senators chose to fly in Trump’s slipstream to enhance their own electoral prospects. Past Presidents held their tongues when they should have been the first to man the barricades in defence of American democracy.
Surely Trump’s cabinet (the Administration) wouldn’t knowingly put an insane man’s priorities ahead of the National interest? They, obviously, didn’t think he was insane…. or ….if they did think him insane…. they were willing serving him to enhance their own careers. Ditto big business entrepreneurs, bankers et al.
Is it only in the last week or so they’ve noticed the man they’ve made so many deals with is insane? No. All these people consciously backed Trump when it was in their interests to do so. They are all implicated in the collapse of American democracy. They are all implicated in the rise of Trumpian authoritarianism. They’ll deny it of course. Just as everyone denies being an intimate of Jeffery (who?) Epstein.
It’s all Trump’s fault they’ll cry, ‘Thank God it’s all over and we can get back to normal’. Hopefully it won’t be that easy for them to shrug off their complicity. Hopefully they will be held accountable. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t. It all depends on which way America breaks. If the military says ‘no’ to Trump there’s a chance that he’ll collapse in a heap and can be taken away by ambulance for a rest and calm down. That would be a good result for him, America and the world (including Australia). But if Americans continue to wait for ‘someone’ else in power to take the initiative before they’ll join in Trump could take us all into hell.
TRUMP LAUNCHES THE DUMBEST WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Trump criticised past Presidents for getting into pointless wars that bleed America of its treasure and youth. He promised to stop both the Ukraine/Russia and Palestine/Israel wars on day one of he’s second term. He not only posed as the President of ‘no more forever foreign wars’, he announced he is The President of Peace. He complains time and time again that he’s due many Nobel Peace Prizes because he’s (amongst other things) stopped eight wars (details of which only he can remember).
One of these two men knows what he’s doing.
Source: David Rowe cartoon published in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) on March 20, 2026,
Less than a year ago Trump installed himself as lifetime Chairman of a body he created by personal fiat, the Board of Peace (membership fee, a billion dollars). His Board’s first mission was to reconstruct Gaza as an international, upmarket, seaside resort. Before that ‘mission’ was started he got distracted by Venezuela. The US military’s spectacular and easy success in the subjugation of this sovereign nation gave him a taste for flexing his muscles as Commander in Chief.
In his mind he truly was becoming a more assertive version of his heroes, President Andrew (Old Hickory Stick) Jackson (1776-1845) and the dogged Winston Churchill. He likes the image of himself striding the world as a latter-day Alexander the Great.
The PM of Israel has learnt how to flatter Trump into believing that Trump can fulfil his manifest destiny by ignoring both the weak (the liberal West) and destroying the most evil empire in the Middle East (which is Iran as far as Netanyahu is concerned). He’s been hugely successful in this regard, successful beyond his wildest dreams.
Trump, in his own mind’s eye – with apologies to General Patton and George Scott (from the movie Patton)
Photograph: Kobal
Netanyahu gave Trump his first taste of blood when he encouraged the bellicose President to try his hand by sending B2-bombers into Iran to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons. Trump loved the experience. He boasted to have ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear programme in less than a day without loss to America’s military. No other US President had come even close to achieving that goal (he said). It was ‘shock-and-awe’ all over again – only better. The world paid attention. Trump looked strong, brave and brilliant. He loved it.
He then pulled another rabbit out of his hat in Venezuela. All over in a night, wow! Taking a country’s oil was as easy as getting women to succumb to your unwelcome advances – as he said ‘if you want it just take it’. Trump felt he was on a roll. Netanyahu suggested Trump should go for another gold, to pull off a three-hat trick, by joining Israel in a joint venture to put Iran back in its place once and for all. Another chance for glory. Trump swallowed the bait.
This ongoing joint venture is working well – for Israel. America’s military might and treasure are being expended to achieve Israel’s long obvious goals. Israel isn’t interested in liberating suppressed, freedom loving Iranians from theocratic madmen. It isn’t interested in the rights of Iranian women. Israel doesn’t seek to establish democracy in Iran. It simply wants a decapitated, broken and preferably chaotic country that’s too weak to challenge Israel in the future.
When the new Iran war started Israel immediately accelerated its long-established assassination programme to murder the leaders of countries and organisations that oppose the expansion of the Israeli state. Layer after layer of political leaders, generals, diplomats, physicists and engineers have been tracked down and ‘eliminated’. They have not been killed in battle, they have been murdered in cold blood. Even Iran’s Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenei) and most of his family were ‘taken out’.
Imagine if Israel’s leaders (or Trump himself) were to suffer such a fate. The US and Israeli press would label the perpetrators ‘barbaric terrorists’, sub-humans. We have become too accustomed to operating on a double standard where ‘we’ are always the good guys and ‘they’ are always the really, really bad guys.
Only one statistic is needed to illustrate this dangerous quirk of human nature – the double standard.
On Oct 7 2023 the world first heard of the massacre of unarmed civilians, the wanton killing of children and babies, the rape of women and the taking of hostages by cowardly Hamas terrorists who attacked out of the blue on an Israeli holiday.
Since (and including casualties on that day) there have (to the end of 2025) been around 60 Israeli children killed in the war. In Gaza the figure is estimated to be around 20,000, a ratio of over 300 to 1. Who are the barbarians here?
While the world watches the histrionics of the US President on their screens every day, Israel has cleverly slipped out of the limelight to get on with the job of crippling its opponents not only in Iran but also in Gaza, The West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. Israel will not stop until it owns or controls the whole of Palestine from the River to the Sea – and has established protective ‘buffer’ zones elsewhere. Even if that involves forcible IDF intrusions into the territory of other sovereign nations.
Israel judges all methods legitimate in pursuit of its goals – the bombing of civilians, the blocking of humanitarian food aid and medical supplies, the destruction of infrastructure schools and hospitals, the bulldozing of civilian homes, the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It finds no difficulty ignoring UN resolutions and the dismissal of International court findings.
While Israel is close to achieving its war goals, America is not.
We don’t even know what goals Trump is trying to achieve in this war – beyond his own self aggrandisement.
Is it to support Iranians who want to throw off an Islamic theocracy in favour of replacing it with some sort of democracy of their own, just as the US tried in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya? The US failed in all those cases after considerable, sustained effort. Why would a few words from Trump convince ordinary Iranians that Trump really has their backs? They’d be fools to think he means what he says given his track record. In one breath Trump extols Iranians to rise and overthrow their government. In the next he promises he will annihilate their civilisation if they don’t do what he says. There is no sign many Iranians take him seriously. Mission failed.
Is it to secure regime change? Sometimes Trump says ‘yes’ at other times ‘no’. Sometimes he claims this goal has already been achieved, sometimes not. The reality is his partner in arms (Israel) has only achieved replacing one generation of the regime with a more hardline and more determined one. Mission failed.
Is it to end Iran’s nuclear weapon programme once and for all? Trump said he did just that last year. He didn’t. There are no signs Trump has done anything so far this time around to achieve such a goal. He’d have to put many boots on ground to have a chance of pulling that off. That would mean escalating the war and accepting the high probability of significant troop casualties. Mission status: postponed, perhaps (hopefully) cancelled.
Is it to damage the Iranian economy and its industrial base to such an extent that it (and its proxies) can’t produce or buy enough ballistic missiles and drones to threaten Israel or other Gulf States or American bases in the area? The US military claims this is a prime objective of the US Administration and that it (the military) has already all but achieved these objectives. America claims virtually all of Iran’s defence industry no longer exists……and yet Iran, so far, has surprised many by its ability to return fire at a far more than token level.
Some experts claim that Iran still has about 60% of its pre-war stockpile of missiles left undamaged – and thousands of drones in reserve. It certainly has enough to terrify its Gulf neighbours by threatening to destroy their oilfields. The rest of the world also fears the consequences of that happening. It would be a disaster for everyone, including Americans. Mission status: who knows?
Is the mission to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping? Well it was open before this war started. Epic Fury has, (unintentionally from America’s point of view), closed it. The world – and the US – will suffer higher prices, supply shortages in oil, gas, fertilisers, helium etc etc until the Strait opens again. Inflation will spread out throughout the world, while economic growth slows and debt levels rise. Mission status, America shot itself in the foot.
AMERICA WINS THE MILITARY BATTLE BUT LOSES THE WAR
Overall, reports of the defeat of Iran seem premature. Indeed it could be argued Iran is winning its war with the USA (in spite of losing it against Israel).
Yes, the Iranian navy has been obliterated, the air force knocked out …. but Iran still has enough assets to control the Strait of Hormuz. It didn’t exercise that Ace negotiating card before the war. It now does.
Before the war Iran wasn’t launching attacks on its Gulf neighbours. Now it’s attacking them in an attempt to get those neighbours to apply pressure on America to back off.
If the pain Iran inflicts is enough at least some may well do just that. Most of the free world also hopes America will step back (if not down).
THE major impediment to finding an equitable and sensible end to this war is Trump’s ego. He can’t end the war until he finds a way of fabricating a story that will make him look like Captain Invincible. For a week now he’s flailed around in public trying to craft such a story. His ever-changing scripts, however, have delivered little beside braggery, multiple inconsistencies and symptoms of panic. He is at a loss as to how to convincingly claim VICTORY.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, has no difficulty in claiming victory (although he does so in a deliberately quieter, behind-close-doors way). Even Iran looks like a more unified, resilient and capable foe than it did before Trump unleashed Epic Fury.
Gaza, after the ceasefire
Maybe it’s finally dawning on a not too clever Trump that he’s been positioned as the fall guy in this complex game of international chess; that Goliath is being brought down by two squabbling, but smarter, little competing Davids.
America alone couldn’t unblock the Strait even if it wanted to, even if it committed a sizeable portion of its military/naval resources in an attempt to do so.
How could or would such an idea work?
Would the US navy only escort and protect its own merchant ships and/or those affiliated in some readily identifiable way with US interests? Would it escort its allies’ ships although its allies refused to send their own naval assets to the region to defend their own and US related ships? I don’t think so.
When Trump floated the idea of UK, French, Japanese, South Korean (and even Chinese!) naval assets assisting the US in keeping the Strait open he got zero takers. None. He’s never stopped sulking about that.
Besides, how could Iran arrange to separate ‘enemy’ (US ships) from ‘friendly’ (and unescorted) shipping into separate queues where it would charge a toll to ‘neutrals’ (and a lesser – or no charge – to its allies like China) while attacking ‘enemy’ US affiliated ships with the intention of sinking both those enemy ships and their US naval escorts?
Both scenarios are ‘missions impossible’ because of their complexity. They’d be impossible to pull off in such a small a crowded waterway as the Strait where ships from so many nations and flags of convenience mix together in close proximity. The use of airpower would only compound problems further. It would be mayhem, chaos. Both are silly solutions to a problem of America’s own making.
END GAME
Trump has tied himself up in knots ……knots he can’t easily undo. He’s tried to, repeatedly, but failed. He’s cornered. And when such men are cornered they tend to lash out in desperation, blaming all and sundry (other than themselves) for their failures. Just before Hitler shot himself he blamed Germans for letting him down, he blamed ordinary Germans for being too weak to fulfil his vision to make Germany Great Again.
Trump thinks the same way. He’ll try to take everybody down with him rather than admit failure.
It’s up to Americans to stop him from doing that. There’s about a 50-50 chance they will.
And Israel?
Netanyahu hasn’t made it easy for the ‘best friend Israel has ever had’ (Trump) to reach a face saving deal with Iran by refusing to stop Israel’s continuing intrusion into Lebanon. Israel First trumps America First on Netanyahu’s priority list.
Pretty soon Trump will turn against Netanyahu when he realises he’s been suckered, when he realises he hasn’t manipulated Netanyahu, that it’s been the other way around.
Netanyahu won’t care much by then. He’ll have already achieved his goals. By then Trump will have only one big buddy left – Putin. And that’s not good news for anyone.
And Iran?
Iran will probably end up controlling the Strait in a more overt and stronger way than it has in the past. China (which buys approx 80%% to 90% of Iranian oil) will probably help Iran consolidate such a positioning. What’s more Iran will probably be charging a (reconstruction) toll of around US$2 million per ship to exit the Persian Gulf unimpeded. Such a toll would boost Iran’s income by around $50-70 billion a year. Add to that the extra income Iran might accrue by way of higher oil prices (at a guess around $10 billion) and you have a far from destroyed financial system. There’s no reason why Iran should concede to Trump’s demands from a $ point of view.
The sooner Trump goes the better – for everybody. Is Napoleon’s room on Saint Helena available for long term lease? Are there gold plated taps in the bathroom?