Trump’s Tantrums

Now that ceasefire negotiations with Iran have predictably broken down before they ever got started, we can finally get back to the destruction of Iran’s “civilization” that Donald Trump promised with all the subtlety and panache of a drunken sailor.

The president who apparently doesn’t drink nonetheless can’t hold his tongue. Who will ever forget this decidedly unpresidential rant:

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote on Truth Social, perhaps hoping to end the war with a dystopian threat. “Open the F—in’ Strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

He directed his fury toward Iran’s oil and gas industry, and bridge and tunnel infrastructure. “There will be nothing like it!!! I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Holy shit!

Okay, … news flash: our president is neither a graduate of the Emily Post Charm School or Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. Manners and diplomacy are most definitely not his specialty; temperament even less so.

The president can’t seem to help himself. Maintaining composure is like an Artemis II moonshot. He lashes out with zero self-restraint. To him, Barack Obama was the epitome of decorousness—and a failed strategy of charming the Ayatollahs out of enriching uranium.

Trump shoots from the hip as bullets ricochet all over the globe. He is by far the world’s least diplomatic and measured political leader—and many of his most ardent supporters love him for it. The current occupant of the White House takes great pleasure in saying exactly what’s on his mind the moment he formulates a thought. Deliberation is dispensed with; so, too, is studied preparation.

President Trump is a case study in impulsivity and indiscretion.

Indeed, he barely knows what he’s saying half the time he opens his mouth. Both of his presidencies would have been far better served and received had he forsworn social media—and off-the-cuff, repetitive rallies—altogether. God help those who are tasked with briefing him for the day. Clearly he won’t listen.

Surely, not the most endearing traits for the leader of the free world to possess. In the end, however, does it matter? His delivery system may be deplorable, but his decision-making has often been correct.

Is he wrong about ending the “civilization” of Iran—as in, would you call beating a woman to death for revealing a strand of hair, or hanging homosexuals from cranes, an advanced society? Civilization is a misnomer for the Iranian people. For 50 years they have been thwarted from any progress in societal aims.

Trump once again misspoke. Isn’t bringing civilization back to Iran what we sought to accomplish in striking Iran in the first place—alongside another clear-eyed, level-headed country, Israel? Iran’s theocracy is a death cult, and not a country designed for human fulfillment.

These Islamists are decidedly anti-civilization. They remain infatuated with the halcyon days of the 9th century; fixated, with a steely determination, on dragging the entire Western World back to those primitive, ruthless times. Stoning women and adhering strictly to Sharia law is but a preview of how much worse it may become for all of us unless we forcefully reclaim and protect our own civilizational trajectory and progress.

Democrats and MAGA Firsters question whether Iran posed an “imminent threat.” Seriously? A half century of shouting “Death to America!”—the only nation in the world that resorts to such eliminationist rhetoric while threatening to “wipe Israel from the map”—and enriching weapons-grade uranium when they are drowning in oil, is insufficient evidence of an eternal threat? From all the clamor, one would think America just started a war with Tahiti or Luxembourg.

We are not living in a time of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Chuchill or Abba Eban—political leaders who spoke with eloquence and knew how to sell an agenda. Public expression is widely coarsened; talking points are ticked off with vulgarity. Trump recently addressed a business summit by reassuring the audience, “You can ask me anything you want. You can talk sex, whatever the hell you want.”

Democrats Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Rashida Tlaib, Ruben Gallego have all recently resorted to language unbecoming of their high office and public presence. Congresswoman Susie Lee unleashed a torrent of expletive-filled recriminations on social media against President Trump: “So f_cking f_cked up. I’ll pray they f_ck him to his face.”

Lovely.

Democrat spokesperson and antisemitic psycho Hasan Piker responded to a Vietnamese refugee from communism with, “Suck my d_ck old lady. . .. “F_ck this south Vietnamese motherf_cking . . . psychotic f_cking refugee!”

Nice.

Of course, the president should be held to a much higher standard. He shouldn’t be known for rhetorical cringe. Lose the live wire and loose cannon, Mr. President. Instead, sell your policies and make the case for this war with Iran. Messaging should be your mantra; not endless insults of Joe Biden, Tucker Carlson and CNN.

Trump would do well to examine the presidencies of FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. All three had no trouble getting the American people behind defeating their mortal enemies.

Let’s not hold our breath.

The tragedy is that Trump, who successfully sold real estate and a hit reality TV show, should be able to accomplish this effortlessly—if he could simply control his worst impulses and focus less on boasting and more on articulating the cause. After all, he’s already made some gutsy but correct calls that should have, if not for his outsized personality handicaps, drowned out his detractors.

The tragedy is that Trump, who successfully sold real estate and a hit reality TV show, should be able to accomplish this effortlessly—if he could simply control his worst impulses and focus less on boasting and more on articulating the cause.

There’s an enormous disconnect in believing that one must positively approve of Trump, the person, in order to begrudgingly recognize that he has had the right idea on several highly significant public and foreign policies. You can both despise him and appreciate some of the good he has accomplished—especially if you are Jewish.

There’s an enormous disconnect in believing that one must positively approve of Trump, the person, in order to begrudgingly recognize that he has had the right idea on several highly significant public and foreign policies.

Finally sealing our southern border has been a godsend. Responding to crime after years of lax criminal and immigration enforcement is long overdue. Correcting for lopsided trade and tariff imbalances makes fiscal sense. Taking a hard line on the deportation of criminals who have no legal status in our country is bad optics but arguably correct. Stemming the flow of dangerous narcotics surely saves lives.

Recognizing that Palestinian intransigence, rejectionism, and terrorism is the cause of their own self-inflicted problems was always true but never acknowledged by prior presidents. Further expanding the once unthinkable Abraham Accords has happened entirely under Trump’s watch.

Removal of dictators from our region is surely in America’s national security interest. Far too many countries in the United Nations and NATO are not our true allies, unlike Israel, which so demonstrably is.

Every president knew that Iran was a nuclear threat, and that its sightlines extended much farther than Israel. For decades we saw how conciliatory gestures and laughably one-sided negotiations neither appeased nor neutralized Islamists. Meanwhile, thousands of American military personnel and diplomats lost their lives with no president deciding to take the war to them.

Now, with the mullahs on their knees just begging for a knock-out punch, be thankful for a vulgar man in the Oval Office eager to deliver the final blow.