A not-very-slight difference of opinion . . ,

• Numerous Republicans: We’re not a war. It’s just a temporary special military operation.
• Trump: We’re doing very well on the war front. . . . When you go to war, some people die.

Conceivably, they’re all lying.

Trump’s fantasy of US omnipotence has crashed into reality . . . Perhaps the most shocking thing about his cavalier approach is that he seems to have had no idea the Gulf would be a target, despite the fact that just about every country in the region had warned his administration that Iran would surely attack US allies in retaliation for an American assault. . . . Trump seems to believe that he, like his fantasy America, exists on a different plane, utterly untouchable by the swirl of global events. The devastating consequences of his actions are not just someone else’s fault. They are someone else’s problem, too.

Who’s really influencing Trump’s war.

• Podcast
• Video

Podcast: Why Trump fired Kristi Noem and the forever war presidency. [Spoiler, she fingered him for corruption]

Quotes

• Watching Hegseth’s manic rant about limitless killing, I remembered the 1950 words of an anticolonial poet: “The hour of the modern barbarian is at hand. The American hour. Violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, conformism, stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.”
• Trump: Asking a question about Russia helping Iran is stupid. That’s a less important issue that solving sports problem.
• Mr Flippancy: If gas prices, they rise.
• Leavitt: When Trump thinks that Iran is no longer a threat to the USA, that will amount to ‘unconditional surrender’. Utterly regardless of whatever Iran says and does, apparently. Trump’s fantasy world, again.