Iran Quagmire: Predictable and Predicted

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, and  Alex Leary at WSJ report that Trump summoned then-DNI Gabbard to brief him on how the Iran War would go.

Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard outlined assessments from America’s intelligence apparatus. According to people familiar with the meeting, she told Trump that killing Iran’s supreme leader would likely usher in a more hard-line regime open to acquiring nuclear weapons. Tehran would rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market. And it would strike U.S. forces and partners in the Middle East, prompting questions about American resolve and reliability with allies.

The notes of caution echoed warnings Trump was receiving from all corners. Top military leaders told the president that a war would lead to casualties, concerns about the weapons stockpile and readiness problems for an overstretched force, The Wall Street Journal reported.

...
Now Trump is relying on sanctions and a perpetual blockade wearing down U.S. forces to crush Iran’s economy, a wait-and-see strategy he argues will send the regime crawling to his feet.

An estimated 3,000 Iranians and 18 U.S. servicemembers have died related to combat operations, and the Pentagon says an additional 756 American troops have been wounded. The war also has damaged U.S. bases, drained oil reserves and shrunk munitions stockpiles. The conflict is weighing down Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections and sinking Trump’s poll numbers to the lowest of his presidency.

...

“This was all predictable and predicted,” said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative who worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. “You can draw a straight line from the fact that the war was launched without any clear political objective to the mishandled diplomacy in trying to end it.”

The Politics of the US Surrender

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Niall Stanage at The Hill:

President Trump tried to make the case for his interim peace deal with Iran on Wednesday, but a lengthy news conference only revealed that no last-minute rabbits would be pulled from the hat to assuage his critics.

Trump’s comments, delivered as he prepared to leave a Group of Seven (G7) summit in France, also exposed just how far the U.S. has shifted from its original war aims as the president avidly seeks to bring the conflict to a close.

An especially startling example came when Trump defended Iran’s right to maintain ballistic missiles — despite the fact that a prior U.S. and Israeli objective had been the destruction of this capacity.

“They have to have some because other people have some. You’ve got to have some,” Trump mused, referring to Iran’s position in relation to other Persian Gulf nations.

The president added that when unnamed advisers told him he needed to wholly eliminate the Iranian conventional arsenal, “I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles but they can’t have them?’”

Trump cast his push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as critical for American prosperity. He raised the specter of “economic catastrophe” in the absence of a deal and said he had no desire to end up analogous to former President Herbert Hoover, who is widely blamed for exacerbating the Great Depression.

On the central issue of Iran’s stock of enriched nuclear material, Trump waved away concerns, saying that while the U.S. has “the equipment to get it” and that it would be “psychologically” satisfying to do so, “it’s actually not valuable. Not a lot of value.”

Trump further confirmed that the interim memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreed between American and Iranian negotiators calls for a fund of $300 billion to be set up to help with the cost of Iranian reconstruction. While this would not be directly bankrolled by the U.S., Washington would be involved in the planning and facilitation of the fund, and it appears its Persian Gulf allies would be expected to contribute.

At roughly the same time as Trump was speaking, a senior administration official was on a media call reading the full text of the MOU to reporters. The agreement is expected to be signed in Switzerland on Friday.

The text confirmed by the official shows that the MOU provides for the reopening of the crucial strait by both sides, allows Iran to immediately resume crude oil exports, and includes a provision for the U.S. to unfreeze Iranian assets so long as the deal is implemented.

In return, Iran pledges that it will not “procure or develop” nuclear weapons. Trump is presenting this as a major victory but it in fact merely echoes a promise Iran has made numerous times in the past — including in the deal arrived at during former President Obama’s tenure, known as the JCPOA, which the current president excoriates.

The MOU does say that Iran’s existing stock of highly enriched uranium will, at the least, be subject to dilution on-site under the eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the relevant paragraph is vague and also notes that a final resolution on “the issue of enrichment” will be punted to a final deal. Skeptics worry this allows Tehran a capacious amount of wiggle room.

Critics on the left and right alike are asking why the war was fought in the first place, if this is to be the shape of its resolution.

The angst is especially sharp among conservative hawks. The staunchly pro-Israel commentator Ben Shapiro called the deal a “disaster” during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday. Another prominent conservative commentator, Erick Erickson, wrote on social media that the accord was “an American surrender.”

It isn’t just the pundit class who are outraged.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost a primary fight last month after Trump backed one of his opponents, blasted what he called “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during part of Trump’s first term but went on to run against him in the 2024 presidential primary, wrote on social media that the Iranians will use any funds received to “further their nuclear ambitions and on terrorist proxies against us.”

Haley added, “It’s a huge mistake to pay to rebuild the threat we just destroyed.”

Dana Blanton at Fox:

Voters doubt a peace deal will keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, according to the latest Fox News poll.

Sixty-four percent say it’s unlikely a peace agreement with the U.S. will stop Iran from pursuing nukes, including more than half of Republicans (53%), independents (69%), and Democrats (73%). Today’s views match those in 2015, when the Obama administration made a deal with Iran, as 63% of voters at that time also said it was unlikely an agreement would stop Iran from building a nuclear program.

 

Another Lost War

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic:

President Trump lost. The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. The United States is left weaker—diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally.

The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset. Instead, it only empowered the hard-liners in Tehran and arguably emboldened them to someday seek a nuclear weapon. Despite that, the president was so desperate for the war to end that he repeatedly backed off his threats—allowing Iran to call his bluff—and upbraided his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for responding to attacks in the region in a manner that jeopardized the negotiations.

Trump won’t admit to any of this. He has spent recent days furiously spinning the tentative deal as a clear win, and has seethed at unflattering comparisons with the deal that President Obama struck with Iran more than a decade ago, aides and outside advisers told me. Trump, they said, has privately denounced Iran hawks, some of whom are among his closest allies in the Republican Party, for questioning the strength of the agreement. Within the administration, there is a divide on the deal, but Trump sided with those advocating for the war to wind down, no matter the terms, as fears mount about the economic toll on Americans and the political costs for Republicans in the midterms.

Trump’s own anger masks a desperate desire to find an off-ramp from a conflict that did not go the way he had planned, an outcome that has threatened to leave the United States—and Trump—reduced in the eyes of the world. For a decade, Trump has dominated the global stage and wielded extraordinary executive power. But now he is saddled with low poll numbers and unhappy Republicans, and he may soon have to contend with a Democratic Congress. His evolution into a lame duck is accelerating, and the political world is poised to soon look beyond him and focus on the 2028 contenders hoping to succeed him. World leaders, who were once cowed, have begun to defy him. Trump’s defeat in Iran, and the way he lost, may hasten his irrelevance.

Democrats Cool on Israel

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Andrew Solender and Justin Green at Axios:

Zoom in: Every Senate Democrat who's eyeing a 2028 presidential run voted against arms sales to Israel in votes earlier this week.40 Senate Dems voted on a resolution to block arms sales to Israel, up from just 15 on a similar vote last April. Netanyahu is "destroying the bipartisan nature in terms of support for Israel," Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told Punchbowl News.

Over in the House, some Democrats are turning against defensive support, including funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.That was "seen as insanely fringe four years ago," Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) told Axios. But multiple Democrats who voted for Iron Dome in 2021 told Axios they're done providing financial aid.The big picture: Older Republicans and white Evangelicals are the last groups to hold majority favorable views of Israel, according to recent Pew polling. For every other group, Israel's favorability has collapsed since 2022.

⬇️ Down 31 percentage points among older Democrats (ages 50+).
⬇️ Down 22 percentage points among both younger Republicans/GOP leaners and younger Dems/Dem leaners.
⬇️ Down 14 percentage points among Protestants, 23 among Catholics and 20 among the religiously unaffiliated.
⬇️ Even white Evangelical support, which was at 80% in 2022, has slid by 15 points.

Iran and Consumer Sentiment

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Matt Grossman at WSJ:

Consumer sentiment fell in April to the lowest level recorded in the 70-plus-year history of the University of Michigan’s survey, evidence of Americans’ concerns that the Iran war will hit the domestic economy.

The survey’s initial April reading came in at 47.6, versus 53.3 in March. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting a drop to 52. The April reading is below the previous low point of 50 recorded in June 2022, when the economy was facing searing inflation.

The initial April results are based almost entirely on interviews that took place between March 24 and April 6, before a tentative cease-fire took hold. The survey will be updated with a final April reading later this month, based on more recent responses.

The darker economic mood was widespread across people of different ages, income levels and political affiliations, said Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director. “Many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy,” she said.

Trump Doesn't Listen

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

WATCH: Donald Trump is getting his daily briefing on the war in the form of a highlight reel of "stuff blowing up,” NBC News reports. “National intelligence in the form of Instagram Reels, basically,” says Chris Hayes. https://t.co/ByWSf8GW1m

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) March 26, 2026

 SCOTT WALDMAN, BEN JOHANSEN and SOPHIA CAI at POLITICO:

NATE SWANSON spent nearly two decades in the U.S. government, including most recently as the National Security Council’s director for Iran. Days before the U.S. bombed Iran, Swanson published a piece predicting that Iran would do exactly what it has done should the U.S. attack.

That’s expertise President DONALD TRUMP had available to him — until Swanson, an BARACK OBAMA holdover, was “forced out” of his post after a critical tweet from LAURA LOOMER, Swanson said. Neither the White House nor Loomer returned a request for comment.

In his piece for Foreign Policy published Feb. 24, Swanson wrote that Iran would not capitulate after a bombing campaign, but rather escalate and “target global oil flows and international shipping, sending energy prices up and creating a serious political liability for Trump.” And indeed, Iran has made scattershot attacks on energy targets and others across the region, as well as throttling passage through the Strait of Hormuz by threatening attacks on ships.

In an interview with POLITICO this week, Swanson predicted that the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran will not go well because both sides are “irrationally confident” in their positions. Neither side seems willing to find an off-ramp at this point, he said.
...

Trump keeps saying Iran’s response has surprised him — that no one told him Iran would retaliate against regional energy infrastructure. How does that kind of comment from the president sit with you?

"Obviously, it’s not true. There are many people in the government who told him that there was high risk involved. He just chose not to listen to them. And as someone who was forced out of the government and wrote pretty much exactly what was fairly obviously going to happen, that doesn’t sit super well."

Among the people to whom he does not listen is former Secretary of Defense Mattis.

 

“‘Targetry’ does not take the place of strategy”

Looking forward to all the people who are going to argue that Jim Mattis is a woke war college weenie https://t.co/N1vXWypJVZ

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 24, 2026

Trumpism's Three Pillars Collapse

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Ian Ward at Politico:

The three issues that stood as the unshakable pillars of Trumpism have all at once become political millstones around his neck.

Start with immigration. In line with his 2016 campaign promises, Trump has indeed swept away whatever remained of the GOP’s pro-immigrant past, replacing it with a new nativist orthodoxy that seeks not merely to stem the tide of mass migration but to reverse the demographic changes of the past half-century.

But following the pushback to ICE’s aggressive immigration raids in Minneapolis and elsewhere, the administration is confronting the political risks of that new orthodoxy: Recent polls suggest that nearly half of all Americans — including 1-in-5 voters who backed Trump in 2024 — think his mass deportations campaigns are “too aggressive.” In response, the White House has reportedly urged congressional Republicans to soften their hardline rhetoric on mass deportations, warning them that it could cost the GOP key voting blocs in the 2026 midterms.

The situation doesn’t look much better on trade. As with immigration, Trump’s successful campaign to get the GOP on board with trade protectionism has come with a significant political cost: over 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, according to some recent polls, and even Republican voters are split about the upsides of his trade war. Even worse for the administration is the slew of recent polling suggesting that a majority of voters blame Trump’s tariffs for raising the cost of living — a significant political liability in an election year where “affordability” remains a top concern for voters.

On foreign policy, Trump’s military moves abroad remain broadly popular with self-identified “MAGA” Republicans. But there are signs that his forays into foreign interventionism —  including the ongoing war with Iran — are unpopular with the critical independent and swing voters who pushed Trump over the top in 2024. Inside the White House, Trump’s senior advisers appear increasingly anxious that those numbers could get even worse if the war continues to push up gas and energy prices.

That said, foreign policy poses the most vexing question of the political downsides of Trump’s fidelity (or lack thereof) to pure and uncut “Trumpism.” Unlike on trade or immigration, where the blowback has been prompted by Trump’s fulfillment of an original campaign promise, there’s a case to be made that the president is courting political disaster by betraying Trumpism’s original promise on foreign policy — to prioritize American interests by keeping America out of foreign wars.

A crack in the MAGA wall:

 

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr

— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 17, 2026

Bad Days for Trump

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Will Wessert at AP:

In the two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump increasingly has been knocked on his political heels.

He’s grown more agitated with news coverage and has failed to find a way to explain why he started the war — or how he will end it — that resonates with a public concerned by American deaths in the conflict, surging oil prices and dropping financial markets. Even some of his supporters are questioning his plan and his overall poll numbers are declining.

Meanwhile, Moscow is getting a boost from the war’s early days after Trump eased sanctions on some Russian oil shipments. That, combined with rising oil prices, undercut the yearslong push to crimp President Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.

Then there are Democrats, who were left reeling after Trump won the 2024 election. With control of Congress at stake in November’s midterms, the party has come together to oppose Trump’s Iran policy and point to the economic turmoil as proof that Republicans haven’t kept their promises to bring down everyday costs.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios:

Trump is working to help break the Persian Gulf oil jam. But in doing so, he risks getting caught in an "escalation trap," where a stronger force is incentivized to keep attacking to demonstrate dominance amid diminishing returns.A senior Trump administration official practically admitted as much, telling Axios' Marc Caputo: "The Iranians f*cking around with the Strait makes [Trump] more dug in."

State of play: Israel wants regime change in Iran and more dramatic military destruction as it weighs an invasion of Lebanon. Bibi Netanyahu has shown several times that when it comes to Iran, he has the ability to convince Trump to take his side.Iran wants survival — and to prove it can impose pain, militarily and economically, to scare off future attacks.

...

A source close to the administration said some key officials around Trump were reluctant or wanted more time. "He ended up saying, 'I just want to do it,'" the source said. "He grossly overestimated his ability to topple the regime short of sending in ground troops." The source said Trump was "high on his own supply" after last summer's quick strikes in Iran and January's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro: "He saw multiple decisive quick victories with extraordinary military competence."

Tom Nichols:

This kind of thinking is an old problem, and it has a name: “victory disease,” meaning that victory in battle encourages leaders to seek out more battles, and then to believe that winning those battles means that they are winning the larger war or achieving some grand strategic aim—right up until the moment they realize that they have overreached and find themselves facing a military disaster or even total defeat. It is a condition that has afflicted many kinds of regimes over the course of history, one so common that my colleagues and I lectured military officers about it when I was a professor at the Naval War College. The issue is especially important for Americans, because when national leaders have exceptionally capable military forces at their disposal—as the United States does—they are even more likely to be seized by victory disease.

The Persian emperor Xerxes had it; that’s how he found himself eventually suffering a historic defeat in Greece at the Battle of Salamis. Napoleon had it; that’s how he ended up freezing in the Russian snow after years of brilliant victories over other European states. The French in 1870 had it; that’s how they confidently marched to catastrophes against a superior Prussian army. The Axis had it; that’s how Germany and Japan convinced themselves that their early successes meant that they could quickly defeat the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively.

Bad Times

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

 Sam Sutton and Megan Messerly at POLITICO:

Donald Trump won reelection on the promise of restoring the economy and eliminating illegal immigration.

But in the last week, both issues have threatened to turn into liabilities: A stagnant labor market and soaring gas prices amid the Iran conflict are hammering the economy, and the ouster of Kristi Noem from the Department of Homeland Security has cast new light on the administration’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda. The economic backdrop has grown ominous — Wall Street analysts are warning that surging oil prices could lead to stagflation — and the blitzkrieg of bad news has jeopardized the GOP’s ability to keep voters focused on Trump administration policies that were designed to help with the rising cost of living.

“If you combine an economy that people don’t like with a prolonged war that you know nobody in his base believes they voted for, that’s a toxic problem,” said one Trump ally granted anonymity to speak freely. While Trump isn’t on the ballot this year, his party needs the president’s poll numbers to improve to keep the House and Senate.

“Don’t drag this war out,” the person said. “That’s my best advice for the administration. The country is in no mood for a prolonged war.”

The Iran conflict has put immense upward pressure on oil and gas –- prices at the pump have climbed by more than 11 percent in a week. Now, with employers shedding payroll and Trump pressing reset on who’s leading his immigration agenda, the president is on the backfoot on the two issues he needs to own for his party to win the midterms.

 Justin Lahart at WSJ:

The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, a sign that the job market continues to struggle in nearly every sector.

The hiring numbers, reported Friday by the Labor Department, fell far short of January’s gain of 126,000 jobs. They were worse than the gain of 50,000 jobs that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see.

The unemployment rate was 4.4%.

The labor market slowed markedly last year, with the U.S. adding the fewest jobs outside of a recession since 2003. That was in part due to the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce through a combination of layoffs and voluntary buyouts, but it also reflected the cautious approach to hiring that many businesses adopted to combat uncertainty about tariffs and other policy measures. Expectations that artificial intelligence could reduce staffing needs might have further cut into hiring plans.

Despite some high-profile announcements, the overall level of layoffs remains low. But businesses are limiting the number of new workers they take on. Moreover, job growth was highly uneven, with the healthcare and social-assistance sectors driving gains over the past year, and most other sectors shedding jobs.

MAGA and Mixed Messaging

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

JACK BLANCHARD with DASHA BURNS at POLITICO:

After a remarkable weekend of radio silence from officials, the Trump administration has shifted gears and is now trying to blitz the airwaves with positive messages making the case for war — which the president himself said “can be fought ‘forever’” on Truth Social last night.

Count ’em: Over 13 hours yesterday, we got Trump speaking at the White House. VP JD Vance went on Fox News in primetime. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a press conference on the Hill, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his top Gen. Dan Caine did the same at the Pentagon. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and NATO Ambassador Mike Waltz both did Fox last night. And press secretary Karoline Leavitt went to bat on social media — pushing back at MAGA influencers critical of the administration.

The reason for the shift is clear: As Leavitt’s lengthy post on X laid bare, the White House feels pressure to push back on heavy criticism — most crucially, from across its MAGA base — that a convincing case for war has not been made.

And the anger on the American right is real. Tucker Carlson. Megyn Kelly. Matt Walsh. Mike Cernovich. Candace Owens. Sean Davis.There are plenty more.

Here’s the problem: The White House response is not landing well. Trump’s strategy of offering different lines to almost any reporter who calls is mixing the message. And we’re now up to at least 19 of these ad hoc phone interviews since war broke out three days ago. (For those keeping track, yesterday’s callers included CNN’s Jake Tapper, NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer, the Daily Telegraph’s Connor Stringer, Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rachael Bade, Washington Reporter’s Matthew Foldi and the Sun’s Harry Cole. We should also add WaPo’s Natalie Allison and CNBC’s Joe Kernen, who Playbook missed from the weekend tally.)

Through this mish-mash of rapid-fire questions and snatched phone calls Trump has at times dabbled with regime change and freeing Iran, then insisted it was all about the nukes. At one point, the campaign might only last a couple of days, he said. Then suddenly it was “four to five weeks.” No wonder Walsh and Cernovich sound confused. And the poll numbers are only getting worse.

An even bigger problem erupted on Capitol Hill last night, where the generally on-message Rubio and Speaker Mike Johnson set out a very different justification for war. Their claims that the attacks were necessary because Israel was poised to strike Iran anyway — meaning America would have been hit in response — have gone down incredibly badly with “America First” types who already feared the U.S. was being dragged into Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.

War With Iran

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

The United States has gone to war against Iran. America has only one ally—Israel—in this operation (the Arab states of the Gulf, which fear the Iranian regime, are targets of Iran, but so far are not participating in the attack), and both Washington and Jerusalem are making claims about “imminent” threats that require “preemptive” strikes. But we should dispense with such statements: Iran is not presenting immediate danger to the United States or Israel. Even President Trump, in a recorded address, didn’t bother overly much with such excuses; instead he presented a farrago of charges and accusations going back a half century that included everything from killing American troops in Iraq to terrorism. These indictments are all grounded in truth, but none presents a rationale for immediate attack. Trump ended by calling on Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government.

Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll:

As the Trump administration mobilizes U.S. military forces in the Middle East and President Donald Trump threatens possible military actions against Iran if it does not reach a negotiated deal with the United States, Americans have to contend with the possibility of being at war in the Middle East once again. Our latest University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll finds 21% of Americans favor the United States initiating an attack on Iran, 49% oppose, and 30% say they don’t know.

The latest poll was carried out by SSRS, February 5th – 9th, among a sample of 1,004 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

 

Trump Corruption Update

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. 

Sam Kessler et al. at WSJ:

Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities.

The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said.

The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh”—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president, the government’s national security adviser, as well as the leader of the oil-rich country’s largest wealth fund. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money that spans from fish farms to AI to surveillance, making him one of the most powerful single investors in the world.

The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.

Under the Biden administration, Tahnoon’s efforts to get AI hardware had been largely stymied over fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China. Of particular concern was one of Tahnoon’s own companies, the AI firm G42, which had stoked alarm among intelligence officials and lawmakers over its close ties to the sanctioned tech giant Huawei and other Chinese firms. The company said it severed ties with China in late 2023, but concerns persisted.

Trump’s election reopened the door for him. In the months that followed, Tahnoon met multiple times with Trump, Witkoff and other U.S. officials, including in a March visit to the White House where the sheikh told officials he was eager to work with the U.S. on AI and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter.

Two months after the March meeting, the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters. The framework agreement called for roughly one-fifth of the chips to go to G42, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Donald Trump, Fascist

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Jonathan Rauch at The Atlantic explains why he has abandoned his earlier reluctance to call Trump a fascist:

Ehen the facts change, I change my mind.Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.

Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

...

Police-state tactics. Trump has turned ICE into a sprawling paramilitary that roves the country at will, searches and detains noncitizens and citizens without warrants, uses force ostentatiously, operates behind masks, receives skimpy training, lies about its activities, and has been told that it enjoys “absolute immunity.” He more than doubled the agency’s size in 2025, and its budget is now larger than those of all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined, and larger than the entire military budgets of all but 15 countries. “This is going to affect every community, every city,” the Cato Institute scholar David Bier recently observed. “Really almost everyone in our country is going to come in contact with this, one way or the other.” In Minneapolis and elsewhere, the agency has behaved provocatively, sometimes brutally, and arguably illegally—behaviors that Trump and his staff have encouraged, shielded, and sent camera crews to publicize, perhaps in the hope of eliciting violent resistance that would justify further crackdowns, a standard fascist stratagem. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s recent appearance with a sign reading ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS seemed to nod toward another fascist standby, collective punishment—as did the administration’s decision to flood Minneapolis with thousands of officers after residents there began protesting federal tactics, a prioritization that was explicitly retributive.

 ...

Territorial and military aggression. One reason I held out against identifying Trumpism with fascism in his first term was Trump’s apparent lack of interest in aggression against other states; if anything, he had seemed shy about using force abroad. Well, that was then. In his second term, he has used military force promiscuously. Of course, many presidents have deployed force, but Trump’s explicitly predatory use of it to grab Venezuela’s oil and his gangster-style threat to take Greenland from Denmark “the easy way” or “the hard way” were 1930s-style authoritarian moves. The same goes for his contempt for international law, binding alliances, and transnational organizations such as the European Union—all of which impede the state’s unconstrained exercise of its will, a central fascist tenet. (Mussolini: “Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism … are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations.”)

Jordan Liles at Snopes:

In short, Trump genuinely said, "Sometimes you need a dictator." He made the remark during a reception with business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2026. Those words came immediately after Trump referenced his critics referring to him as a dictator.

 

President Trump: I don’t need guardrails. I don’t want guardrails. Guardrails would hurt us. pic.twitter.com/HSOxEFXNqJ

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 27, 2026

Erratic Trump Backs Down

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Serious people are now raising serious questions about his sanity.

Stephen Collinson at CNN:

President Donald Trump’s climbdown on Greenland capped one of the most erratic episodes involving a modern president on the world stage.

Within hours Wednesday, Trump flipped from demanding “right, title, and ownership” of the semiautonomous Danish territory to celebrating an “infinite,” “forever” framework deal over its future.

The breakthrough seems to hinge on extra NATO forces to secure the Arctic — something he could have got before his week of mayhem — if only he’d asked.

...

Farcical scenes unfolded after Trump flung days of insults at allied leaders, raising fears that NATO was about to implode. His initial refusal to rule out sending troops to take Greenland — which is already alliance territory — seemed torn from a bad futuristic thriller.

Trump further confused the issue with several days of rambling and baffling public appearances in Washington and Switzerland. On Wednesday, he even got Greenland and Iceland confused.

He’s always governed by whim and social media outbursts. But in extricating himself from a crisis that he triggered, Trump laid bare the alternative factual reality that surrounds his increasingly unpopular presidency.

Spot the Looney

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Serious people are now raising serious questions about his sanity.

Amelia Nierenberg at NYT:

President Trump ratcheted up his feud with European leaders on Tuesday, firing off a series of mocking social media posts that reinforced his designs on Greenland, as he risked damaging the longstanding trans-Atlantic diplomatic alignment beyond repair.

A day before he was scheduled to join allies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Trump insisted that the United States must have Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory, repeating a persistent demand that has shaken the foundations of the NATO alliance. “There can be no going back,” he wrote in one of a series of posts on his Truth Social platform.

In another post, he shared messages from President Emmanuel Macron of France, who said, “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.” A senior French official confirmed that the messages were authentic.

The tensions over Greenland threatened to dominate the meeting in Davos. Speaking there later Tuesday morning, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, suggested that the European Union would take steps to bolster its security in light of the crisis and would be looking at “how to strengthen our security partnerships with partners such as the U.K., Canada, Norway, Iceland and others.” She did not offer details.

Ms. von der Leyen also argued that Europe needed to change to adapt to a more hostile era, saying, “Nostalgia will not bring back the old order.”

Faced with Mr. Trump’s threats, including a warning that he will impose new tariffs on nations that oppose his territorial demands, European leaders have scrambled to formulate a response and were expected to gather in Brussels this week to come up with a way to answer Mr. Trump’s provocations.

Mr. Macron, who was scheduled to speak at Davos on Tuesday afternoon, appeared to be trying to appeal to Mr. Trump in person, inviting him to dinner in Paris on Thursday, according to the messages Mr. Trump shared online. Mr. Macron offered to set up a meeting there of leaders of the Group of 7 countries — with additional invitations to the Russians, Ukrainians, Danes and Syrians. It was not immediately known whether Mr. Trump responded to Mr. Macron’s messages.

Mr. Trump also shared a message from Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, in which Mr. Rutte said he was “committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.” An official at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the exchange was authentic.

Mr. Trump said that he had spoken with Mr. Rutte and reiterated his claims that American control of Greenland was essential for the security of the United States and of the world.

The Madness of King Donald

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Serious people are now raising serious questions about his sanity.

NEW: @potus letter to @jonasgahrstore links @NobelPrize to Greenland, reiterates threats, and is forwarded by the NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington. I obtained the text from multiple officials:

Dear Ambassador:

President Trump has asked that the…

— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) January 19, 2026

Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic:

One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they fe

Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

Think about where this is leading. One possibility, anticipated this morning by financial markets, is a damaging trade war. Another is an American military occupation of Greenland. Try to imagine it: The U.S. Marines arrive in Nuuk, the island’s capital. Perhaps they kill some Danes; perhaps some American soldiers die too. And then what? If the invaders were Russians, they would arrest all of the politicians, put gangsters in charge, shoot people on the street for speaking Danish, change school curricula, and carry out a fake referendum to rubber-stamp the conquest. Is that the American plan too? If not, then what is it? This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.

Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova at CNN:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” the committee that will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, his spokesman said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters during a regular media briefing, Dmitry Peskov said: “President Putin also received through diplomatic channels an invitation to join this Board of Peace.”

He said the Kremlin is now reviewing the invitation and “hoping to get more details from the US side.”

CNN has asked the White House for a comment.

Later on Monday, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said President Alexander Lukashenko also received an invitation to join the board.

The ministry’s press service said Minsk “highly appreciates that the American side sees Belarus – and this is clearly stated in the text of the address – as a country ready to take on the noble responsibility of building a lasting peace and leading by example, investing in a secure and prosperous future for future generations.”

Lukashenko is Putin’s closest ally and has been described as Europe’s last dictator.

Limitless Power

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- including the snatching of Maduro from Venezuela.

David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.

“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.

In 2019, he said: " Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."

A Long Time in Venezuela

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- including the snatching of Maduro from Venezuela.

David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

During the wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump did not give a precise time range for how long the United States would remain Venezuela’s political overlord. Would it be three months? Six months? A year? Longer?

“I would say much longer,” the president replied.

Over the course of the interview, Mr. Trump addressed a wide range of topics, including the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, Greenland and NATO, his health and his plans for further White House renovations.

Mr. Trump did not answer questions about why he recognized Mr. Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s new leader instead of backing María Corina Machado, the opposition leader whose party led a successful election campaign against Mr. Maduro in 2024 and recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. He declined to comment when asked if he had spoken to Ms. Rodríguez.

“But Marco speaks to her all the time,” he said of the secretary of state. Mr. Trump added: “I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and the administration.”

Mr. Trump also made no commitments about when elections would be held in Venezuela, which had a long democratic tradition from the late 1950s until Hugo Chavez took power in 1999.

"Take the Oil"

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Anton Troianovski at NYT:

While he was out of office, President Trump mused about what would have happened if the United States had taken control of Venezuela.

“We would have gotten all that oil,” he said in a speech at the North Carolina Republican Convention in 2023. “It would have been right next door.”

On Saturday, Mr. Trump made it clear that he now intends to follow through.

In the last year, as the Trump administration built up pressure against Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, the president and his top aides said that the aggressive U.S. actions were necessary to curb drugs and migration from that country. But on Saturday, as Mr. Trump discussed the predawn attack on Venezuela that led to the capture of its leader, it was evident that the president’s longtime fixation on oil was a driving factor in his decision to greenlight the mission.

“We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he celebrated the seizure of Mr. Maduro, promising that American companies would be able to tap more of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

On January 21, 2017, he told the employees of the CIA:

But when I was young—and I think we're all, sort of, young. When I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We'd win with trade. We'd win with wars. At a certain age, I remember hearing from one of my instructors, "The United States has never lost a war." And then, after that, it's like we haven't won anything. We don't win anymore. The old expression, "To the victor belong the spoils"—you remember. I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil. Now, I said it for economic reasons. But if you think about it, Mike [Pence], if we kept the oil you probably wouldn't have ISIS because that's where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. [Laughter] Maybe you'll have another chance. But the fact is, should have kept the oil.

But taking military action on behalf of the oil companies is likely to be unpopular.  Americans do not like oil companies: