Evolution or Opportunism – Who is the Real JD Vance?

Posted on April 11, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 11, 2026

Some leaders grow into their roles, maturing and broadening their perspective as they age. They start out espousing naive philosophies and opinions, but life experiences lead them in new directions. Probably the best example, during my lifetime, was Lyndon Johnson. As a young politician in Texas, and later, as a Congressman, he supported the New Deal and President Franklin Roosevelt, but he was also a southern Democrat who supported segregation and opposed civil rights legislation. As a Senator, he maintained his stance against integration while strongly supporting Texas’ oil and gas industry and was a bipartisan leader during the Eisenhower administration.

When Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy as president, there was trepidation among Democrats that right-wing southerners would dominate the party and the White House. But Johnson instead became the steward of the Great Society movement that included passing the Civil Rights and Social Security Acts, including initiating both Medicaid and Medicare. After supporting the expansion of the Vietnam War, and condoning the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incident that solidified popular support for the war, Johnson came to realize what a terrible error that was and dropped out of the 1968 presidential race. Lyndon Johnson proved that given the opportunity, hard core, ambitious politicians can evolve toward governing for all Americans and acknowledge when they’re wrong.

But Johnson was a rare bird. Far more common are politicians and influencers who are motivated by opportunism rather than ideology or principle. Notorious right-wing conservative Rush Limbaugh was one such, who had no ideology of his own until he seized on the rising trend of reactionary politics that was anti-everything liberal, including women’s rights, welfare, and equal opportunity, as a way to acquire influence and wealth.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is credited with stacking district and appellate courts with right-wing judges and famously said at the beginning of Barrack Obama’s presidency, “My job as Senate Majority Leader is to assure that Obama fails.” In later years, McConnell told interviewers that his core principles had nothing to do with right-wing extremism, that he was motivated solely by finding a path to maximize his personal power. In his dotage, as he approached retirement and diminished capacity, he has expressed regret that his efforts resulted in helping Donald Trump rise to power.

Why are Johnson, Limbaugh, and McConnell relevant today? Because all the above raises similar questions about JD Vance, Trump’s Vice President who has taken over negotiations with Iran from the grossly unqualified Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. How Vance handles the tough, smart Iranians in Islamabad will make or break his ambition to succeed Donald Trump as the leader of the MAGA movement, and as president. Vance is someone whose major life decisions have been largely opportunistic.

He’s a really smart guy. You have to be to graduate from Yale Law School, notwithstanding that many of us wondered how George W. Bush managed the same accomplishment. What Vance has demonstrated more than anything else during his brief career, (he’s only 41,) is ambition, guts, and a keen ability to align himself with people like billionaire Peter Thiel who saw great potential in Vance and helped him win election to the Senate and the Vice Presidency. It’s been widely reported, and not denied by Vance, that he was not originally a supporter of Donald Trump or the Christian Nationalist movement Trump coopted from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

But Vance seems almost matchless in his ability to adapt to situations –  he can change his stripes as easily as donning a new tie to match Trump’s. In the current environment, in which it’s been leaked that Vance does not support the war in Iran, and Americans are realizing their error in giving Donald Trump what he believes is a mandate for an unfettered second term, I hear people debate one question every day. Would America be better off if Trump were removed from office and replaced by Vance? More often than not, people fear Vance, believing he’s more dangerous because he’s smarter than Trump and he generally behaves rationally even when he expresses radical views.

They fear MAGA in the hands of Vance would be worse than it is now, but I disagree. Movements like MAGA only succeed long-term with a hypnotic leader at the helm, someone with the charisma of a cobra, paired with extreme narcissism, greed, and sociopathy, in other words, Donald Trump. MAGA needs that to be viable post-Trump, but Vance does not check any of those boxes.

Vance is a mysterious black box. He is extremely talented at adapting to situations and seizing opportunities. He seems undaunted by criticism or opposition and gives every appearance of being the hardest worker in the administration. He is also very good a being loyal to whomever he needs to be to get ahead, but it’s impossible to know where he might come down on policy issues if given the power he obviously craves.

Vance has no credible experience with negotiations, but I suspect he will turn out to be talented in that regard. He’s good on his feet, always confident, and never at a loss for a response to tough questions. In his present role leading negotiations with Iran in the middle of a misguided war Trump is drowning in, he may display talents we didn’t know he had. The question is, if he finds himself succeeding in wresting concessions from tough Iranian negotiators, will he decide that it’s safe to stray from Trump’s insane daily-changing agenda. And if he does, which version of JD Vance will emerge?

I have no idea if Vance or anyone else can be successful in undoing the mess created by Trump. But I believe that negotiations in Pakistan will affect far more than the war. They could influence American politics for decades. Vance is only 41.

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Trump’s War in Iran Has Diminished America

Posted on April 9, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 9, 2026

The silliness over Donald Trump and Iran’s leaders both claiming victory in Trump’s thirty-eight day war masks a more troubling reality. For Iran, “victory” means that the regime still exists, and they still have the power and leverage to disrupt the entire world’s economy. Most important, the alleged trigger for the war, Iran’s nine-hundred pounds of enriched uranium, is still where it was.

Trump claims he proved that America has the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s like saying he proved the sun rises every morning. Everyone knows it does. So Trump got to play with his lethal toys, order around a bunch of generals, and dictate actions to the rest of the world – except, every foreign leader ignored him except the guy who dragged him into this war in the first place, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump’s fury at finding himself impotent to influence former allies and adversaries alike is evident in his increasingly bizarre behavior. While bragging about military successes, he fails to mention the blow American prestige has taken around the world. Because all that matters to Donald Trump is ego gratification, he thinks causing Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines to realize they can no longer count on us to defend them and the world order is a good thing.

The truth is, it’s a very bad thing. It disrupts the relative stability the world has seen, at least in terms of avoiding world wars, since 1945. Moreover, not only has Trump caused the entire world to view America as a declining world power, despite its military prowess, but even some of his allies are being hurt. If Hungary’s Viktor Orban loses Sunday’s election, many political experts believe it will be because of his close ties to Trump.

There’s an opinion piece in today’s New York Times by Steven Erlander that describes the current situation as America’s Suez moment, a reference to 1956 when France and Britain attacked Egypt to force the re-opening of the Suez Canal without coordinating with the United States. President Eisenhower ordered the attack stopped, and both Britain and France withdrew, acknowledging that they were no longer the world powers they once were. Erlander makes a convincing case that Trump’s war has left us in a similar position.

By withdrawing the United States from every initiative that represents a unified approach to a better future, Trump has by definition reduced our influence over world affairs. And watching how over 13,000 airstrikes failed to subdue Iran has simply confirmed what most rational world leaders already knew. Conventional military power alone does not make us a great power. When we lose our moral center and the world sees everything America has stood for being flushed down Trump’s gold commode, we are the losers.

The terrible situation we created in the Middle East is not our military’s fault. They performed brilliantly. But what good is tactical brilliance when they’re led by a madman? By telling both our Congress and all of our allies that we’re not interested in their opinions before starting a war that still might explode beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, unilaterally, he violated diplomatic protocol, our Constitution, and international law. Adding insult to injury, demanding that NATO join the fight after it became clear that Trump had badly underestimated Iran’s ability and willingness to absorb punishment and hold the world hostage, created rifts that will likely never heal.

When Trump launched air strikes on Iran, he said there were two objectives: preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon and enabling the people of Iran to overthrow the regime that he was confident he could bring down. Neither of those goals was achieved. Instead, Trump changed the objective every day, and his threats became more apocalyptic as his frustration at not being able to control the entire world increased. The allegedly huge compromise made by Iran to permit shipping to flow through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a cessation of bombing wasn’t even an issue when Trump launched his war. Nor was the bombing by Iran of our Gulf state allies.

On balance, Trump showed the world two things. He is absolutely incompetent at strategic planning, and his vigilante-style war was far more about his ego than Iran’s enriched uranium. It’s likely that the two biggest winners of this war will be Russia and China. Russia is reaping a windfall of oil profits from the war, which, combined with our greatly reduced ability to support Ukraine has Vladimir Putin ecstatic. And China, Iran’s largest oil customer, came out of this being credited with convincing Iran to go along with the ceasefire. No doubt, Xi Jinping is licking his chops awaiting Trump’s visit.

Perhaps worst of all for our near-term future is the depletion of our munitions, especially laser-guided precision weapons. Our stockpiles have been recklessly degraded to the point where we have little left to continue the war if the cease-fire fails, counter aggression by Russia or deter China from overwhelming Taiwan. Considering Venezuela and Iran together, it’s clear from his own words that Trump’s dream was to control the world’s oil supply. He is proving again that greed and delusions of grandeur are not qualities we need in a president.

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What Has Trump’s War Against Iran Accomplished?

Posted on April 8, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 8, 2026

The world breathed a sigh of relief, but only minutes passed before the reality of the terms of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran were revealed for what they are. President Trump’s outrageous, inappropriate language threatening genocide and the destruction of an entire civilization was, after all, a bluff. But the fact that it so far has resulted in the appearance of further negotiations doesn’t change the reality that deliberate deception in diplomacy often leads to catastrophic outcomes. The consensus among world leaders is that Trump is reckless and dangerous. The trust and respect for the United States that existed before Trump took office is no more.  

With both the United States and Iran declaring victory and Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continuing to engage in hyperbole about the outcome, we’ll not soon see anything like transparency or truth from either. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains happily silent as his forces continue to destroy southern Lebanon while the world’s eyes are focused elsewhere. Not that Israel isn’t justified in attacking Hezbolah, but let’s not pretend the fighting is over.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez summarized how the rest of Europe sees the cease fire: “The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket. What is needed now: diplomacy, international law and PEACE.” If the lack of cheerleading and praise for Trump from every country we once viewed as allies seems dismaying or confusing, let’s look at why. As many observers have noted, Iran’s proposal, which Trump lauded as a sound basis for further negotiation, would leave Iran far stronger than it was before the war and America’s influence and ability to effect events in the Middle East far weaker.

Trump began this war demanding that Iran cease all work on enriching uranium and turn over its store of near weapon-grade uranium. He also demanded regime change and the end of Iran’s state-sponsored terrorism. The issue of the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t even mentioned, and insiders have suggested that Trump never took the possibility of Iran shutting down shipping in the Strait seriously. Nor did he heed warnings that Iran would attack the Gulf oil states as vigorously as it attacked Israel.

The Iranian proposal solved nothing except offering Trump an offramp he desperately needed to stop bombing or have to back off on his threats whether Iran complied or not. Trump’s “basis for further negotiations” is a proposal that supports Iran’s claims of victory. Iran demands acknowledgment of its right to continue refining weapon-grade uranium. It demands the removal of all U. S. military assets from the region, an end to all economic sanctions, and reparations to repair the damage done by American and Israeli bombing, while making no mention of suspending its support for terrorist organizations like Hezbolah, Hamas, and the Houthis. It also insists that the Strait remain under the control of the Iranian military who would have sole discretion over which ships were allowed to pass through, and being able to charge substantial tolls for passage.

This proposal would leave Iran in a stronger strategic and economic position than it was before the war, and it does nothing to relieve the distrust and anger that Trump has spread among allies in Europe, Australia, Japan, and South Korea. The leaders of our allies realize that as long as the United States is led by Trump, they cannot rely on us economically, militarily, or as the world’s leading promoter of democracy and human rights.

Trump ended that era, and depending on whether American voters end his power over Congress in November and replace him with a sane, morally centered president in 2028, those rifts may never heal. And then there is the economic cost of this war. In addition to raising energy costs, we depleted our supply of offensive weapons and the defensive munitions that protect us from incoming drones and missiles to the point that our ability to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine and China’s designs on Taiwan is severely limited. Trump wants Congress to give him $200 billion to replenish them at the expense of domestic programs millions of Americans depend on. Was salving Trump’s ego worth all that?

The better course of action, from the start, would have been convincing our allies and Congress that a joint action to force Iran to change was required. By letting Netanyahu play him into attacking Iran unilaterally, Trump supported the narrative that the world should be dominated by three great powers, Russia, China, and the United States, with everyone else secondary and dependent on them.

The European Union proved that open borders and the elimination of tariffs worked, bringing nations that fought two world wars together in peaceful if not always harmonious cooperation. The last century’s embracing of free trade and economic codependence as opposed to dominance by a few powerful nations has been temporarily sidelined by a worldwide movement toward authoritarianism. But if Trump is either neutralized or removed from office, and leaders like Viktor Orban of Hungary lose power, as Trump seems to fear he will, the world might get back on track for a prosperous, peaceful future.

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Does Anyone Actually Like Donald Trump?

Posted on April 5, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 5, 2026

In the transactional universe of Donald Trump, everything has a price, and every action generates a quid pro quo. Friendship, collegiality, and courtesy are simply bargaining chips, tools of manipulation, domination, and intimidation. All that matters in Trump’s world are blind loyalty, wealth, and power. Truth has no meaning except as a reference to lies and misrepresentations. It’s pure gangsterism. In that kind of universe it’s reasonable to ask, “Does anyone really like Donald Trump?”

Among two-thirds of our country there’s little chance of finding anyone who does, but what about his supporters? When I asked my extremely conservative cousin who supported Trump in all of his elections, and who devoted his entire life to military service and national security, he said “Trump’s just a blowhard, but we’re safer with him as president.” How many people have you heard say something comparable?

When I ask people in my purple community who voted for Trump what they think of him personally, the typical response is disgust over his behavior, dismay over his lack of moral center, and horror over his mobster-like persona. Without exception, my statistically invalid sample of interviewees dislike him, some intensely. Then why did they vote for him? The most common answer is that they have no faith in Democrats. I don’t either, and I hate the notion that “anything would be better,” but we can only choose from what is available. I’m utterly convinced that Trump will destroy this country if right-thinking Americans don’t find the means to stop him.

Years ago, I studied game theory, the science of intelligent decision making. We’re familiar with things like cost-benefit analyses and evaluating the odds of the success of different outcomes, but the most  important thing I learned from game theory is that all the analyses we use when we make decisions omit a critical element: how to assure avoiding catastrophic failure.

The solution is to first identify outcomes so awful, such as nuclear war, that they’re unacceptable under any circumstances. Any option that might result in such an outcome is nonnegotiably off the table before our search for the best option ever begins.

What if, given Trump’s history of questionable business dealings, bankruptcy filings, court defeats, and accusations of fraud leveled against him, the leaders of Atlantic City, NJ had thought that way before approving plans for Trump’s hotel/casino empire? They might have realized that the possibility of the total failure of Trump’s vision wouldn’t only hurt Trump, but devastate the city’s economy for decades. The lesson from game theory is that for such an outcome, even a tiny probability of occurrence is unacceptable, so we eliminate it before looking at anything else.

We can apply the same idea to most of Trump’s policies. Before passing the Big Beautiful Bill, many people asked if the near certainty that more than twenty million people would lose access to health care was a nonnegotiable outcome. Before turning ICE loose, unfettered to constitutional requirements like court orders and warrants, we might have asked if the death, injury, and general intimidation of innocent Americans that resulted from ICE’s tactics was a nonegotiable outcome.

We might have asked similar questions about Trump’s war against Iran, had we been given an opportunity to weigh in before the bombs starting falling, and by we, I mean every American including Congress who isn’t part of Trump’s inner circle. We might have asked if starting a major conflict with uncertain outcomes without the support of allies or the legitimacy of Congressional approval might yield an unacceptable outcome. We might have asked if the possibility that Iran could disrupt the entire world economy while enriching Russia’s war against Ukraine, the depletion of our stockpile of strategic and precision weaponry all over the world, or the horrific likelihood that the war might spiral out of control and become nuclear were acceptable risks.

Even people who, now that we’re inextricably committed to seeing the war through, recognizing that Trump’s notion that he can end it whenever he wants is pure fantasy, support continuing the fight until Iran’s threat to the world is eliminated, mostly regret the way the conflict was handled. They fear that even total victory over Iran will leave us in a far weaker position with respect to Russia and China. It didn’t have to be that way, except that for Trump, satisfying the desperate needs of his narcissistic disorder had as much to do with attacking Iran as any argument about Iran being a danger to the world.

A president who uses governing as therapy for his own mental illness and sociopathy is by definition an existential threat to us and the world. If Trump carries out his threat to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure over the objections of the rest of the world, he will draw the United States into a future that looks like a tea party compared to our forever war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vice President Vance and Trump’s Cabinet need to keep their powder dry just in case. I hope they remember where they put the 25th Amendment. It’s that serious.

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The First Rule of War

Posted on April 3, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 3, 2026

Donald Trump’s war with Iran and the events it triggers will plague us for years if not decades. ISIS kept us bogged down in the blood of Americans for twenty years, despite extensive planning and strategizing with a coalition of thirty-four willing nations that wanted to stabilize the Middle East. That would give any intelligent person pause before dropping bombs there. Anyone who expects that Trump can declare the war over, and expect Iran to thank him and promise to behave is delusional.

It’s important that we’re clear about this. There were two critical but distinct issues prior to this war. One was that Iran was a bad actor that no one was comfortable with, and that it seemed inevitable that we would have to confront it one day, especially if all of our allies’ Intelligence believed the threat of a nuclear weapon was imminent. Even our dysfunctional Congress could reach such a consensus, but that’s the easy part.

Modeling and war-gaming every possible strategy as our military did is only a starting point. Before we can employ what we learned, our experience tells us two other things must occur before we consider war. First, we have to ensure the integrity of our Intelligence. No one wants to engage in war based on misinformation, whether its simply in error or a deliberate, politically motivated lie, yet that’s exactly what the United States has done three times in the last sixty years, at enormous cost to all of us.

We apparently haven’t learned from the fictitious attack in the Gulf of Tonkin or the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had. We won’t know until people feel safe telling the truth, but many believe the nuclear threat Trump claimed was imminent wasn’t. Even with competent, responsible people like Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and Dick Cheney making policy decisions, we were still drawn into wars that resulted in more than a quarter of a million Americans killed or injured over more than thirty years.

Compared to who Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Bush, and Nixon chose, Trump put Pete Hegseth in charge of military planning. His confirmation as Secretary of Defense first had to get past allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and excessive drinking, and we learned a lot about Hegseth when he became a cheerleader for changing the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War. He’s no Dick Cheney.

I’ve never been to War College, but I imagine that the first principle they teach is never start a war you’re not willing or capable of finishing. But teaching our military leaders only works if they have the unbiased capacity to apply what they learned in the real world, and some arrogant bureaucrat doesn’t usurp their roles and undo it all. With Hegseth in charge of war policy, presiding over Joint Chiefs of Staff who are aware that if they disagree with Trump they’ll be fired, and by not permitting people with real expertise to comment freely, we’ve become involved in a war that violated the first principle. We opened a box we don’t know how to close with no clue what to do afterward.

This was the danger many Americans feared with a narcissistic sociopath as president. We’ve been sounding the alarm since Trump rode down the golden escalator, and now the wolf is at our door. A wolf cannot be tamed with offers food and loving care the way your yellow lab can, and Iran’s leaders cannot be trusted to behave like world leaders who care about peace and progress. If it were just Trump and his sycophants hung out to dry, there would be justice in their predicament. Watching these incompetent clowns crash and burn might be amusing if they weren’t capable of taking modern civilization down with them.

Vice President J.D. Vance was opposed to this war before he dutifully fell in line behind the administration. Now that they see Vance was right, I wonder how many Trump supporters understand that Trump is a terribly dangerous man capable of destroying everything, and realize our nation’s future may depend on removing the cancer he represents before it kills us. Don’t be surprised if we hear serious talk about the 25th Amendment as the midterm elections near or if the MAGA Republicans in the House who haven’t already thrown in the towel decide that a third impeachment is the charm to protect their seats.

Any discussion of removing Trump from office must include the Epstein files, and Trump can exert great influence over them when he replaces Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Trump knows what he’s guilty of, and he knows that when his Christian base realizes he was fully aware of the things his friend Jeffrey Epstein did and never reported them, they’ll abandon him, even if the hushed-up accusation that Trump sexually assaulted a thirteen-year-old girl proves baseless. I wouldn’t want to be the new Attorney  General.

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Trump Finally Explains His War to Americans

Posted on April 2, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 2, 2026

Forty days after starting a war with Iran, Donald Trump finally got around to addressing the people who elected him on a platform that included no more endless wars, although the fallout from this one will be felt for years. Trump ordered our matchless military to attack Iran without consulting either Congress or our allies. Considering that the number of targets attacked, (obliterated according to Trump,) is approaching 15,000, this war was never going to be a quick foray like kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

This war is about Trump’s boundless ego and his belief that he understands war and diplomacy better than anyone else. Remember how many times he referred to his generals as stupid? Surrounded by yes-people and sycophants, his administration has run completely out of control because no one tells the truth to a president who punishes people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear. Led by the nose by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who would ruthlessly destroy every Arab neighbor if he could, Trump allowed himself to be convinced that he really is the all-powerful dictator of policy for the western world.

The war with Iran is as much a result of Trump’s domestic reign of terror as anything else. Look at who is setting American policy goals: Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Scott Bessent, and J. D. Vance, all of whom march in lockstep with Donald Trump’s quest to create a Fascist oligarchy to replace our constitutional republic. Trump always imagined he was someone who could set the world on fire; now he’s doing it.

Reality check: we’re not safer than we were when Trump started this war, declaring that Iran was an imminent nuclear threat to the United States, a claim that has been debunked by both military and national security experts willing to speak out and risk their careers. Political analyst Van Jones said it perfectly after Trump’s speech, last night. He noted that Trump’s contradictory ramblings since the war began seemed to have focused on three objectives: getting rid of the regime that murdered thousands of its own people and is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, preventing Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon, and assuring free passage of international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

In addressing those concerns, Lindsey Graham called Trump’s speech a compellng explanation for the need for the war, and Ted Cruz said it made him feel safer. Mark Warner stated the obvious, that the speech had not provided evidence that Trump gave any thought to what happens after the bombing stops. Jones called last night’s speech a disaster. He said all Trump accomplished was replacing an old, murderous Ayatollah with a younger, worse one, and the revolutionary guard, which rules Iran with an iron fist is still in control. With respect to Trump’s claim that since we know where Iran’s refined uranium is buried, deep underground at Istafan, there’s no need to remove it because we can watch with spy satellites and hit them hard if they make a move to retrieve it, Jones said that is exactly what we were doing before the war. The war has left Iran’s stash of enriched uranium intact, which was what Trump claimed at the outset, was what convinced him to attack.

About opening the Strait of Hormuz, did Trump start this war ignorant of the near certainty that Iran would retaliate by attacking the small gulf states considered U. S. allies and threatening shipping in the Persian Gulf? Or was he fully aware of the threat, knowing that our European allies would suffer most from energy shortages, not to mention friendly countries like Japan and the Philippines who reported they will run out of oil in less than a month if the Strait isn’t reopened?

After putting Europe in that position, Trump tried to goad them into sending ships to reopen the Strait, and when they refused to get involved in his war, he abused all of our allies in worldwide media. Yesterday, he threatened to use Europe’s lack of support for a war about which they were never consulted as an excuse to quit NATO, the alliance that has kept the world safe for eighty years.

Trump cannot control when this war ends. He can only control when our military stops bombing Iran. But the fanatical Shia clerics who control Iran have long memories. The war will end only when they’ve exacted revenge at times and places of their choosing, and that does not address the always present risk of the war expanding into a nuclear conflict. Donald Trump has not made anyone safer by following Benjamin Netanyahu into battle without an exit plan. If he tries to extract himself from the mess he created, he will leave us with a legacy of terrorism and uncertainty that will never stop.

When you poke a beast like Iran in the eye, you’d better make sure it’s dead before you walk away, especially when all the friends you’ve alienated stop watching your back. This war has shown, as much as anything, that most world leaders detest Trump. They fear him, not as an adversary, but as a rabid animal running wild.

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Overgeneralization

Posted on March 22, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 22, 2026

Donald Trump’s greatest weakness and vulnerability may be the way he oversimplifies things. We all do it at times, but Trump seems to stop there. He doesn’t have the attention span to get into the weeds and details. The fact that he constantly contradicts himself makes it appear that either he never actually considers details until they come out of his mouth or he does it deliberately because he thinks it makes him unpredictable. Either way, in his desperation to look strong and maintain his power, there’s little or no substance behind his bluster, insults, and threats.

Trump loves to put on a big show. He urgently needs to project a greater-than-life image of himself. He never suggests reforms or moderate changes. Everything he does has to make a big splash to satisfy his ego, like knocking down the East Wing of the White House or shuttering Kennedy Center to avoid the embarrassment of people simply not buying tickets to protest Trump’s takeover.

Consider Project 2025, which history will view either as a bold attempt to completely remake America into a Fascist oligarchy or a classic case of far-right overreach that failed just as previous attempts have. Think big. Create a massive federal secret police force that follows its own rules and ignores the Constitution. Remove millions of alleged murderous and rapacious illegal immigrants from our nation. Pursue the most extreme possible gerrymandering to rig the midterm elections. Throw around America’s military might at the whims of a totally deranged narcissist. How’s all that working out, Donald?

Allowing an unfettered ICE to run wild creating havoc in America’s cities removed more than a half-million undocumented immigrants from our country in 2025. But at what cost? Aside from the injuries and deaths of innocent American citizens at ICE’s hands, the policy horrified most Americans and left Trump’s approval rating severely underwater.

His attempts to steal Congressional seats in red states while claiming similar actions by blue states were illegal collapsed in the courts, leaving the Democrats with what pollsters predict will be at least a two-seat gain in the House. Worse, for MAGA Republicans, their over-generalized analysis was based on the assumption that Trump would retain the support he received from Hispanic voters in 2024. Recent polling and special elections in Texas, for example, show that support badly eroded, with the likely outcome that Texas’ gerrymandering will have far less impact than Trump hoped.

Trump’s war of choice with Iran shows a similar lack of detailed planning with the likelihood of unpleasant outcomes increasing daily. Trump’s expectation that our military might would so intimidate Iran’s leaders that they would come crawling back to the negotiating table were nothing more than a fever dream. People who truly understood the issues in the Middle East knew the war would not go as Trump hoped. They understood that no matter how many (non-nuclear) bombs we dropped on Iran, it would retain the ability to throw the entire world economy into chaos, and the near-suicidal dedication of the Ayatollahs’ hatred for the west means there would be no surrender any time soon. Trump’s need to take full credit for everything combined with his compulsion to constantly surprise everyone alienated us even further from the alliances which have kept us safe since World War 2.

So here we are, seven months out from the midterm elections involved in a catastrophically costly military venture that is slowly spinning out of control and having exactly the reverse effect Trump expected it would on world opinion. Far from creating worldwide awe over American military power and sophistication, (the world was already aware of it,) the war has diminished us in the eyes of our allies while enriching Russia which was struggling to pay for its war in Ukraine.

In a desperate attempt to save his Congressional majority in November, Trump and his friends at the Heritage Society trotted out the Save America Act, which will require every voter to produce both a photo ID and proof of citizenship. That sounds almost reasonable until you drill down into the realities. In order to pass it, the Republicans will have to kill the filibuster, but John Thune and the other senior Republican Senators won’t do that. They understand that what goes around comes around, and even if they passed the bill and Trump signed it, it’s highly likely that the Supreme Court would find that it violates Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution.

But suppose MAGA somehow overcomes those obstacles and passes the Save America Act. Who will really benefit from it? Proof of citizenship requires either a birth certificate or passport. Do you have ready access to either? Do your friends and family members? And more to the point, are people in red states more likely to have either than people in blue states? Draw your own conclusions, but I’m convinced that this is another example of overgeneralizing without understanding the details. I hate the idea of the Save America Act – it’s nothing if not unAmerican – but if it passes, I’m confident it will hurt MAGA voters far more than Democrats.

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It’s Time to Take Our Country Back

Posted on March 16, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 16, 2026

I’m tempted to write that our president communicates as incoherently as my five-year-old grandson. But at dinner a few nights ago I spent an hour listening to him, and while I was dismayed by some of the things he said, I can’t complain about his coherence – unlike Donald Trump who sounds like he’s desperately treading water in a storm. Ever since it became clear that the White House’s planning for Trump’s war of choice against Iran was either nonexistent or incompetent, he seems unable to complete a sentence without contradicting himself and addressing every perceived injustice he’s experienced since he entered politics.

If you ever doubted that Trump lies instinctively whenever it suits him, the evidence is before you. If he contradicts himself every time he opens his mouth at least half of what he says has to be untrue. A more accurate way of putting it is that when Trump speaks, truth is irrelevant. The only thing motivating the things he says is another opportunity to salve his own ego or increase his wealth. It’s always a depressing thing to witness, but now it’s dangerous. Trump’s mouth poses an existential threat to all of us.

His antics, this week, demanding that other nations assist in escorting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously repeating that we have completely decimated Iran’s military and the war is over – oh wait, we still have three or four weeks of bombing ahead of us – result in the chaos we typically expect from him. But this is not a typical situation. Trump had a shiny new toy that no one else on Earth had, and he treats fighting a war like playing Call to Action. He made it worse by posting a picture of himself in his military school uniform with his “proud parents,” the same ones who sent him there to keep him from winding up in prison. Any similarity between our military personnel and Donald Trump exists only in Trump’s twisted mind.

The bombs in a video game aren’t real. Neither are the deaths and the destruction of the infrastructure that 90 million Iranians depend on for survival. In a video game, Trump can act out his need to control everything and everyone. In real life, it’s not that simple. Disparaging NATO for ten years and then characterizing their reluctance to be drawn into an ill-planned war that looks more and more, every day, like it will end in disaster as disloyalty goes way beyond Trump’s usual approach to trying to control things. This time, he has created a situation that grows more dangerous every day. This time, thousands of lives in countries all over the region, many of them civilians are being lost.

Our allies don’t want that blood on their hands, especially when it could be their own people bleeding from Iran’s retaliation to something they had nothing to do with. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made it clear, when he said Trump’s war is not NATO’s war. It could have been if Trump had consulted them before his buddy Netanyahu played him into joining Israel’s unlitateral war. Trump might also have retained a shred of credibility had he quietly obtained approval for his war from Congress. But Trump won’t do those things because he needs to be the only one in charge with everyone else bowing to him and kissing his ring.

Now, as most of us have predicted, Trump looks to most of the world like a pariah. He has spent ten years injudiciously lashing out at everyone who didn’t worship him. It’s only common sense that when you cozy up to your enemies while disparaging your friends, when you talk about other world leaders in the insulting terms he continually uses, when you call your allies stupid and incompetent and accuse them of ripping you off, they may not rush to your defense when you’re hoisted by your own petard. If the potential for disrupting the entire world’s economy weren’t so real, if the possibility of nuclear powers fighting over the spoils in Iran when we pull out after leaving it defenseless didn’t move the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, we might treat this as business as usual.

But it’s not usual in any sense. Trump is simultaneously risking a regional or world war, attempting to muzzle the Congress and suppress the opposition’s voting rights, and trying to silence any media voice he considers disloyal. He can’t overtly defy the First Amendment, but he had a better idea. Get his billionaire friends to buy up all the media outlets and control what they tell the public. He’s already humbled CBS/Paramount, and while his friends the Ellisons promise they will not influence editorial content on CNN. I wouldn’t bet on that.

Check out a valid history of how Adolf Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic in 1933. Donald Trump is attempting exactly the same thing in 2026 America. Trump is trying get unarmed Iranian citizens to revolt against a vicious Revolutionary Guard force that has already murdered tens of thousands of protestors. I would like to see millions of unarmed Americans stand up and assert that we won’t put up with this anymore.

We’d better start taking our country back now if we expect have one in ten years.

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The Aftermath of Trump’s War Against Iran

Posted on March 10, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 10, 2026

In 1960, comedian Bob Newhart recorded his new comedy routines in an album called The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, that quickly shot to the top of the charts. He’d invented a brilliant gimmick. Each routine was one side of a telephone conversation, a marketer talking to someone trying to sell something to the public. (My favorite was Abner Doubleday trying to market baseball.) If you never heard them, they’re all on YouTube.

Newhart’s genius was describing things we took for granted in a perfectly literal way that made them sound absurd. Donald Trump’s war against Iran would have been a perfect subject. As Newhart would have said, “If Donald Trump called a marketer to sell his war on Iran, the conversation might go something like this.”

Hello, Donald is it? You want to Trump things? Oh, I see, that’s your name. Well, you may be selling the wrong thing. Why don’t you try selling special Bridge or Pinochle cards? The players would have to say your name every few seconds.

What’s that? You want to sell them a war? I hope your idea is original – we’ve tried that before. Remember The Mouse that Roared  and Wag the Dog? Oh, you meant a real war. With bombs and missiles and lots of dead and maimed people? Tell me about it.

Who do you want to fight with? Iran? Wow, that’s a pretty tall order. Don’t they have thousands of missiles and drones? What if they shoot your missiles and drones down? Oh, I see, you’re going to destroy all of Iran’s missiles and drones first so they can’t fight back. That doesn’t sound very fair.

Because if you don’t strike first they’ll attack us? And they’re building nuclear weapons? They’ll have as many as eleven of them within two weeks if we don’t attack now? How do you know? Your intelligence people said they’re ten years away from being able to do that. Didn’t you say last June that we had obliterated them? Well, which is it. You’ll never be able to sell this if you keep changing your mind. No, Donald, I don’t see how making a deal will help.

What’s that? You’ll win the public over by not telling them about it until the bombs are falling because you think that once we’re at war, everyone will back you and let you do anything you want to? How long will the war last? Until you say it’s over? You really think people will buy that when Americans start coming home in body bags? And what about oil? Oh, your intelligence folks are telling you Iran would never attack the Gulf oil states or shoot at oil tankers? Wouldn’t that create serious disruption in the world economy and really piss off China? Really? They wouldn’t dare?

Okay, so your plan is to blitz them and wipe out their ability to fight back and then destroy their industrial capacity so they can’t rebuild? All this so you can brag that you got Iran to unconditionally surrender and let you pick their new leaders? Okay, let’s say you accomplish all that. Won’t our forces be left vulnerable everywhere with supplies and munitions depleted? What happens next? Donald, did you hear me? I asked you what you expect to happen after you destroy Iran’s ability to defend itself and build more weapons after you kill countless thousands, many of whom are innocent civilians? Are you still there Donald? Are you alright? You sound like you’re choking.

Honestly, Donald, who sold you this pile of crap? Who the hell is Hegseth? You mean that clown from Fox News? How the hell did he ever get to be in charge? He really kisses it every day? That’s a pretty stupid way to select a Cabinet, Donald. Don’t you understand that if you break a country like Iran, assuming they don’t break you first, you’ll own them? You’ll have bought into years, perhaps decades of nation-building that will almost certainly fail and wreck your economy. You’ll wind up with a far more dangerous situation than you were in when you started bombing them.

With all their natural resources, a defenseless Iran would create a power vacuum that its predatory neighbors will rush to fill. Imagine Russia, China, the Sunni Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia and a completely unfettered Israel bent on revenge all coming together to fight over what’s left after the bombing.

You think that won’t happen? You don’t even have a plan. Are you really as ignorant as you sound? Sorry, Donald, I wouldn’t touch your war with a ten-thousand-mile pole, and neither will anyone else who knows anything about warfare. Continue down this path and you’ll cause a civil war that could destroy what’s left of law and order in Iran, leave ninety million people destitute and hungry, and put the entire world at risk.

Listen to me, Donald. Attacking Iran without support from either Congress or our allies, is not only stupid, it’s illegal and unconstitutional. What? You’ve already ordered the bombing to start?

Let’s continue this tomorrow from my bunker.

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The Real Issues Raised by Trump’s Attack on Iran

Posted on March 6, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 6, 2026

It’s essential that we maintain our focus on why a striking majority of Americans are opposed to our war against Iran. There are two issues that are completely distinct from each other, and Trump, like other presidents before him, would love to blur the line between them. Let’s be clear. There are few if any Americans who are mourning the loss of the Supreme leader and nearly fifty of his senior leaders.

It was inevitable that Israel and the United States, and therefore the world would have had to confront Iran’s murderous regime one day, and there’s logic to the argument that since the conflict was inevitable, we should embrace it at a time of our choosing. Hardly anyone disagrees that Iran in February, 2026 was weaker than it’s been in decades, while there was considerable uncertainty about how long it might take them to be a serious threat with nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.

None of the above is in dispute regardless of politics and ideology. The point of contention, which is part of the much larger concern about the future of America, is whether our president can be permitted to recklessly ignore the Constitution. That document reserves the authority to declare war exclusively to Congress, which seems to ignore the reality that as Commander on Chief of the armed forces, the president can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack on another country. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that as president he believes he has the right to do anything he wants to. His imperial ambitions combined with his narcissistic mental illness make Trump himself the greatest existential threat to our future.

Yet, as has been the case since Trump’s first term, the MAGA-dominated Republicans in Congress have once again failed to do their jobs. Typical of this abject abrogation of their responsibilities was Senator Susan Collins (R, ME.) For years, Collins has talked a good game about being a centrist who believes in reining in extreme policies at both ends of the political spectrum. But her statement, yesterday, that she would vote against a war powers resolution limiting Trump’s ability to wage an unfettered, unconstitutional war, once again demonstrated that when really put to the test, self-interest about a likely close re-election race made all her words meaningless. Shame on her and her disingenuous colleagues!

Collins and the others who folded gave Trump exactly what he hoped for. Conventional wisdom says that when we’re involved in a major military conflict, we can never take actions that weaken the president’s options. A better description in this case is conventional stupidity. All during 2025, a majority of Americans feared that Trump would go to war with Iran for political reasons, whether to distract from his domestic failures, to give him potential options for controlling the midterm elections, or simply to gratify his psychological need to be the toughest badass in the world. He’s done exactly that, for all of the above reasons.

By failing to obtain Congressional approval for the attack on Iran and by ignoring entreaties by our allies to use restraint, Trump changed what might have been viewed as a righteous war by virtually all Americans into an issue that could tear the country apart from within. It’s clear that the administration did not expect Iran to attack the Gulf nations that host American interests and never gave any thought to the safety and likely need to evacuate nearly a million Americans who were in the region when Trump ordered the attack. And as the June attacks on Iran depleted our stock of defensive options and laser-guided munitions, many experts warn that an extended campaign will leave America vulnerable all over the world.

Never to be deterred, however, Trump is now threatening Ecuador and Cuba while we have no idea how long the war with Iran will last. Energy prices are soaring, our labor market has stagnated, and investment markets are extremely volatile. As Trump suggested we might have to rely on a ground troops to finish the job in Iran, Americans are reminded of the 7,000 American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. All this has voters opposed to Trump’s war in Iran by surprisingly large majorities, and that makes it even more likely that the midterm elections will be disastrous for MAGA and Trump.

Trump never admits weakness and never backs down. As the midterm elections near, he will become even more desperate than his erratic behavior suggests he already is. All this points to eight months of increasing chaos as Trump tries to impact, if not delay or cancel the election. As we’ve noted before, the Supreme Court may be our republic’s last line of defense, since Congress has defaulted once again.

And then, there are the Epstein files, and the memos released by DOJ today which detail an accusation of sexual assault against Trump by a woman who claims she was thirteen at the time. 2026 is going to be the most turbulent year we’ve seen since nine-eleven.

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