The Full Cost of the Iran War

Posted on June 10, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 10, 2026,

We wake up every morning hoping to learn that our president has finally reached the initial stages of a deal to permanently end the fighting around the Persian Gulf and neighboring countries. Every day that goal seems more tenuous, and today, Donald Trump, who has claimed for weeks that he’s in no hurry to make a deal with Iran, accused that country of dragging its feet and threatened to attack its energy infrastructure to punish them.

Yesterday, he ordered an attack on a reservoir, denying potable water to a nearby town. That sounds like a tone deaf escalation of the fighting and possibly a war crime.

Trump himself is the greatest obstacle to a deal. His social media posts, his daily self-contradictions, his obvious lack of respect for Iran’s negotiators, and his wild threats make already difficult negotiations nearly impossible. Every day this continues, Trump and Congressional Republicans grow more desperate about the midterm elections, and everyone else bears the costs of the war.

Some of those costs are transparent, while others, perhaps the bulk of them are not. The Apache helicopter that Iran took down this week will cost $120 million to replace. Our brilliant military was able to rescue the crew, but even rescue missions cost a fortune. That Apache helicopter we lost cost $10,000 per hour to fly, and an F35 fighter costs $40,000 per hour.

We know about the downed Apache because it was too visible to cover up, but we have no idea, how many of our aircraft have been damaged or destroyed on the ground by Iranian strikes. We have little or no information about the cost of repairing the damage done by Iranian missile attacks on our bases in allied countries in the Persian Gulf, likewise the human cost of casualties on those bases.

We’ve heard various estimates of the alarming rate at which our munitions are being expended. That includes expensive precision missiles and bombs, and the defensive missiles that comprise Israel’s Iron Dome and the defensive batteries protecting all of our bases that are within each of Iran’s missiles and drones. Add it all up. New aircraft, new missiles and drones, reconstruction of damaged buildings and aircraft runways, and the injuries and stress on our troops from having to be constantly on alert for incoming missiles. We could be looking a nearly a trillion dollars in recovery costs when this is all over, just to return our military to the level of preparedness it enjoyed before the war.

To those costs, we must add the disruption to the American and world economies. We complain about four dollar plus gasoline, but Europe and Asia are facing far greater increases in energy costs, and some of our allies, (South Korea, Japan, the Phillipines,) are dangerously close to running out of oil.

The skyrocketing cost of fertilizers as a result of this war increases the price of food and raises the specter of shortages and famines, all of which is exacerbated by Trump killing USAID. The costs, taken together, are staggering, and they’re still rising, largely out of sight of most Americans.

These costs will re-ignite the guns or butter debate we seem to have every generation. How are we going to pay to restore the economy and our military preparedness – Trump asked Congress for $350 billion, today – while millions of Americans are losing their health care, their social security benefits are being threatened, and the social safety net seems to be cut back more each month. Where will the money to pay for all this come from with Trump’s permanent tax cuts on the wealthy in place?

In addition to financial costs, there are other significant costs that can’t be quantified in dollars and cents. The war has severely damaged our relationships with Europe, and Trump has weakened our response capability in the western Pacific so badly it’s almost an invitation to China to threaten Taiwan. Our prestige and the perceptions of America by foreigners are all suffering from this war, too. The number of European and Asian touurists visiting America and spending money here has already dropped significantly compared to before Trump’s second term.

Perhaps most significant is risk, whose cost is unknown. As Trump writhes trying to find a path out of the cul-de-sac he’s trapped himself in, his options for ending the conflict shrink. The last few days have seen attacks by United States forces and Iran on each other accelerate, threatening the tenuous peace negotiations. When Trump runs out of possible exit ramps, our greatest risk is that he will wildly escalate the war out of fury and frustration that things didn’t turn out as he wanted them to.

The chances of the Iran war spiraling out of control grow every day that our incompetent president allows it to continue. But let’s not let Congress off the hook. If our representatives grew a pair and stood up to Trump, this war could be history before summer’s end.

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I Call the Shots!

Posted on June 9, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 9, 2026

If ever there were an epithet that described Donald Trump, it’s the title of this piece. Our arrogant, rude, egotistical president has a desperate need to be in charge, or at least to have all of his sycophants tell him he is. That mostly worked for him until he entered politics. And therein lies the fundamental flaw in his assertion, in 2015, that what America needed was a successful businessman to run the country.

There are multiple flaws in that argument. One is the questionable suggestion that Trump is a successful businessman. Making money is not the only criteria for reaching such a conclusion. Other things, like the respect and admiration of peers and subordinates, the sense that the person in charge possesses a moral center and compassion for the people whose labors are what is actually making the business successful are more important. By those measures, Trump is anything but a model of success. The level to which people who have worked for or with him despise and distrust Trump is remarkable.

In business, a hated leader is tolerated as long as they’re making money for their partners and investors. When profits turn into losses or businesses run into severe protests or legal challenges, corporate boards and shareholders are ruthless. Presidents and CEOs find out quickly that they’re as replaceable as soiled underwear. Corporations don’t worry about fairness, ethics, or the approval of the masses. Make enough enemies and lose your edge, and you’re gone.

It doesn’t work that way in government. In a well-functioning republic, no single individual can maintain the kind of control Trump craves indefinitely. Screw up as badly as Trump does, anger and insult people indiscriminately, and let everyone see his total lack of compassion, and eventually they’ll topple him. It took all of Trump’s first term, which ended in the debacle of the January sixth insurrection at the Capitol, for that to sink in.

But few people are as driven by greed and power-lust as Trump. He spent all of Joe Biden’s presidency plotting to overthrow our rules-based system and undermine our Constitution. That meant accepting the support of right-wing extremists who would prefer that America be a white male Christian oligarchy. In their arrogance, the Heritage Society, which wrote Project 2025, presented it to Trump as his only path to becoming the all-powerful president he dreamt of being, believing with enough money and chutzpah, they could slip their agenda past a sleepy, disengaged electorate and execute a political coup before anyone realized they’d been mugged.

The probability that Project 2025 would succeed was never high, but with an opposition party that constantly tripped over itself and an army of well-financed influencers, this was the best chance the plotters would ever have. For more than a year, Trump and his cronies ran roughshod over everyone, aided to a great degree by a supportive Supreme Court. But as almost often happens when narcissistic leaders, encouraged by their yes-people overreach, Trump’s delusions crashed headlong into reality.

Trump found out that he couldn’t call the shots on tariffs, and even a Republican party cowed by the fear of being primaried wouldn’t stand for the creation of a Nazi-like government police force. Even their craven self-interest had uncrossable red lines, and when Trump’s power-grabbing attempts to neutralize Congress got personal, he learned he was not invincible.

But the die had already been cast for the midterm elections. Independent voters who had swept him into office in 2024 abandoned him in droves, which caused Trump to trigger a gerrymandered redistricting war among the states. But any gains he made as a result weren’t nearly enough to offset approval ratings dropping toward 30%. Thus, as many people predicted he would when his prospects became desperate, he started a war with Iran, or more accurately, he allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to manipulate him into starting one.

Trump obviously thought he could control Netanyahu, and he assumed, in spite of warnings by people in his administration who knew better, that he could bully Iran into a quick surrender. It turned out, however, that Trump couldn’t call the shots against people who were as driven and determined as he was. For Trump, this war is about bravado and showing the world how tough he is. For Israel and Iran, however, it’s about long-term survival, which is a far more powerful motivating factor. Neither Israel nor Iran is about to adopt Trump’s agenda, nor is either willing to let him call the shots.

Trump has crashed into the consequences of his own mental illness and incompetence. When one of his business ventures failed, the collateral damage was limited to places like Atlantic City, New Jersey. But when an arrogant president who is also the Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military fails so spectacularly, we all pay a huge price.

We’re going to be paying for Trump’s failures for many years to come. So far, the world’s enmity toward America has been focused on Trump, but it’s clear as he inflicts damage on everything he touches, that if Congress doesn’t take back its constitutional power, the nation that everyone once revered will become a pariah.

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Deal Making and Diplomacy – Trump’s Achilles Heels

Posted on June 6, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 6, 2026

Donald Trump believes he is a master deal maker, something he clearly is not. Trump’s idea of deal making during his long career as a real estate developer was always based on the gangster model. He makes deals like a mafia boss armed with expensive lawyers and enforcers. For Trump, making a deal means getting what he wants at the expense of everyone he can successfully bully and punishing everyone he perceives as disloyal.

Anyone who has studied the true art of deal making understands that Trump’s approach, while it sometimes appears to work in the short run, is the worst possible way to forge lasting agreements. It’s a cliché that a good deal is one from which each side walks away believing it won something of value. Deals that endure over time work because each side achieves something sustainable. But Trump’s deals must vanquish the other side, leaving the people he deals with feeling resentful, angry, cheated, and misled.

That’s not the way to conduct diplomacy or trade negotiations. It is certainly not the way to grow lasting alliances based on mutual trust and shared interests. That’s why Trump will never obtain a deal with Iran that his narcissistic personality can accept. Trump cannot  bully the IRGC that now appears to control the Iranian regime. He said at the outset of his war that one of his principal goals was regime change. He seems to have achieved that goal, silencing all the dissident voices within Iran’s government, leaving the hard-liners who hate America and the West in charge.

We abhor the way the Iranian regime treats their own people and sponsors terrorism, but we still must deal with them. To win a lasting peace without first enduring another forever war in the Middle East, both sides must be able to believe and trust each other, which is why Donald Trump’s approach will fail. He ignores the advice of people who know far more about diplomacy than he does, and refuses to understand how the people he must treat with think and what they value. That requires a level of mutual respect that Trump is incapable of. The only way he knows how to deal with potential adversaries is to alternate between the kind of phony obsequiousness that was on display when he fawned over Xi Jinping, and projecting an air of superiority that enrages friends and foes alike.

Therein lies the problem, which can only be solved if the real professionals who have devoted their lives to averting war can somehow control what comes out of Trump’s mouth. Trump’s approach to power is based on lies, misdirection, and creating chaos. In his war with Iran, that can only lead to disaster. Americans, even much of Trump’s base have learned that they can’t trust anything Trump says. He is a serial liar who often seems incapable of distinguishing truth from his own delusions. He reneges on agreements, and considers himself the only trustworthy arbiter of disagreements, and he trusts his own dangerous impulses over facts and expert counsel.

Trump’s approach to governing is to tear up the established order in favor of a world in which he and his imagined co-emperors have free reign to do whatever they please. He wants to reverse the progressive gains of the last century, he has withdrawn from the worldwide efforts to combat climate change and the World Health Organization, and is on the verge of undermining NATO. He withdrew from the JCPOA, the deal that Barack Obama and nearly twenty other countries spent two years negotiating with Iran to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency routinely inspected Iran’s nuclear facilities and reported that they were complying with the agreement. So why did Trump tear it up? Simply because of his personal animus toward Obama. He couldn’t stand the idea that a black president could achieve such an important success. In Trump’s mind, Obama’s success was the ultimate Wokism, which he and Project 2025 are determined to eradicate.

Iran’s leaders are smart. They understand how Trump thinks far better than he understands them. They know they can’t trust him, and he reinforces that every time he seesaws threats with disingenuous olive branches. Three quarters of Americans don’t trust their president. Why should Iran? A high ranking leader of the IRGC told CNN yesterday that Trump is the problem in their negotiations, that it’s impossible to negotiate with someone who doesn’t understand the first thing about diplomacy.

I despise the Iranian regime and what it stands for. But when it comes to deal making and diplomacy, they’re far better at it than Trump. They have his number, and as Trump is fond of saying, they believe they hold the cards that give them leverage. Trump is never going to get a deal as good as the JCPOA. Everyone but Trump knows that regardless of how they spin it.

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The Only People Who Fear Trump are MAGA Republicans

Posted on May 27, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 27, 2026

Every day, at least one person asks me, “How can Donald Trump ______?” You fill in the blank. I always answer the same way. We can’t possibly know what motivates Donld Trump deep down, because we can’t see everything through the filter of a sociopathic, megalomaniacal narcissist. I know that’s a lot of syllables, but claiming to know how his mental illness influences everything he says and does is like me telling my wife I know what it feels like to give birth. I can’t possibly.

In the sixteen months of his second term, Trump has become even more unhinged. The Republican majorities in Congress and Trump’s hand picked Supreme Court have virtually unfettered him from inconveniences like the Constitution. With the exception of Trump’s illegal tariffs, there has been virtually no oversight of the Executive Branch by either the Legislative or Judiciary Branches. With neither checks nor balances, surrounded by yes-people and sycophants, Trump acts as if he really believes he is not only the King of America but the most powerful and respected leader in the world.

Since Inauguration Day, it’s been extremely painful for Americans who love our country to see Trump parade around like the naked emperor of Hans Christian Anderson’s 1837 fable. He is a laughing stock among world leaders, which is hardly a laughing matter. In Beijing, Trump fawned over Xi Jinping, calling them the G2 and receiving nothing but diplomatic courtesy in return, only to have Vladimir Putin visit Beijing for a mutual love fest with Xi as soon as Trump left.

No one outside his core MAGA base respects Trump. Surely, foreign leaders do not. They see him throw our military around like toy soldiers, putting them at risk and wasting their brilliance on missions whose only real purpose is to salve Trump’s ego. Thus, the leader of America’s staunchest ally, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney politely disengaged from Trump, re-orienting Canada’s trade and even its auto industry away from the United States toward Europe and China. The leader of our next-staunchest ally, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer risked his own leadership when he told Trump where he could stick his Iran War. German Chancellor Freidrich Merz made it clear that Europe and NATO no longer consider America a reliable ally.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s Iran War and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a right wing extremist herself broke with Trump over support of NATO and Trump’s criticism of the Pope. Both Denmark and Greenland rejected Trump’s attempt to annex Greenland and other traditional American allies, Australia, South Korea, and Japan, broke with Trump over Iran.

Our allies respect America’s military prowess and they realize that Trump is extremely unpopular with the American people. The whole world saw Trump’s favorability rating at home drop from around 50 percent to 30 in sixteen months. Every foreign leader understands that when Democrats take over the House in November, Trump will be a lame duck, albeit a very dangerous and annoying one. They know Trump fears the exposure of the Epstein Files and that Iran is playing him, stalling for time and betting that Americans will insist on an end to the war before Iran’s economy crashes completely.

Trump isn’t capable of understanding that he has lost. Every since he declared a cease-fire, only to see Benjamin Netanyahu increase his attacks on Hezbollah, many of us have wondered what he would do when it became clear, with the midterms nearing, that Iran is not intimidated by him. He’s certainly capable of inventing his own delusional reality in which he declares victory and walks away. The Obama nuclear deal that Trump tore up was complex enough that most people won’t be able to tell who comes out ahead in the current negotiations, compared to where we would have been in the JCPOA had remained in effect. It seemed like the last thing Trump wanted was to resume full scale war. When Congress returns in six days, it will likely pass a new war powers resolution that asserts their sole authority to declare and pursue war.

Trump seemed to have trapped himself badly, but when a cornered rat finds itself with no good options it attacks wildly, survival being its only motivator. When Trump said at his cringeowrthy Cabinet meeting today that Iran would never wait him out, he didn’t care about the midterms, and that Oman, a major U. S. ally in the region would either behave or we would “blow them up,” everyone but the sycophants in the Cabinet Room knew we might have crossed a point of no return.

Trump is now in full gangster mode, hurling irrational threats at anyone who displeases him, isolating America from the rest of the world. He is so driven to prove his own delusions there is no way to predict what he’ll do next, but there is now a significant chance that he will escalate attacks on Iran into a region-wide bloodbath, not caring if he bankrupts our strategic weapons supplies and detroys our economy. Mental illness can do that to you.

The most important question on the table is what it will take for his captive Republicans to say, “Enough!” and shut him down.

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What Did Trump Accomplish in Beijing?

Posted on May 16, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 16, 2026

As I looked through today’s news reports and opinion pieces from CNN, Fox News, and  the New York Times, I was surprised at their consistency. There were no wildly opposed partisan views, which suggests that much of what I read was likely true.

To organize my thoughts and avoid my biases I imagined my thirteen-year-old grandson responding to a school assignment to watch Trump’s encounters with Xi Jinping and report on what he saw. Looking at it as I imagine he might gave me a simple, common-sense perspective.

President Trump arrived in Beijing lavishing praise and adulation on his Chinese counterpart. Trump can be extremely charming when he wants to be, but anyone who’s been exposed to him for any length of time knows his charm is disingenuous. It’s a character he plays. When he invited television personality and Trump critic Bill Maher to the White House for dinner, Maher said afterward that he was amazed at how friendly and charming Trump was. He added, though, that while Trump allowed Maher to criticize his policies, there was no chance that anything Maher said would make a difference.

Xi did not reciprocate Trump’s obsequious behavior. He never praised Trump or said anything positive about him directly, instead addressing the importance of them being able to work cooperatively. While Trump was fawning over him, Xi delivered a stark warning that if Trump interfered in the dispute between Taiwan and China, it could mean war, but unlike the bombastic Trump, whose threats are always exaggerated and bullying, Xi was subtle, especially when he referred to America as a declining power while China was on the rise. My grandson would have gotten the message clearly.

Trump told anyone who would listen that it was all about relationships, and he was building one with Xi. After the summit meeting he told Fox News he considered Xi a friend. No doubt, he was desperately hoping Xi would say something that was at least conciliatory, but Xi only talked about the importance of the United States and China getting along. When a reporter asked Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi if Xi considered Trump a friend, Yi said China and the United States would continue working together.

Coming home on Air Force One, when he could say anything he wanted, Trump bragged about trade deals he made, suggesting China would buy 750 planes from Boeing, for example. But when asked to confirm that, China would only say it was considering buying a few aircraft but there was no deal. It was much easier to agree that China would resume buying soy beans from American farmers, because that is in both country’s interests. But when it came to the three things Trump needed to get China to agree to, he came home with nothing.

About Iran’s enriched uranium, Xi repeated China’s long-standing position that Iran should not have nuclear weapons with neither specifics nor offers of assistance. About the Strait of Hormuz, Xi said it should be open to all shipping, again, without offering to help, and that resulted in Trump telling the media he didn’t need help and wasn’t asking Xi for any favors. Finally, on an issue that has enormous impact on American industries, security, and the competition to develop AI, no one said anything. China processes 93% of the world’s rare earth minerals, which are vital to all three. Trump understands that if China restricts it’s exportation of rare earths it could destroy our economy. Xi had the leverage going in, and he still does.

Trump’s attempts at flattery and his desperate need to be revered by Xi were on full display when he referred to the United States and China as the world’s two superpowers, quipping “I call us the G-2.”

When XI met with Vladimir Putin before Russia invaded Ukraine, he said the friendship between China and Russia was unbreakable, and both China and Russia have strong ties to Iran. Both countries have been assisting Iran in Trump’s war with satellite intelligence and drone technology.

Putin will visit China next week. The pomp and ceremony Xi showed Trump was a skillful play on Trump’s narcissism. That’s what powerful leaders do when they disrespect the person they’re hosting but have to play the diplomatic game regardless because one serious misstep could be catastrophic in the nuclear age. I can’t wait to see how Xi receives Putin. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall when Putin and Xi mock Trump’s fantasy of a G-2 that excludes Russia?

My grandson is a smart kid who won’t draw conclusions without evidence. The only way he could possibly answer the question, “what did Trump accomplish in Beijing” would be, “nothing of substance.” For all his bombast, Trump’s hanging out there on his own. The rest of the world sees him as a deranged, dangerous clown. There’s no clear exit from Iran, and the likelihood of a deal to remove Iran’s enriched uranium that was as good as the Obama deal Trump tore up is vanishingly small.

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Trump vs Xi

Posted on May 12, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell,  May 12, 2026

A normal person approaching a critical summit with the leader of our most powerful and dangerous adversary, knowing they have no trump cards to play might be nervous. They might suffer extreme anxiety attacks and even cancel or postpone the meeting again. But people who suffer from serious narcissistic personality disorders don’t react or behave like normal people. They have such exaggerated, grandiose images of themselves, they don’t realize they’re mired in quicksand until it’s too late.

I fear that is the fate of our impetuous, out of his depth president. He is so fundamentally unlikable that I have no sympathy for him, but I hope that having billionaires Elon Musk and Tim Cook with him, along with an entourage of people who understand Chinese and have a clue about the way Xi thinks will mute Trump’s worst tendencies. Despite self-promotion as the Master of the Deal, Trump is anything but that. In business, he never negotiated fairly on a level playing field. He always used money and an army of lawyers to intimidate the opposition.

I doubt that Trump has any idea what a fair deal would mean with either China or Iran. He understands neither fairness nor what it takes to be a real dealmaker. All that motivates him is winning, or at least convincing himself that he’s winning, even when everyone around him can see that he’s lost. And that, to our great misfortune as Americans, is exactly the situation as Trump prepares to depart for Beijing.

We’re all aware of the debacle that Trump’s war in Iran has become, and equally aware that he was warned by experts that bringing the Iranian regime to its knees would not be as easy as sending in a few commandos to kidnap Nicolas Maduro. Instead he listened only to Benjamin Netanyahu, who convinced him that the interests of Israel and the United States were perfectly aligned, and undoubtedly played upon his ego. The truth is that Netanyahu, who understands Iranians as well as anyone, was focused on what he believed was Israel’s survival. The fate of things like the Strait of Hormuz were far lesser priorities for him than for Trump and the rest of the world.

Trump allowed himself to be drawn into a war that drastically weakened our ability to confront China. Thanks to 24/7 worldwide news channels, Xi can see everything we see in real time. He sees that our ability to fight effectively on multiple fronts is far more fragile than anyone, especially Trump imagined. He sees that Trump’s trade war is a total disaster, and that in the sixteen months of Trump’s second term he has driven our allies away and forced them to cozy up to China and each other rather than do business with us.

MAGA Republicans continue to live in their oblivious bubble, drinking Trump’s Kool Aid and supporting his attempts to undermine our electoral system to assure that Trump remains in power. Like Trump himself, they are narrowly focused on power and wealth to the exclusion of what’s good for the rest of America and the world.

All that might still be salvageable, except for some realities that Trump and MAGA seem to have overlooked. China is forging ahead of the United States in the production of alternative energy sources, while Trump is spending billions to kill them in the United States, creating a perfect storm of bad outcomes when oil becomes scarce and expensive. China is also on the verge of leaving us in the dust with respect to AI. It wouldn’t surpise me if bringing our most powerful tech executives on this trip actually benefitted Xi in the end. The unpredictable and uncontrollable Elon Musk could turn on Trump in a second if he saw more profit in throwing his lot in with China.

But the thing that may be the determining factor in Trump’s meeting with Xi has mostly fallen under the radar. The demand for rare earth minerals increases every day, and America depends on them to support AI, the IT industry in general, and our strategic weapons systems. The United States is relatively poor in rare Earth ores, while China possesses enough to hold the rest of the world hostage if Xi decides that’s to his advantage. In 2025, China accounted for more than 70% of the mining and 90% of the processing of rare earth elements. The United States was a distant second, with Europe having almost none. Those numbers portend a very negative future if China chooses to use rare earths to dominate his relations with Trump.

I doubt that many American leaders would want to be in the position Trump finds himself, but then, it’s unlikely that anyone but Trump would have managed things so badly that they would find themselves in such a position. Thanks to Trump, the rest of the world sees us as a declining empire. They also note that the U. S. has been the loser in every military venture we’ve engaged in since World War 2, except Ronald Reagan’s heroic invasion of the island of Grenada.

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And The Winner is … China

Posted on May 7, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 7, 2026

Project 2025 and Donald Trump’s impossible to control ego have been driving his second term. As we approach the confluence of the crises Trump has put in motion, it’s important to understand that Project 2025 was a Hail Mary. The likelihood that it would replace our Constitution with a Christian Nationalist Manifesto was always relatively small, but it was the best opportunity right-wing extremists had since Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich began preparing for what is happening today, forty-five years ago.

Project 2025 and Trump 2.0 attempted a coup. Their best hope was hitting the opposition simultaneously from every direction, challenging and attempting to either kill or change everyhing they could reach. Trump went all in on the motto, “I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission,” hitting the ground running with a long list of Executive Actions drafted for him by the Heritage Foundation, most of which had very little chance of getting past the courts. The administration knew that, but they also knew the chaos they created would paralyze any opposition, as it did for most of 2025.

We spent last year watching Trump pick fights and start wildfires everywhere he could. He was never going to win every fight, but he would do as much damage as he could. Doing damage seems to be the one thing the Trump administration is adept at. He began with a double-barreled attack on the federal government and the world economy. Under the auspices of DOGE, a fake federal agency that existed only in the minds of Trump and Elon Musk, under the guise of combating waste, fraud, and abuse, Musk was able to destroy federal agencies that Americans cared about but that the Heritage Foundation disapproved of. And with the stroke of his pen, Trump upended decades of international economic stability with his tariffs.

The tariffs and most of DOGE’s actions, particularly Musk’s theft of huge troves of Americans’ personal information from confidential government computer systems to feed his AI ventures, turned out to be illegal or unconstitutional, but reversals by the courts couldn’t prevent massive harm to 300,000 people whose careers were erased, to the philosophy of free trade and tariff-free borders, and to our alliances. After those opening salvos, Trump went after private law firms that employed people who had opposed him and our elite university system, attempting to control what is taught on our campuses.

To repay his friends in the coal and petroleum industries for their political donations, Trump did everything he could to kill the struggling electric vehicle industry, and terminate all government projects that supported alternative energy production like solar arrays and wind farms, despite massive evidence that carbon pollution is destroying our ice caps, changing our climate, and affecting the health of every person on Earth. Even if destroying our environment weren’t a compelling enough issue, the effect of Trump’s war with Iran on oil supplies demonstrates how wrong-headed those decisions were.

Deciding unilaterally (illegally) to change the name of the Defense Department to the War Department was symbolic of Project 2025’s attitude toward the rest of the world. No more leading the Free World or supporting alliances that prevented another world war, and no longer leading efforts for world peace and cooperation. Instead, becoming the bullies of the world, abandoning our allies and cozying up to autocrats.

Trump’s promises to end wars on day one were his biggest lies. He weakened support for Ukraine against Russian aggression, possibly dealing a mortal blow to NATO and our European allies. And instead of reining in Israel’s destruction of Gaza, he joined Israel in destroying 13,000 military and infrastructure targets in Iran, bogging us down in a war that seems to have been justified on bad or faked intelligence – again!

Trump is desperately trying to end the conflict against an enemy he badly underestimated and does not understand. With his approval ratings at home at record lows for any president, the midterm elections approaching, and committed to a face-to-face meeting with Xi Jinping, Trump will go to China with few cards to play. His actions with respect to alternative energy made China the biggest winner in his Iran war.

China invested billions of dollars in wind and solar energy, ramping up their efforts as Trump’s war has caused severe shortages all over Asia, and placing China in the diplomatic driver’s seat. Moreover, Trump is desperate for some sign of support from Xi. It didn’t bother him when our allies (Canada, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany) criticized and backed away from him. If Xi decides it’s in China’s interest to weaken Trump further, he will have all the leverage if Trump goes to China without an Iran deal that’s better than the Obama deal Trump tore up.

Trump may be about to learn that his delusions of grandeur have caused great damage to his administration, but more seriously to the 350 million Americans he swore to defend. He unnecessarily picked fights with virtually everyone except Xi and Vladimir Putin. With the rest of the world wise to him, and having reduced our supply of strategic weapons to a dangerously low level, his power and influence ebbs internationally every day. He’ll never admit it publicly, but all those chickens are coming home to roost.

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Trump as Commander-in-Chief

Posted on May 6, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 6, 2026

Whenever someone asks him a question about his Iran war, Trump lauds “our incredible military.” Seeing our forces bomb Iranian targets with little resistance and sink Iranian naval vessels obviously excites him, elevating his normal tendency to exaggerate and fabricate to embarrassing levels, especially in light of things he’s said about them in the past. In case you’ve forgotten, let’s ask Four Star Marine General John Kelly what he recalls.

The widely respected Kelly was in charge of the Southern Command, which is responsible for all U. S. military action in South and Central America and the Caribbean before being appointed Secretary of Homeland Security by Donald Trump in 2017. After six months in the position, Kelly became White House Chief of Staff because disarray in the White House required someone with strong leadership skills to right the ship. It was widely reported that Kelly’s role was to impose discipline on the president.

Kelly respected the chain of command, which included respecting Trump’s role as Commander in Chief, which made him Kelly’s superior from two points of view. He did his job dutifully and discreetly, never expressing his obvious frustration with dealing with Trump until well after he was fired as Chief of Staff. A lesser individual might have turned on Trump out of anger or spite, but Kelly had nothing to prove after his illustrious career.

In 2020, with a presidential election pitting Trump against Joe Biden looming, Kelly sat for an interview with The Atlantic. He described the president as “[a] person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all suckers because ‘there is nothing in it for them[,]’ … a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me[,]’ … a person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family. Kelly went on to say that Trump privately disparaged people like Arizona Senator John McCain and former President George H. W. Bush as losers for being shot down and captured by the enemy.”

In an interview with NBC news in 2025, Kelly slammed Trump “as a person who is not truthful … on his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person who has no idea what America stands for…” I’m not a veteran, but I spent three years in the Pentagon during the Vietnam conflict, and I have great respect for our military personnel. Hearing Trump disparage them after using his father’s  money to dodge the draft himself made me sick.

Watching and hearing the military briefings on his Iran war infuriates me. Yesterday’s briefing was both embarrassing and frightening. Any objective person watching it would have cringed, during the question session with Trump afterward, seeing him ecstatic about rubbing elbows with the generals he commands, knowing that whatever lies or fantasies he indulges in, they will all maintain proper decorum before the cameras, no matter how much they despise both the man and his words. Trump revels in firing generals he doesn’t like, including suggesting that former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley be tried for treason. He intervened in this year’s list of officers up for promotion to General, striking the names of the blacks and women, despite their qualifications and recommendations.

After yesterday’s briefing, Trump sounded like an insecure schoolyard bully who knows he can do anything he wants because daddy is the principal. He sounded childish, but that’s old news. The frightening part was that he sounded completely unhinged, his ego dominating everything, throwing around absurd threats and insults, and beyond that simply sounding irrational and completely out of his depth. The larger problem is that every political and military leader in world watched and heard him.

With Trump’s upcoming visit to China still scheduled, reporters asked him if he intended to discuss the Iran War with Xi Jinping. Trump couldn’t just say “Yes,” however, without bragging about his wonderful relationship with Xi, how supportive Xi has been about the war, and how much money the United States was making from tariffs on Chinese imports.

I’m shocked that Trump hasn’t postponed his trip to China claiming he must remian here to direct the war effort. As conditions in the Persian Gulf deteriorate, and the alleged cease fire looks more like a resumption of hostilities, it’s clear that Trump’s cards are being trumped by Iran. I can’t imagine that even our mentally ill president will fail to realize that Xi laughs at him.

As Trump was going on about how America is the hottest country in the world, respected by everyone, I had to turn him off before I threw the remote at the screen.

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Victory vs Humiliation

Posted on May 4, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 4, 2026

About seventy percent of Americans are asking why we are at war with Iran. The issue is not whether anyone disagrees with prohibiting Iran from developing nuclear weapons as long as they are the world’s greatest supporter and dispenser of terrorism and they chant, “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” We want to see clear evidence that Iran was, as Donald Trump claims, only months away from having a nuclear weapon.

We’ve been hoodwinked twice before with faked or simply incorrect intelligence, resulting in thirty years of war in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin and the “weapons of mass destruction?” Both were sold to the American public as imminent threats to justify going to war, and both were false.

I understand Benjamin Netanyahu’s motives. Israel has lived throughout its existence as a nation under declarations of war from the countries that surround it. With all the angry rhetoric and threats Trump and the Iranians fling at each other, it’s hard for us average people to know who and what to take seriously, although Bill Clinton’s failure to take Osama bin Laden’s threat seriously brought us nine-eleven.

Netanyahu has a point, that if Iran were allowed to use its enriched uranium to make ten nuclear warheads, their history since 1979 suggests that they might launch them at Israel preemptively out of hatred. When he had a chance to manipulate Donald Trump with visions of being a hero to the world, he took it, and our president who suffers from delusions of grandeur was hooked.

Trump 1.0 had similar concerns about North Korea, but the situations are different. North Korea was never going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, but Kim Jong Un believed having them would prevent his country from being attacked. Iran’s position is quite different. We don’t like their regime, but if they stopped funding terrorism and spreading hatred of Jews and Americans, we’d have no incentive to bother them. They don’t need nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

Netanyahu knew Trump wasn’t a strategist, but it didn’t matter to him if Trump’s poor planning allowed Iran to take over the Strait of Hormuz. That’s the rest of the world’s problem, not Israel’s, and given the way most of the world has treated Israel, I understand that attitude, too. In any case, he probably assumed, like most of us, that our professional military wouldn’t let Trump do anything stupid.

Unfortunately, everyone underestimated Trump’s belief that no one can negotiate a deal or manage a war as well as he can, and his ability to intimidate smarter people to bend to his will. Trump ignored all the warnings that his fantasy for a Venezuela-like in-and-out mission was untenable, and he wrongly believed he could terrify Iran into capitulating, which any Israeli diplomat could have told him was absurd.

Trump is playing a dangerous game, alternating between outrageous threats and claiming that all he wants is peace and prosperity for the Iranian people, which is really rich, since up to twenty-five million Americans will lose their health care this year because of his policies, and he couldn’t care less about them. Because threats, bluster, and expensive lawyers usually got Trump what he wanted in business, he has tried in both  terms to govern by intimidation and threat. He  doesn’t understand that neither the fedeal government nor international diplomacy works that way. He thinks he can ignore all that, and he’s very wrong.

Trump doesn’t understand the Iranian mindset, and that’s a serious issue. The Iranians don’t trust him, and why should they when he tore up a deal they spent five years working out with the Obama administration. And since it’s clear that Trump’s not-so-hidden motive for behaving that way is manipulating markets so his insider friends can profit from the war, the Iranians as well as most Americans understand that they can’t believe a word he says.

Trump is committing another inexcusable error in this war. Because of his personal issues, he cannot separate the concept of victory from humiliating and punishing his adversaries. Trump bellicosely demands total, unconditional surrender to his demands, but the Iranian leaders are proud people who are deeply offended but such tactics. With Trump running things tensions can’t help but escalate. It’s difficult to imagine reaching any agreement with his out-of-control behavior and his need for everyone to kneel to him submissively, which are the antipathy of sound diplomacy.

Diplomacy requires adherence to standards of behavior, courtesies, and above all, clear unambiguous communication, but those are the things Trump is worst at. If he stayed away from his social media platform, if he kept his mouth closed and hired skilled negotiators, there’s a chance they could reach a deal, but Trump only knows how to maximally beat down an opponent. No one ever explained to the Master of the Deal, that a good deal is one from which both sides walk away feeling they  got something of value.

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Two Crises: War and Voting Rights

Posted on May 3, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 2, 2026

Americans grew up believing our Constitution was the bulwark of our democracy. It was supposed to assure that no autocrat would ever rule the United States, that the Separation of Powers among the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of our federal government meant that none of the three couldn’t dominate the other two, and that our basic rights as citizens were protected. However naïve that may have been, I believed it, and you probably did, too.

What we are witnessing in the MAGA Republicans’ attempt to replace our Constitution with what they call Christian Nationalism, an oxymoron if there ever was one, is the potential eradication of everything Americans have believed in, particularly since World War 2, when we accepted the mantle of the protectors of the free world. MAGA not only threatens our democracy, but it would isolate us from our allies and buy into Trump’s fantasy that the world should be divided among the three major powers, Russia, China, and the United States, with Emperors Trump, Putin and Xi running the world.

The Trump 2.0 administration adopted the strategy of attacking every precept of our democracy simultaneously, intentionally creating chaos and legal confusion, in the belief that that would paralyze the opposition and allow single-minded, obsessed MAGA politicians to win. Consequently, our nation faces a combination of crises that could destroy both our economy and our democracy, because elected officials who swore an oath to protect our Constitution care more about their personal political futures than the people they swore to serve.

The United States Constitution guarantees the right to vote to any American citizen over the age of eighteen. Even persons who would otherwise be considered legally incompetent have the right to vote. Many states allow convicted felons to vote. Our founders believed only white male property owners should vote, and some states had higher voting age requirements until the 26th Amendment set the minimum voting age at eighteen. The 15th Amendment gave the franchise to blacks, the 19th to women. The 24th Amendment outlawed poll taxes and the Voting Rights Act made literacy tests for voting illegal.

Given all of the above, I cannot understand how the Supreme Court concluded partisan gerrymandering that effectively denies the right to vote to millions of Americans based on partisanship was constitutional. I grew up on the cliché “one man one vote,” and I was taught that the right to vote was a sacred pillar of our democracy supported by the Constitution.

It makes no sense to me that the Court would rule that racially-based gerrymandering violates the 15th Amendment, but that partisan gerrymandering doesn’t potentially infringe on every American’s right to vote. All the esoteric legal arguments in the world can’t change the fact that that’s illogical and makes a mockery of democratic voting.

Our Constitution clearly grants the power to declare war to the Congress, while recognizing that the Commander in Chief of our military, that is, the president, has the right and responsibility to direct military action when out country is attacked or under demonstrably imminent threat of attack. Even as a school child I asked my teachers how that made sense, especially in the age of nuclear weapons. Congress, after seeing us dragged into a decade of combat in Vietnam without any declaration of war being issued, realized the apparent contradiction, and passed the War Powers Act in 1973.

Theoretically, the War Powers Act attempts to bridge the logical gap in the Constitution summarized by a single question. How do we reconcile the fact that a president can involve us directly in a war on their own initiative while only Congress can authorize and financially support a war effort? Trump isn’t the only president that has taken us to war ignoring Congress’s role, nor is he the only one who believes that once hostilities begin, in practical terms, Congress has no choice but to support them, making the 60-day limit to unauthorized hostilities moot. Our twenty-year involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated that the War Powers Act by itself doesn’t resolve the conundrum.

There are many examples of situations in which our Constitution and Declaration of Independence from tyranny laid out idealistic principles of democracy and human rights, which in practice are violated whenever strong leaders who disagree with them simply ignore them. Trump is only the latest and most virulent example of such a leader, and as we’ve noted before, Trump isn’t the problem. He’s just a symptom of the dangers of flawed humans allowed to go unchecked.

We create laws and rules of behavior so we can live in a civilized society. Otherwise, survival of the fittest becomes everyone’s way of life. But human nature is fundamentally selfish, and under stress, humans mostly revert to form. It’s important that we recognize that in 2026 because we have a critical choice to make six months from now. We can’t rely on the Courts to do this for us. It’s up to every one of us to determine whether the current administration can be allowed to function as it has done for fifteen months, and whether our Congressional representatives deserve re-election. The buck stops in the ballot box.

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