04.13.26
Trump's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend
Things are starting to go poorly for King Donald the Little Handed.
Europe is losing patience with Trump’s insults, his tariffs, and his demands that NATO join his war of choice (though the distinguished foreign policy journalist Ann Applebaum told the Atlantic that there’s more cooperation than it looks like). British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared himself “fed up”; ten years after Brexit, alienation from the U.S. is pushing the UK back toward its alliances with Europe.
In Hungary, after 18 years in power, Victor Orbán lost his election, in spite — and probably in part because — of endorsements from both Trump and JD Vance. This was widely seen as a test of the strength of the Hungarian’s “illiberal democracy” and of the extreme right more generally. Both lost a big one, and that includes MAGA.
The Iran war seems to be continuing. After 21 hours in a room with Iranian diplomats in Islamabad, JD Vance and the kleptocrats Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff declared their peace negotiations a bust. Of course, each of the issues on their 10-point list would take years to work through. Either the trio in Pakistan and Trump and L’il Marco at home were too dumb to understand this, or the talks were never meant to be more than theater in the first place. Before, the administration had no reason to go to war. Now they have justification to beat the living shit out of Iran. Peace with honor, as Nixon used to say about Vietnam.
Meanwhile, at home, American support for Trump and his policies is plummeting. The president admitted that gas prices are likely to remain high through the midterms. In a supposed-to-be-private speech to rich donors, he let slip that we can’t afford “day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.” Why? “We’re fighting wars.”
And, as if he didn’t have enough troubles, Melania pulled a fast, and weird, one, calling a press conference at the White House to announce that she had never been a friend, accomplice, or victim of Jeffrey Epstein and that his accusers should go before Congress and tell their stories under oath. The war had been temporarily succeeding, as nothing else, to distract Americans from the Epstein files, and Melania whipped their attention right back.
Maybe that’s why the administration had to throw the peace talks and vow that the U.S. is now going to block the Strait of Hormuz. Unsurprisingly, the price of oil boomeranged above $100 a barrel.
After the negotiations broke down and Iran hinted it was still open to talking, Trump told the press: "I don't care if they come back or not. If they don't come back, I'm fine." He added that the ceasefire was "holding well,” even while promising to block the Strait.
A person in the street might be asking: How does a US blockade help anything? How is that a ceasefire? What is Trump going to enforce this blockade with — orange traffic cones? And isn’t Iran already blocking the Strait?
For a while there, it looked as if the war was kind of fun for Trump and Pretty Boy Pete Hegseth (I wrote about this, in the Guardian). But now, between watching bouts of mixed martial arts and planning his Arc de Trump, even our uncommanding commander-in-chief might finally be asking himself: How the fuck am I going to get out of this one?