The Trump Administration has misgoverned with a blizzard of pronouncements, policies and actions.

There was Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, random economic sanctions, the DOGE massacre, election rat-fuckery, the ICE attacks and murders, the West Wing Ballroom and command bunker, putting his name on the Kennedy Center, creating his own crypto-coin, suing the IRS for his new “anti-weaponization” slush fund, the new “anti-terrorist” laws, failure to release the Epstein Files where his name features prominently, providing intel for Ukrainian/NATO attacks on Russia, attempting to assassinate Putin, bombing Yemen repeatedly, attacking Venezuela and seizing president Madura and his wife, droning the so-called “drug boats” and murdering hundreds of fisherman, attempting to colonize Greenland, green-lighting Israel’s genocide of Gaza, sneak-attacking Iran with Israel and assassinating Iranian leaders, sanctioning China, again, unlimited support for the data center build-out despite widespread protest, turning over Cold War era plutonium to Sam Altman and Open AI, (what could go wrong?) suckering MAGA supporters with a gold-plated cell phone “designed with American values in mind”, and building a UFC cage on the White House lawn to celebrate our nations 250th birthday, because nothing says America-Fuck-Yeah like cage fighting.

I’m sure I missed lots of outrages, but what the fuck?

To put all of this in grim perspective, Trump is now presiding over the most corrupt, incompetent, repressive regime in the history of our republic. And worse yet, some of his most dismal policies, like unstinting support for Israeli aggression and genocide, have fulsome bipartisan support from pro-war, Zionist Democrats. He has taken what were already some of the worst American policies and accelerated them, even as he destroys positive aspects of the government like support for advanced scientific research, environmental controls and foreign policies that provided food, clean water and public health services abroad as a way in which to engage in constructive international relationships.

Unfortunately, all of this make it up on the fly cray-cray has caught up with the president, who spends most nights shit-posting. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way Trump has gone about driving the empire onto the rocks in the Middle-East.

Now, with Iran maintaining the closure of the Straight of Hormuz, Trump is desperate for a way out of the mess he made. The facts are stark. Trump effectively holds less than zero leverage with Iran. And Iran holds insurmountable escalation dominance. Former MI6 analyst, Alastair Crooke says that “Trump is in zugzwang. (Any move he makes, potentially only worsens his position, whether strategically or domestically). We saw this same zig-zagging, back of an envelope, non-strategy perfectly illustrated in the iconic imaging from Trump’s Beijing visit – Trump ‘winged it’; no prior preparation; a ‘seat of the pants’ summit.

That image may perhaps come to define this era – today’s iconic moment was of a U.S. President wearing the air of defeat whilst a confident President Xi’s comportment demonstrated who was in control.”

Trump grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, confident that whenever he got in trouble he could simply declare bankruptcy and walk away. But he now finds himself in an entirely new situation with the war in Iran. He doesn’t have the advantage, no matter what he posted at midnight. And he can’t declare bankruptcy for the seventh time and go on his merry way, because his whole reputation is on the line now. The only path forward is the one that will permanently destroy his legacy. There’s no way he can claim victory and if he tries to slink away the neocon-hawks and AIPAC will eat him alive.

Trump had to fuck around, and now he found out.

Update: Intelligence reports suggest that Iran stands ready to test a nuclear bomb if the US and Israel persist in attacks.