Which Group of Morons Will Trump Listen to on Iran?

Take your pick: the hawk morons, or the dove morons?

(Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

President Trump is trying to decide whether he wants to join in Israel’s war with Iran, and as of this writing there remains some uncertainty about which choice he will make. The question comes down to this:

Which group of morons is Trump going to listen to?

I wish that were an exaggeration, but it isn’t. There are some smart, thoughtful, and experienced people in the Republican foreign policy and national security world, but none of them have any influence over this president. He sits between two collections of idiots, all begging for his favor while they try to convince him that their side is the correct one.

Here’s a passage from a New York Times article earlier this week reporting on the behind-the-scenes machinations:

That same day, Mr. [Mark] Levin, the conservative radio host, met with Mr. Trump and several of his advisers in the dining room adjoining the Oval Office. He had been an influential force in presenting an anti-Iran view to the president. The conversation with Mr. Levin appeared to have made an impression on the president, advisers said.

Mark freaking Levin is who Trump is taking advice from on matters of war and peace, right there in the Oval Office. And not just him. All of MAGA world is asking: Will Trump side with isolationists like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene? Or will he be persuaded by the war advocates like Levin and Sean Hannity?

Do you feel like you’ve completely gone mad yet? You should.

Of course, right-wing media nincompoops are not Trump’s only source of information. Should he decide to turn to his crackerjack national security team, he has a whole other group of idiots to hear from, as long as they aren’t busy trading war plans on Signal while journalists listen in. He can speak to the Fox & Friends weekend co-host and totally-not-drunk Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, or the creepy Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (who, remember, had zero intelligence experience before taking that job), or the pathetic lickspittle Marco Rubio, now serving as both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser (though it may be hard for Rubio to express an opinion with his tongue lodged so firmly in the eyelets of Trump’s wingtips). And if he wants to get an on-the-ground view from the Middle East, he can check in with his ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, the former Fox host and snake-oil salesman who recently texted Trump that “I believe you will hear from heaven” on how to handle this crisis.

With all that sensible advice in hand, how’s the decision-making going? Here’s Trump’s description:

You’ll have to tune in to tomorrow’s episode to find out, but in the meantime, why not put your life savings into Trump memecoins?

This all feels familiar

Those of us who were around in 2003 can’t help but be brought back to all the inanity and horror of the run-up to the Iraq War, to the freedom fries and the aluminum tubes and the yellowcake and “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” The right had its share of morons then too, but the Bush administration was also full of supposedly serious people with credentials and experience who could make their case, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice and Powell.

It may have been the most carefully planned and successful propaganda campaign in American history, and the news media fell for it with an almost gleeful enthusiasm. The public, assured that revenge for September 11 could be exacted on Saddam Hussein, went right along:

With that knowledge in hand, they were fired up and ready to go:

That is not the situation right now, for a number of reasons. There is no seeping wound that the public is being told will be staunched by a military adventure. The Trump administration’s propaganda efforts have been amateurish at best. And since Trump himself has no idea what he wants, they can’t even wage a campaign to fool the public on his behalf, since they don’t know whether they’re supposed to convince the public that bombing Iran is absolutely necessary or completely unnecessary.

Finally, this is all taking place on a compressed timeline. The Bush administration spent an entire year and a half convincing the public that the Iraq War was both urgent and justified, and would be a quick and easy triumph. But it’s been only a week since Israel began its attack. Which is why not even Republicans are convinced we ought to go to war:

I’m sure Trump has seen the polls, but the truth is that he’s less likely to be influenced by them than he is by whatever he sees on Fox & Friends the morning he makes his decision. And on Fox, the cheerleading for Israel and the encouragement for America to join in has been relentless. Which is why odds are better than even that those bunker-busters are going to be falling before long. Either way, the morons will have won the argument.

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