This week, Jon Stewart called Trump the Supreme Misleader. This is an essay on why I believe that to be apt.
I am still finding that it is very difficult to write about this political moment. In fact, it’s not just me… I heard Bill Kristol complaining about the Monday article he had written being rendered useless within minutes of completion. He had to rewrite the entire thing after yet another about face. Because everything out of this administration is so divorced from fact that any act or statement can be upended within seconds. This administration routinely makes multiple mutually exclusive claims all in the same breath. This is politics sans real world restrictions and consequences (for them anyway…). This week was particularly rich in contradictory lies. And I think it’s important just to lay it all out as such, so that we have a record and so that we can all see how we are being misled.
On Saturday morning, Trump bleated out an ultimatum, claiming that, unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz in 48 hours, the US would begin bombing Iranian energy infrastructure “beginning with the biggest one first”. I don’t know if anyone actually believed this threat. Iran seems to have shrugged and issued a reply, saying that they would respond to such an attack on civilian infrastructure with their own attacks on energy facilities and desalinization plants in regional countries allied with Israel and the US. At which point the UAE and the Saudis started openly claiming that they were ready to enter this war as US allies. (The UAE is suffering immensely both from a near total economic shutdown and daily drone strikes from Iran. The Sunni Saudis just hate the Shiite Iranians…)
But was this a real threat from Trump? I don’t know. First of all, if the US and/or Iran were to start targeting civilian infrastructure that would be considered a war crime and would be prosecuted as such. I’m quite sure that the rest of the world, particularly our former European allies, would gleefully and aggressively pursue such a case immediately. Not least because it would isolate the Trump administration from the rest of the world and probably lead to Trump’s ouster. (After a good deal of pain for the US people…) Maybe Trump doesn’t know this, and nobody in the administration is man enough to point it out to him. Maybe nobody cares… But they do care about oil prices, and escalating the bombing is not going to do anything to calm the markets. To the contrary, what little is flowing through the Strait of Hormuz would likely stop and the fossil fuel states would be decimated, likely unable to rebuild for many lifetimes, if at all. Going after petro-state infrastructure would lead to global market armageddon and would destroy life as we moderns know it. Even Trump has to be dimly aware of that… Maybe…
But there is little chance of armageddon happening. I believe that Trump’s bleat was just as empty as his head and had no basis in reality whatsoever. The rest of the administration was left picking up the pieces over the weekend — while Trump golfed and partied in Florida — trying to explain the message. None did a convincing job. Which leads me to believe that none were aware that this message would be issued. Further, I don’t think Trump, himself, had any prior intentions. This leads me to believe that the bleat was just a spur of the moment thing done for reasons that we’ll discuss below and not with any examination of what was actually said.
I don’t think he ever planned to follow through on such a threat. And Monday morning he validated that belief.
A few minutes before US markets were due to open on Monday morning, with a crash imminent and oil prices soaring, Trump again took to his own social media platform to bleat out the following:
I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Iran immediately flatly denied being party to any such talks. It is a sad commentary on the state of the world that a duplicitous and violently authoritarian state like Iran is more likely to be telling a closer version of the truth than the President of the US. Iran has since said that they have received the US administration’s ceasefire demands via intermediate countries, possibly Egypt and Pakistan, but that “sending messages through different mediators, does not mean negotiations”. So it seems unlikely that there are any negotiations happening, whatever Trump meant by his Monday outburst.
But I don’t believe that either of his bleats were messages for Iran…
Later on Monday, Trump somewhat revealed his empty hand when confronted with questions about the matter. There were substantial holes in the narrative. He could not confirm that Iran’s negotiator was in any position to negotiate. He claimed that the real estate buffoon Steve Witkoff and and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were involved in the talks, which would be frightening if it weren’t a bald lie, since these two idiots had already burned all bridges with Iran by holding negotiations in bad faith and then bragging about it to the entire world. Trump also claimed that Iran had already agreed to a “15 point” plan, with points 1-3 being “no more nuclear weapons”. Which is also laughable. (Uh… that’s 13 points, Mr Dipshit-in-Chief… and also didn’t you “obliterate” all nuclear capabilities the last time you dealt with Iran?…) And then to reinforce that this was all a complete fantasy flowing from his demented brain, when asked how the Strait of Hormuz would be made safe for transport, Trump declared that he, personally, and “whoever is the new Ayatollah” would have joint control over the Strait.
Let’s be clear, there is no reality in which the Ayatollah would ever deign to talk to Trump, never mind consent to allowing Trump to control Iran’s only bargaining chip in world politics. I’m fairly certain that the Ayatollah’s sanctity proscribes interaction with crass infidels like Trump. More importantly, I’m equally certain that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the organization that actually runs Iran, would have no compunctions against eliminating the Ayatollah if he ever seemed amenable to giving away their source of leverage.
More to the point, it is not clear that Iran could negotiate even if someone of high rank could be found to go against the IRGC. This war is an existential threat to Iran. Both the US and Israel have repeatedly claimed that one of the many shifting goals (though less shifty for Israel) is a complete Balkanization of Iran. Israel, in particular, wants an Iranian state that has been wiped off the geopolitical map. Moreover, the US has proven its bad faith repeatedly. This war began the day after the last round of negotiations had reportedly reached some consensus — even with Kushner and Witkoff involved. Iran left the table on that Friday evening and issued a video stating that agreements were all but settled, only a few technical issues to address on the following Monday. And instead, bombs fell on little Iranian girls the next morning.
The Iranians have one card to play to preserve their statehood — to keep the Strait of Hormuz under their tight control. They have to control — or destroy — the global oil market in order to preserve their statehood. Even if they keep bombing regional American interests until the American people and allies pressure Trump to pull out (another TACO), there’s still Israel to contend with. And Netanyahu does not TACO… The demands that Iran has released as prerequisites to opening the Strait reveal high reluctance to meet their enemies in the middle. They want full reparations. They want guarantees of sovereignty in the form of 100% capitulation from the US and Israel (really not happening in the latter case). They want US military presence removed from the region. And they want to be able to continue charging tolls on the Strait of Hormuz. These are not negotiating points. These are demands designed to drive the US and Israel away from the bargaining table. Iran does not want to negotiate a ceasefire. Iran wants to be the clear military winner. Because really… there does not seem any other option for Iran as Iran…
Which brings up the main sticking point… Israel is not going to stop. They’ve said as much multiple times. In fact, Israel has claimed that their goal of “regime change in Iran” — whatever that means — will likely take a year or more. Iran apparently believes them. But still I heard several commentators saying that, should negotiating a ceasefire be in American interests, then Israel could be pressured into ending their aggressions… How ludicrous is that! When has anyone ever been able to pressure Israel! If that were possible, why are they still in Palestine? Why are they unilaterally destroying Lebanon and moving the border between the two states north, claiming a twenty-mile wide slice of Lebanon for their own? Why are they drawing Syria and Iraq into this conflict? Why have they done nothing to keep the Strait open, not even alerted the ignorant US administration to the high probability of aggression against Iran causing worldwide economic meltdown?
Israel can not be pressured into doing anything except what Israel wants… And, for reasons only clearly understood by them, Israel wants to level the Middle East, to topple everything and leave every state actor in the region in chaos. I’m not sure how they escape the resultant global economic meltdown, but maybe they have a divine out…
In any case, negotiations between the US and Iran are not going to open the Strait of Hormuz. There will be no ceasefire. And, most importantly to Trump, there will be no relief for the markets.
And so that was what all the bleating was about, controlling the markets. Even the five day lull granted on Monday morning is suspiciously tied to the business week. Five days of trading… and then we’ll destroy global energy markets. (The five days could also be the time necessary to move ground troops into the area… All are expected to land sometime today…) On Thursday, Trump seems to have TACOd again, stretching the five days to ten… except he’s also saying that he’s going to “hit harder than ever before”. (Not that he has anything to do with actual hitting of anything…)
This is as flimsy a lie as it is possible to tell. Even from Trump. And yet… idiot investors still believed the posts and acted accordingly … Trump’s early Monday lies worked exactly as planned. The market idiots behaved exactly as the administration wanted them to behave. Oil prices instantly dropped $20/barrel, and the DOW gained 900 points. A crash was yet again averted by Trump’s social media backpedaling on a threat he likely never intended to carry out. So what was the intent? Inasmuch as Trump is capable of intention these days, I would say that the bleats were specifically aimed at manipulating the market. That’s it… And that worked…
But it went even further than manipulating idiot investors. On Monday there were, once again, obvious signs of insider trading reaping some $580,000,000 in short sale profits on oil and stock trading in the billions. Fifteen minutes before Trump’s announcement, huge spikes in oil futures and stock trading activity were seen. Then the bleat went out and the rest of the market became a feeding frenzy. This is at least the second such insider profiteering that has happened based on Trump’s bleating. Moreover, there is evidence that betting markets were manipulated leading into the Iran war. There were bets placed on the US bombing Iran, with highly suspect apparent knowledge of timing. This is something that nobody would have bet on without insider information — and the long odds on these black swan bets sure paid off…
This is such an obvious ploy, I’ve been wondering all along if this is not the exact reason Trump us into this war. Another Trumpian enrichment scheme. Because who is benefitting otherwise? At a minimum, someone very close to Trump has access to knowledge of what he is going to do before he does it, along with the financial ability to make very large bets and trades with precision timing. But because Trump is so erratic — often leaving senior administration officials gaping like dying fish, trying futilely to explain what just happened — it would appear that the number of people who can predict Trump’s actions are rather limited… Perhaps just one person?
Well… maybe…
Because all this erratic lying may have other causes than Trump’s grift. You see, it is hard to ascribe volition to Trump at this point, never mind believing that he is capable of masterminding a market manipulation plot. He is obviously demented. He hardly seems to know what is going on in his immediate vicinity. He seems to be able to fall asleep standing up and can’t stay awake when seated even long enough to take a press question. He can’t hold a thought or speak a complete sentence. He must read a teleprompter for even the most basic parts of speech, and his impromptu press briefings as he is walking to the plane are just laughable… or they would be if this was not the person in charge of my country, the person prosecuting wars and aggression on many fronts, the person who is actively trying to turn himself into an authoritarian tyrant — so that he can avoid prosecution for the many crimes he has committed both in and out of office… When asked who had the idea to put ICE into airports, Trump first said “Me, mine, it was my idea” before launching into a non sequitur about paperclips — because that’s his usual campaign talking point on innovation. (For the record, the ICE idea actually came from an Arizona woman who called into some right wing talk show…)
You can find more coherence in an Alzheimer’s care facility than in anything Trump says.
Further, and more disturbingly, it appears that, for Trump, none of this is real. This is all pretext, a television show, another round of Trump reality tv. Revealingly, Trump has repeatedly asked reporters what they thought “of the show”, if they “liked the show”, referring to the horrifying bombing of Iran and the bombastic bravado from the White House. This is all an act for him. I would not be surprised to learn that he has no idea what is happening. In fact, rumor has it that all presidential briefings are in the form of two-minute montages of Iranian things blowing up with no footage of anything that can possibly be construed as a loss to US interests and very little narrative explanation.
The point is that Trump can’t hold onto a point. He is also getting minimal information on the war in his two-minute video briefings. And he’s never been capable of acting with consideration. So one must wonder whether he is, in fact, making the decisions. We must certainly be asking who is loading the teleprompters… But regardless of whether Trump is driving himself on the domestic front or being directed by some grey eminence like Steve Bannon or Steve Miller — or even acting as directed by someone who has compromising data allowing them to blackmail the Trumpies (hello, Putin…) — Trump is not in control of the international community.
He has alienated all American allies. Even Canada is preparing for possible aggression from the US. Is not that too ridiculous to even think about! How do you piss off Canadians! (See 51st State…) Trump never has had influence on Russia or China. Indeed, it is rather darkly the opposite in the case of Russia. Russia has managed to convince Trump to release sanctions on Russian oil and look the other way as Russia sells weaponry and information to Iran, helping Iran fight back against the US. (That has to be treason somehow…) Of course, China refuses to be drawn into any American mess. Full stop… Trump also has no bargaining power in the Middle East now that expensive gifts and American bases in the region have proven utterly useless guarantees of security. In fact, exhibiting close ties to the US has proven a distinct liability in this war. At this point, Trump’s word means nothing. He is a laughingstock. (Iran openly mocks him daily.) He has repeatedly proven that he has no integrity or moral character. Nobody beyond the odd right-wingnut and market investor believes a single thing he says. This is not a person who can represent this country to the world, who can lead negotiations to get us out of a war he started.
(Or maybe he does accurately represent the US… and we don’t want to admit that this is who we are…)
In any case, back to the bleating… What did Trump mean? Is Trump escalating? Probably not, but who knows. Is this a roundabout ploy to get us out of war? Not likely… (I wonder why the military followed commands to get into it… Just show the ignoramus some videos and claim that we won…) And does anyone believe it? Apparently, only the market… but even they have to be questioning the wisdom of TACO at this point…
This is where we end up in a fact-free world. There is barely a way to comprehend what is actually happening out there. The meaning behind those actions is so convoluted and contradictory as to become irrelevant.
Take the narrative of the ten tanks Iran is letting through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump apparently found out about that and called it a gift to the US, an Iranian good-faith offering. It was nothing of the kind. The Iranians had already allowed the ships of non-aggressors through the Strait — provided they paid a steep toll to Iran, that is. This has been Iran’s stance for well over a week. But Trump announced that Iran “gave us a gift, a very valuable prize” (insinuating that it was to Trump, personally). Except that Iran’s short-list of non-aggressors is composed exclusively of those unallied with the US. Some relief might flow to Asia and Africa. Maybe France has convinced Iran of its sincerity with their two million in bribes (uh… tolls…) in whatever currency Iran will accept. (Probably not dollars.) This oil is not going to the US, and so it is not likely to alleviate market stress. Certainly not in the US, but probably not in the global markets since the US factors so heavily into market demand. In any case, this is not a gift… it is Iranian grift. (Or maybe they have a right to toll the Strait? )
So what do we believe? It feels like we are treading dangerously close to believing whatever we think. Because fact, where it exists, is just too difficult to tease out. This is perhaps the most damaging aspect of a Supreme Misleader. We have become the misled… We don’t know what is real… And if we can’t determine reality, we really can’t do anything…
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 