There isn’t much to hand George W. Bush, but he did peg Trumpism better and earlier than most of the Beltway when his immediate response to Trump ’s first inaugural speech was allegedly, “That was some weird shit.” Last night, we got the horrifying shit. The nicest thing you could say about Trump’s address on the Iran War is that it was completely insane. It was also the speech where Donald Trump truly became president forever. Just as one can look at a mime and think “France,” anyone outside these borders can look at Trump and see an America that began as a dream and ended as a dullard.
Unless you’re betting big against the economy on Polymarket, there’s no margin to watching Trump’s live speeches. Their delivery is always the same: a blend of Truth Social posts he’s already written and lines he has never seen before. But this one — about war, blood and victory — merited special attention, because it allowed us to watch Trump assume his final form as universal shorthand for the worst of his people.
The speech was at turns hysterically, unwittingly funny and simply horrific. He couldn’t pronounce the name “Qassim Suleimani” even as he bragged about killing him, as if he (very likely) hadn’t seen it in five years and had (very likely) stopped caring about it four years and 364 days ago. Still, he couldn’t help himself. He immediately ad-libbed lies about the threat Suleimani posed to make the boast he’d just flubbed even bigger. He was clearly overmatched by the material’s requirements of normal human speech patterns and the English language.
Trump cloaked himself in the solemnity of grave purpose — the killing of other people — only to give us the crushing banality of “Operation Epic Fury” coupled with the self-congratulation of making it a speed run so far. As his gooning cabinet would have it, this is our highest self-conception: atrocity dubbed with ancient internet-baiting reference, like renaming our mission in Afghanistan “Operation FTW, Good Sir” in 2008. Mirthless satisfaction seemed to creep over his face when he said of the former leadership of Iran, “They’re all dead.” He pointed his finger at the prospect of “the most violent and thuggish regime on Earth…free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield” without realizing he was talking into a mirror. To anyone beyond our borders, Donald Trump will be president until we show that he is not. It was at once perfectly himself and perfectly the America that we have force-projected onto the world: the munificent, flailing protector that has arrogated to itself the right to inflict righteous vengeance on any and all, on any and all grounds. You could hear echoes of the country that hasn’t won a major fight in 81 years in every invocation of “swift, decisive, overwhelming victories,” nuclear sites “totally obliterated,” a navy and air force that are “gone” and missiles that are “just about used up or beaten.” Which is why we just need a few more weeks, maybe months, to get the already-done job done.
The guy who vowed not to get into stupid wars like Iraq — where he would have taken the oil — explained that in this stupid war, we’ll skip the oil part, because we don’t need it anyway. (We can sell our supply to our allies, which won’t raise prices.) The war that’s already over will be over soon, which is why we need no help, even though it’s the responsibility of our erstwhile allies to open the Strait of Hormuz. “They must cherish it,” he said of the strait. “They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily.” When they do, when the conflict is over, “the strait will open up naturally. It will just open up naturally.” It’ll be like telling Georgia O’Keeffe to paint OPEC. He once again cited a phantom $18 trillion investment as proof of the strongest economy and “hottest country” in history (file not found), which is “going through it right now” despite never being better prepared to go through it. People are also getting huge imaginary tax returns. The final result of all this may have been the cementing of a new symbol of America as a country and an idea — one more enduring than the meanest caricature of Uncle Sam. Synonymizing an entire people with one character isn’t fair, of course, but everyone knows the mime is French. Only 40 of England’s 59 million people dress up like Beefeaters, but “that’s England.” For more than 80 years now, we’ve been able to guess “Germany” at charades by putting two fingers above our lip and making a stiff salute with our right arm. (Like Elon Musk , but whatever.) Last night, Trump’s fat face, puckering mouth, dainty hands and tiptoeing li’l boy voice and phlegmy growl became our new global cartoon. That’s all we get: The ass-ignorant jackass who proclaims his genius and whose brain is being eaten by worms. The bully who can’t stop whining about how afraid and mistreated he is. The punisher who demands his victims’ gratitude. The guy who gloats “SCOREBOARD!” in the first quarter and tries to leave at the end of the third, down three touchdowns. The guy wrapping the flag of liberty around the billy club so the crack isn’t as loud when it hits bone. The popular guy with no friends. The dealmaker with no leverage. The business genius shooting holes in both his pockets, pointing at the coins falling to the ground and telling you it’s raining money.
This is us, until we say it isn’t. To anyone beyond our borders, Donald Trump will be president until we show that he is not. It only takes a handful of members of Congress. We can start and finish in a day. We should. It will take a long time — possibly 80 years or more — before anyone actually believes it.
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