We seem to be in one of those very MAGA interludes in which members of Donald Trump’s base are not so much rebelling as in a process of mourning. They are struggling to find a path to discovering that up turns out to be down, or that the things that they have always professed to care about do not matter because Trump has announced they do not matter. Lindsey Graham seems to be maybe 3/4s through the process. Ted Cruz is working on it. But some of his supporters, especially a number of those who aren’t in elective politics are having a harder time, at least for now. The dynamic, the level of shock is very straightforward. Most of MAGAworld has gone along with the premise that the war in Iran, or Trump’s management of it, has actually been going great all along. Trump is underestimated, the Lamestream media, etcetera. Wait to see the final deal. Trump won’t let Iran get away with anything.
A lot of these folks are now coming into contact with the reality of the situation, from zero to 60 in two or three seconds. It’s pretty jarring. The deal as structured, from what I can tell at least, contains more or less exactly the details that Iranian state media has been reporting for weeks and which the White House claimed was IRGC propaganda. Maybe the U.S. isn’t contributing to the $300 billion Iran rebuilding fund. But it’s overseeing and guaranteeing its creation. So it’s a fairly minor distinction. There are also some odd signals from within the White House that they might pull the plug on the whole thing. For instance, JD Vance agreed with Megyn Kelly that the deal could be scrapped if Trump’s supporters had an “utter meltdown.” Trump has hinted that he might scrap the deal too but has mainly focused on attacking those who are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, perhaps not even an agreement.
The DOJ is attempting to strip a Somalia-born Minneapolis man of his citizenship, citing actions he took after he became a citizen. To do so, it’s relying solely on a McCarthy-era law. Its a first, experts told Josh Kovensky.
TPM is the first outlet to note the DOJ’s novel use of the 1952 law, alone, for this purpose — to denaturalize someone who had already become a citizen. Read our story here.
The TPM Show will not be recording this week. We could say it’s because we’re riding high on the Knicks win, but really, we just had some scheduling issues. We’ll see you guys next week with a brand new episode!
News just moved today that federal prosecutors in Minneapolis have brought conspiracy charges against 15 Minneapolis demonstrators whom the government has identified as being members of “Antifa.” (I don’t know when or if “Metro Surge” officially ended. But apparently most of the incidents are more recent than the period this winter when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed.) Our team is currently reviewing the indictment; check out Kate Riga’s latest for more details about the case. But I checked in with staff and our initial sense is that it is likely yet another case of overcharging, perhaps comparable to what happened in Broadview. It contains the same legal theory in which a protest amounts to a conspiracy in which every member of the protest is legally responsible for anything any other protestor does. It’s a dagger at the heart of the 1st Amendment.
There’s no question that Trump’s Iran War has been a disaster for the United States. There’s no way around that. The U.S. can absorb the cash costs of the conflict without too much difficulty. But along with everything else Trump has done over the last 18 months, it has given the U.S. the reputation of what amounts to a rogue state. Rebuilding trust in U.S. actions and intentions at best will be a very long process. The conflict has also redounded massively to the benefit of China, the only real peer competitor to the U.S. on the global stage.
But I wanted to point out two impacts of the war which are some versions of positives even if they are secondary effects of a disastrous adventure that never should have happened.
We are still, bizarrely, having to make sense of the Iran-U.S. “deal” on the basis of two or three different texts which are circulating on an unofficial basis. Meanwhile, the U.S., at least, refuses to release the text of the so-called “memorandum of understanding.” The Iranians are being somewhat more forthcoming, at least through their quasi-official state news agencies. But President Trump being a pathological liar shouldn’t obscure the fact that the Iranian regime is rather less than a reliable narrator. There’s surprisingly little public discussion in the United States about what conceivable good rationale there is for keeping the agreement secret while the White House is at least nominally trying to build public support for it. How can you know whether the deal is a good deal if you don’t know what the deal is? This is not a rhetorical question.
