The TACO Tuesday Two-Step

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Trump told Iran it must open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. last Tuesday or face the consequences. That a “whole civilization will die tonight… Every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again.” This while sitting on his fat ass safe in the White House Situation Room. 

Playing at tinpot general while brushing off the pertinent question if such strikes violate the Geneva Conventions

What if the president had had to face death and destruction on the front line, with drones dropping bombs on Mar-a-Lago?

Indeed, much of the rest of the world has now turned on him. Which they should have done sooner.

Trump’s TACO Tuesday two-step bought the world a two-week delay from Armageddon. And put the American taxpayer on the hook for two more weeks of billion-dollar-a-day war profiteering as Trump’s troops continue to mark time in the Middle East.

Whether this is a continuation of cut-throat wheeling-and-dealing to deflect attention from the spiraling costs of goods due to the Trump tariffs, the Epstein scandal, and murderous rampages by ICE, it’s extremely doubtful the president has ever held a winning hand in Iran with even the MAGA maggots dismayed and energy prices poised to go through the roof as a direct result of these never-ending wars.

Iran’s list of demands to end the illegal American destruction of their country are acceptable as starting points if only that it is their country and not a vassal state of some vast Trumpian hegemony.

As Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry wrote: “This is not merely another war crime committed as part of an illegal war; it is a barbaric assault on basic human core values... [it’s h]eartbreaking, cruel, despicable, and utterly outrageous.”

Two days following Secretary of State Marco Rubio blithely advising the new Ayatollah’s government to spend its public funds “helping the people of Iran” instead of on weapons, King Trump pontificated that his government has “to take care of only one thing: military protection” so is unable to provide people in the United States with necessities like healthcare and childcare.

War cheerleader Senator Lindsey Graham reveled in the president’s social media posts, while anti-war activists, journalists, and legal experts called Trump out for flaunting his own war crimes, celebrating civilian atrocities banned under the Geneva Convention for generations. 

The United States and Israel have already bombed tens of thousands of schools, homes, bridges, energy installations, courthouses, World Heritage sites, and medical facilities, including the centuries-old Pasteur Institute of Iran that has played a key role in combating and preventing infectious diseases in the country... as well as and murdering thousands of civilians.

Despite this overwhelming destruction, Iran’s nuclear program remains viable, it’s still the lynchpin for Hezbollah, and it looks less and less likely that the country is moving towards democracy... while the United States continues to drift closer to a religious autocracy.

While Israel may have accepted the two-week pause on Iran, Netanyahu has seized this as an opportunity to move forward full-bore on Israel’s illegal invasion of Lebanon. With American weaponry. With the ass-licking White House backing Netanyahu’s deliberate and murderous attack on its northern neighbor.

Which Pakistan says is a direct violation of the oh-so-tenuous ceasefire agreement it brokered. Did Trump deliberately shoot himself in the ass just to continues his irresponsible decimation of a country, of a civilization?

Iran’s more measured response was to not open the Strait of Hormuz; future openings before the war is finally over are likely to be limited by insurance company concerns about how permanent any future ceasefire might be.

Given our administration also appears to be hiding the number of American dead and wounded and attacks on U.S. bases from the public and the media in order to improve Republican re-electability in the mid-terms, how assiduously will Trump act to rein in the original instigator, Netanyahu, without risking being tarred by the crazy Israeli as anti-Semitic?

The author of the Art of the Deal needs to grasp that unlike in business, where combatants can return to Park Avenue penthouses to lick their financial wounds at close of day, Iranians will fight tooth and nail to protect their homes and families putting American troops at risk and sucking the U.S. Treasury dry.

Add in what has already happened here at home and Trump is destroying Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs from the bottom up. 

The right to clean air and water.

The right to food and shelter.

The right to feel safe in a stable environment.

The right to community and romantic relationships of one’s choice.

The right to feel confident and appreciated.

The right to vote and determine one’s own future. 

Attacks on open elections, murdering of innocent Americans for using free speech, hiding behind an ICE army and MAGA malcontents.

Using the heavy-handed hammer of assumed hegemonic power to arbitrarily break international deals and making our nation less safe, less valued, more a pariah, and more disrespected.

Breaking promises to the voters left and right with costs for food and fuel spiraling and services being decimated 

No longer the art of the deal, it’s the art of the steal as Trump and his friends continue to cash in at taxpayer expense.