Trump’s War Cabinet: Unqualified, Unhinged And Unchecked— When Authoritarians Flail, They Bomb

Slouching Toward Tehran? He Dropped Bombs... Will Voters Drop the Hammer?

"Sixth Extinction" by Nancy Ohanian

At least in part, Trump was seeking to salvage his failed presidency when he bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities Saturday. His second term is already collapsing under the weight of increasingly unpopular policies. His hard‑right, Project 2025 agenda— mandating mass deportations, weaponizing federal forces in U.S. cities, rewarding billionaire donors with more  tax breaks, shredding climate protections and packing the Pentagon with ideological loyalists (not to-mention the jaw-dropping personal corruption)— is deeply toxic outside the right-wing Fox bubble. Public polling shows overwhelming opposition to the GOP’s federal abortion ban, their book bans and Christian nationalist indoctrination in schools, the Republican rush to defund Medicaid and chip away at Social Security and Medicare, while handing out pardons and immunity to violent domestic terrorists and corrupt insiders. And beyond policy, his authoritarian crusade— attacking the Justice Department, defaming federal judges and embracing political violence— has driven independents and suburban swing voters into the arms of still basically somnolent Democrats. It's not just rhetoric: 2024 saw statewide abortion ballot measures pass— including in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Missouri, Nevada, and Ohio— despite fierce conservative campaigns. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates have been consistently over-performing in red and purple district special elections since Trump slithered back into the Oval Office. At this pace, the midterms are on pace to be more of a rebuke than a contest. Blue wave? How about blue tsunami?

But that isn’t the way the media chose to cover the sneak attack. You’d never guess Trump’s desperation from the fawning press coverage. Rather than calling out an unhinged act of escalation by a flailing authoritarian, much of the media is treating the bombing like a moment of high-stakes statecraft— less “wag the dog,” more “stroke the ego.” 

Jeff Bezo’s Washington Post went so far as to emphasize what a “tremendous risk” he took, as though brinksmanship with a nuclear-aspiring power is now a valid campaign strategy. Instead of contextualizing it as a desperate and wildly unpopular political stunt by a collapsing regime, much of the press breathlessly praised the “boldness” of the move— portraying Trump, and clowns like Hegseth, Rubio and Vance, not as arsonists, but as some kind of legitimate master tacticians, making “an extraordinary bet that he could eliminate a nuclear program that has bedeviled multiple presidents while avoiding another long-running Middle East conflict of the sort he and his supporters have long denounced. What happens next will have profound consequences for his presidency. If Iran is sufficiently weakened that it cannot meaningfully retaliate, Trump will have delivered a blow against a longtime adversary that will send a message to China, Russia and other global rivals that he will not shy from using military power when necessary.”

With his incredibly unpopular big ugly bill floundering in Congress, even as level-headed an observer as Tom Nichols is writing more about Trump taking risks than Trump fumbling foreign policy. Trump’s isolationist allies, led by Vance, “will want to see it as a quick win against an obstinate regime that will eventually declare bygones and come to the table. But whether bombing Iran was a good idea or a bad idea— and it could turn out to be either, or both— it is war by any definition of the term, and something Trump had vowed he would avoid.” 

On Saturday night, he noted that Trump’s statement (aimed primarily towards his MAGA base) “was a farrago of contradictions: He said, for example, that the main Iranian nuclear sites were ‘completely and totally obliterated’— but it will take time to assess the damage, and he has no way of knowing this. He claimed that the Iranian program has been destroyed— but added that there are still ‘many targets’ left. He said that Iran could suffer even more in the coming days— but the White House has reportedly assured Iran through back channels that these strikes were, basically, a one-and-done, and that no further U.S. action is forthcoming… Only one outcome is certain: Hypocrisy in the region and around the world will reach galactic levels as nations wring their hands and silently pray that the B-2s carrying the bunker-buster bombs did their job… The very worst outcome is the polar opposite of the optimistic case. In this bleak alternative, the Air Force either didn’t find, or couldn’t destroy, all of the key parts of the Iranian program; the Iranians then try to sprint across the finish line to a bomb. In the meantime, Tehran lashes out against U.S. targets in the region and closes the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian opposition fades in importance as angry Iranian citizens take their government’s part. One dangerous possibility in this pessimistic scenario is that the Iranians do real damage to American assets or kill a number of U.S. servicepeople, and Trump, confused and enraged, tries to widen his war against a country more than twice the size of Iraq.”

[P]lenty of wild cards are in the deck.

First, as strategists and military planners always warn, the “enemy gets a vote.” The Iranians may respond in ways the U.S. does not expect. The classic war-gaming mistake is to assume that your opponent will respond in ways that fit nicely with your own plans and capabilities. But the Iranians have had a long time to think about this eventuality; they may have schemes ready that the U.S. has not foreseen. (Why not spread around radiological debris, for example, and then blame the Americans for a near-disaster?) Trump has issued a warning to Iran not to react, but what might count as “reacting”?

Second, we cannot know the subsequent effects of an American attack. For now, other Middle Eastern regimes may be relieved to see Iran’s nuclear clock turned back. But if the Iranian regime survives and continues even a limited nuclear program, those same nations may sour on what they will see as an unsuccessful plan hatched in Jerusalem and carried out by Washington.

Diplomacy elsewhere will likely suffer. The Russians have been pounding Ukraine with even greater viciousness than usual all week and now may wave away the last of Trump’s feckless attempts to end the war. Other nations might see American planes flying over Iran and think that the North Koreans had the right idea all along: assemble a few crude nuclear weapons as fast as you can to deter further attempts to end your regime.

… If Trump continues action against Iran, he will need excellent intelligence and tight organization at the Pentagon.

And this is where the American strikes were really a gamble: They were undertaken by a White House national-security team staffed by unqualified appointees, some of whom— including the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense himself— Trump has reportedly frozen out of his inner circle. (Given that those positions are held by Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, respectively, it is both terrifying and a relief to know that they may have little real influence.) The American defense and intelligence communities are excellent, but they can function for only so long without competent leadership.

Trump has had preternatural luck as president: He has survived scandals, major policy failures, and even impeachment, events that would have ended other administrations.The American planes dropped their payloads and returned home safely. So he might skate past this war, even if it will be hard to explain to the MAGA faithful who believed him, as they always do, when he told them that he was the peace candidate. But perhaps the biggest and most unpredictable gamble Trump took in bombing Iran was sending American forces into harm’s way in the Middle East with a team that was never supposed to be in charge of an actual war.

Trump promised “no more endless wars.” Instead, he’s launched one with no plan, no strategy, no allies— other than an even more desperate Netanyahu— and no grown-ups in the room… just a delusional would-be strongman using American lives to prop up his collapsing regime. If there’s a lesson from history, it’s this: when authoritarian leaders falter, they reach for war. And when institutions and media fail to check them, they tend to get it. He was supposed to be the peace president, remember? The one who would drain the swamp, end forever wars, and put America first. Instead, we’ve got a barely functional regime run by cable news personalities and grifters, dragging us back into a Middle East conflict that’s already spiraling beyond control. Maybe next week, he’ll bomb Venezuela. Or California. This is the price of letting a criminal back into power: endless instability, constant crisis and chaos.

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