The Great Unraveling: An Update
(Part 3)
4) The Wrath of The Holy Manchild: Destroyer of Civilizations.
So that brings us back to Easter Sunday, April 5, and the presidential tweet that started this shitstorm. The one in which Trump used a naughty word and threatened Iran by saying, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one. . . . You’ll be living in hell.” During Trump’s tenure at the White House, Americans have had to endure a never-ending procession of new lows and appalling, historic firsts. Even so, this one stands out. Never before has a president openly said he was going to commit war crimes by attacking civilian infrastructure unrelated to military objectives, or that he intended to destroy an entire civilization as a form of punishment.
On Monday, April 6, Trump held a news conference at which he elaborated on his tweet.
“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by twelve o’clock tomorrow night. Where every power plant in Iran will be out of business. Burning, exploding, never to be used again. I mean complete demolition, by twelve o’clock. And it will happen over a period of four hours, if we want it to.”
When Tuesday morning rolled around, he issued his most dramatic threat yet, while emphasizing that none of this was bringing him any joy.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”
Aren’t we lucky to be alive during these exciting, historic times? Be sure to tune in tonight, and find out whether an entire civilization has been annihilated! The only job Trump has ever been close to competent at was being a reality television actor who pretended he was a successful businessman. By design, his presidency is a never-ending series of cliffhanger episodes.
One would hope that in the MAGAverse, there might be a few people who identify as religious and are appalled by this kind of language. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” The just war tradition in Christianity allows that war is sometimes permissible and unavoidable, but still, there are limits. War can only be fought to address a serious wrong, such as self-defense against aggression. You cannot intentionally target civilians, or even attack legitimate military targets if doing so will cause excessive harm to civilians.
But don’t forget! Trump is not only president, but also The Holy Manchild – a deity who has a unique relationship with Jesus that wavers between BFF and alter ego. During the Monday press conference, a reporter shouted out: “You’ve said ‘glory be to God’ in this conflict. Do you believe that God supports the United States’ actions in this war?” Trump’s response:
“I do, because God is good. Because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of. God doesn’t like what’s happening. I don’t like what’s happening.”
God supports America’s killing spree. Trump supports it. But really, is there a difference? During an interview in January with The New York Times, a reporter asked Trump, “Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop (you from doing the most reprehensible things imaginable) if you wanted to?” Trump replied:
“Yeah, there’s one thing: My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. And that’s very good. I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.”
I trust many readers will agree: this is so maddening it’s enough to make an atheist throw up his arms and cry out, “Lord help us!” Readers in Brazil must be amazed that it is possible for a president in the U.S. to get away with acting like such a madman. To openly display such homicidal hysteria without fear of being removed from office. Unfortunately, it is indeed possible; the unravelling and collapse of the U.S. has progressed this far.
Among the many hundreds of Republicans who occupy high, elected state and federal positions across the nation, only two or three have been brave enough to express any qualms about Trump’s unhinged behavior. Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska (perhaps the only moderate Republican still left in The U.S. Senate) tweeted, “This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold and promote around the world for nearly 250 years. It undermines our long-standing role as a global beacon of freedom and directly endangers Americans both abroad and at home.” Overwhelmingly, though, there has been complete silence within the Republican Party. Not a single leader has dared suggest Trump’s behavior might indicate he is mentally unfit to hold office.
So Why Did This Happen?
The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, called the farce out right away. Speaking in April to a group of high school students, he said:
“The Americans clearly have no strategy, and the problem with conflicts like this is always that you don’t just have to go in; you also have to get out again. We saw that all too painfully in Afghanistan, for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq. So this whole affair is, as I said, ill-considered, to say the least. At the moment, I cannot see what strategic exit the Americans are now opting for, especially as the Iranians are obviously negotiating very skilfully – or, rather, very skilfully not negotiating and letting the Americans travel to Islamabad only to leave again without any results. An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian state leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.”
This is the crazy world we live in. The vile, despotic, theocratic regime of Iran now deserves to be congratulated for defeating the United States (a superpower!) and its illegal, unprovoked war of aggression. Just like the rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, for Americans the 2026 Iran War is now a humiliating and embarrassing stain on our nation’s history. Above all, the war has been, and continues to be, such a useless waste of lives, blood and treasure. As of this writing, Iran’s Ministry of Health says we and our Israeli friends have killed 3,468 Iranians, and injured more than 26,500 others.
And remind me again, why did this have to happen? Granted, Trump has always been an idiot, and he is more addled than ever due to old age, mental disability, and poor health. He is surrounded by a staff and Cabinet made up of venal, corrupt, unqualified sycophants. And his infantile needs and motivations are so transparent that he is effectively a puppet on strings to manipulators like Putin and Netanyahu. But still . . .
In 2016 during the Republican presidential debates, Trump said “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. . . We should have never been in Iraq. We destabilized the Middle East.” In a speech that same year, before his first term as president, he declared “We’re getting out of the nation building business.”
Based on reporting in the Times by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Vice President JD Vance told Trump, during meetings at the White House in February, that he was opposed to starting a war with Iran. Vance warned such a war could cause regional chaos and untold numbers of casualties. And also, that it would be a betrayal of the MAGA faithful by violating Trump’s pledge to stop getting the U.S. militarily entangled in the Middle East. The director of the C.I.A. informed Trump that his proposed war would not trigger regime change in Iran, and that Netanyahu’s claims to the contrary were “farcical.” (According to the Times, at this point Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepped in to translate, telling Trump, “In other words, it’s bullshit.”) As for Rubio, he also thought the war was a bad idea, but the pathetic wimp didn’t try to talk Trump out of it.
For me, the biggest surprise was learning that Tucker Carlson had repeatedly and insistently urged Trump not to attack Iran, and that he did so during one-on-one meetings at the White House. He told Trump such a war would “destroy his presidency.” For readers in Brazil who may not be familiar with this infamous, far-right provocateur, let’s take a moment to describe who Carlson is. And why it is so striking that Trump disregarded his advice.
Tucker Carlson has long been one of Trump’s most important media allies and defenders of MAGA. During a seven year period, from 2016 to 2023, his television show Tucker Carlson Tonight became Fox News’ prime time anchor show. It aired at 8pm every weeknight, Monday through Friday. In 2020, the show drew an average 4.33 million viewers, making it the highest rated program in cable-news history. Fox was paying Carlson an annual salary in the range of $15 to $20 million dollars.
Carlson began supporting Trump at the beginning of 2016 – before he had even won the Republican nomination that led to the presidency. During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, Carlson campaigned with him in many cities and spoke to thousands of his followers at rallies. He was also a featured speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Over the years, he has consistently vouched for Trump’s lies, and helped spread them far and wide – including the lie that Trump won the 2020 presidential election; the lie that federal FBI agents organized and provoked the deadly January 6 insurrection riots on Capitol Hill; and the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which maintains that political and Jewish “elites” are using immigration to replace native-born, White Americans with Black and brown Democrats. (A racist lie, by the way, that has inspired many of the mass shootings our country is so famous for.)
(FYI, at least one happy outcome did arise from all this shit. As a result of colluding with Trump and his election fraud lies, Carlson lost his lucrative job and prominent platform. He and other Fox News personalities had repeatedly aired farfetched, laughable “news stories” about how a manufacturer of voting machines had rigged the machines to favor Joe Biden. The company, Dominion Voting Systems, sued Fox for defamation. Three years ago, in 2023, they unearthed emails and other internal communications that proved everyone at Fox News knew the allegations they were broadcasting were total bullshit. Rupert Murdoch and his company were found guilty and had to pay Dominion a whopping $787.5 million settlement. Carlson was yanked off the air immediately after the verdict.)
So why did Trump do it? When I saw his tweet about destroying civilizations, it made me think about a true story I read way back in high school that was so scary I never forgot it. It was in the History of the Peloponnesian War, a book written by the Athenian historian, Thucydides. I remembered there was a classic quote associated with the story, so I looked it up:
“. . . since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Thucydides’ book is about the war between Athens and Sparta, which began in 431 BC, and the quote comes from what is known as the “Melian Dialogue.” The Melians lived on the island of Melos, which was an independent Greek city-state. An Athenian delegation visited the island and delivered an ultimatum (and thus the quote): submit to our power, pay tribute to Athens, and survive as subjects of our empire. Or refuse and be slaughtered. The Melians protested that it was their natural right to live in freedom, and that they wished to remain neutral in the war against Sparta. They told the delegation they had no choice but to decline the ultimatum; they were a righteous people fighting injustice, and would have to trust that the gods grant them good fortune. So Athens laid siege to Melos, and after several months the Melians were forced to surrender. The Athenians killed every single adult male on Melos, and enslaved the women and children.
So maybe the big difference between Trump’s first and second terms in office is that he has decided to base the nation’s foreign policy on this ur-realist philosophy of might makes right. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Fuck freedom, fuck democracy, and fuck NATO! Russia can have Ukraine, China can have Taiwan, and the U.S. can do whatever it wants.
You may especially think Trump has adopted this philosophy if you have had the misfortune to get to know Stephen Miller. As a reminder, Miller is the senior policy advisor from Trump’s first term who has seemingly returned from Hell to play a leading role in the administration. He is the sick, sadistic bastard who helped devise and champion Trump’s immigration policies – including, most notoriously, the family separation policies.
This January, Miller was taking a victory lap around the mediascape to gloat about the Trump administration’s successful and lethal military operation to kidnap the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. During a memorable interview/shouting match on CNN with the correspondent Jake Tapper, Miller mocked Tapper for being so naive.
“Jake, we live in a world in which – you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else – but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength. That is governed by force. That is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time. . . . The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump we’re going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.”
Well, as regards the notion that Trump has adopted a new world view, I must respectfully disagree. I mean, get real! We’re talking about Trump here, not Henry Kissinger. This idiot is functionally illiterate. He is mentally incapable of comprehending a philosophical construct, much less using one to make strategic foreign policy decisions.
No, there’s a simpler reason why the war against Iran happened: the United States elected, and then re-elected, a rapist and sociopath to be its president. Trump does what he wants to do, and takes what he knows he is entitled to take. He does so instinctively, and with little to no thought about the consequences. The only difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is that now there are no longer any adults in the room. Every single person in his orbit is willing to cheerfully and continually kiss his ass.
Oh yeah, and one other thing. Thanks to America’s corrupt, politicized Supreme Court, Trump now enjoys sweeping immunity! He can commit whatever crimes he wants to commit so long as he does so while carrying out the “official duties” of his office.
Trump’s Driving Motivation and Shortcoming
The one thing Trump has most desired throughout his adult life, beyond financial wealth, is sexual power and domination over young, attractive women. It is essential to his ego and self-image that he be regarded and envied by men as one of the greatest philanderers of all time. A carnal conqueror. And what about the woman (or girl) in question, and what she wants? Well, that is irrelevant. As Trump says (and is on tape saying), he likes to “grab them by the pussy.” He will go down in history as the first, and hopefully only American president to ever win the White House despite being a convicted rapist.
Last December, The New York Times published the results of an investigation into Donald Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein that has not received the publicity and attention it deserves. For obvious reasons, the White House has been strenuously trying to downplay the significance of the relationship between these two men. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said Trump “kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club at Mar-a-Lago,” and “cut off his relationship” with him, because he was “a creep.” Why was Epstein a creep? Certainly not because he was a pedophile who raped children. The evidence that Trump knew about Epstein’s criminal pedophilia, and couldn’t have cared less, is clear and indisputable.
No, Epstein was a creep because he “stole” (hired) Virginia Giuffre away from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where she was employed at the age of 16 as a locker room attendant. (Giuffre has become the most widely known of Epstein’s victims due to her bravery in going public, as well as the financial settlement she received from former Prince Andrew of the British Royal Family. She died by suicide in 2025, and her posthumously published memoir, Nobody’s Girl, has been a bestseller in the U.S.)
In the course of its research, the Times interviewed more than 30 of Epstein’s former employees, abuse victims, and other people who knew the two men. Trump and Epstein’s friendship began in the late 1980s, lasted throughout the 1990s, and ended abruptly in 2004, when they had a falling out over a real estate deal. The bond and camaraderie between the two men was so strong that everyone who knew them assumed they were each other’s closest friend. They regularly socialized together at their homes and offices in Manhattan; their homes in Palm Beach, Florida; and at Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City.
According to Epstein’s assistants, during the mid to late 1990s he would speak by phone with Trump at least three times per week. Often, Epstein would put Trump on speaker phone because he enjoyed seeing his female assistants become discomfited by hearing Trump boast about his sexual exploits. In 2017, two years before he committed suicide in a Manhattan jail cell, Epstein told the writer Michael Wolff (in a recorded conversation you can find on YouTube), “I was Donald’s closest friend for ten years.”
The Times found that Trump and Epstein’s relationship centered around the pursuit and sexual conquest of women in a game of ego and dominance. When they were together, this was virtually the only topic of conversation. As the Sports Illustrated magazine swimsuit model, Stacey Williams, told the newspaper, “I just think it was trophy hunting.” According to Ms. Williams, in 1993 Trump openly groped her breasts and buttocks at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein watched. During the 1990s, both men entered into extensive financial dealings with modeling agencies, beauty pageants, and Victoria’s Secret in order to create a steady supply chain of girls and young women, including victims who were flown to the U.S. from Europe and South America.
Judging by the women Trump has married, as well as the women with whom he has cheated on each of his three wives, he does not seem to be a pedophile. (However, this is not to say that the president never had sex during the decade of the 90s with his friend’s 16 and 17-year-old victims.) In 1989, state gambling officials observed Trump and Epstein at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, after midnight, accompanied by three women under the age of 21 – the minimum age to legally be inside a casino in New Jersey. The manager of Trump Plaza, Jack O’Donnell, called his boss the following day to warn him that he was in danger of losing his casino operating license. Trump told him, “Yeah, Jeffrey likes them young. Too young for me.”
Among Epstein’s victims, the Times identified six who were introduced to Trump by either Epstein or his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell (also a friend of Trump), including one who was a minor at the time. Among the many women Trump has sexually assaulted, two of them (Béatrice Keul and Jill Harth) say they were attacked during social functions at which Mr. Epstein was present. Michael Wolff claims to have recorded about 100 hours of interviews with Epstein, including conversations about Trump after he had moved into the White House, in January 2017. Wolff says it was during this period that Epstein showed him three photographs of Trump sitting with topless girls/young women beside the swimming pool at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion.
The Rapist’s Handbook on How to Conduct International Diplomacy
With hardly any knowledge about international affairs and no curiosity about any subject other than himself, Trump has few skills and little experience to draw upon when conducting foreign policy. And it shows. For example, in order to reach its 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, the Obama administration had to conduct two years of talks involving more than 50 American officials, including experts in nuclear energy and weapons. Five other nations were parties to the agreement, including Russia and China, and the accord was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.
(In 2018, President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement – a stupid, senseless decision that was opposed and regarded with “regret and concern” by Britain, France and Germany, which were parties to the agreement. The three American allies told Iran that, despite the U.S. withdrawal, they were willing to continue abiding by the terms of the accord.)
In contrast, the Trump administration’s nuclear negotiating team with Iran consisted of just two civilians. They both were idiots who had little experience and no qualifications: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law – a man who corruptly enriched himself during Trump’s first term by getting Saudi Arabia to invest $2 billion in his new private equity firm. Witkoff is a Florida real-estate investor who is one of Trump’s friends and golf partners.
When Trump conducts foreign policy, he can only draw upon the limited skills and instincts available to him. That is to say, that are available in his tool kit as a rapist and sociopath.
Trump knows he deserves to be the greatest, most powerful president of all time. So he decides to claim and take control of Greenland. Never mind that Greenland is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and that the U.S. has recognized Denmark’s sovereignty over the territory since 1916. Never mind that polls show 85% of Greenlanders do not want to be part of the U.S. Or that seizing Greenland by force will destroy NATO and our alliances with Europe. Trump wants Greenland, his ego demands Greenland, and he has got to have it. Similarly and just as ludicrously, Trump has decided Canada should join the American empire and pay tribute by becoming the 51st state. Never mind that thanks to him, millions of Americans now envy the decency and sanity of our neighbor to the north. And that we wish our country had never started a civil war with England by declaring independence in 1776.
Have you noticed that Trump even sounds like a rapist when he talks about foreign policy? With Iran, Trump relishes being the cat that sadistically toys with the wounded mouse. We can take our time and enjoy the suffering, or we can show mercy and make the death short and sweet. It all depends on what we feel like doing. He recently told reporters aboard Air Force One, “We’re talking to Cuba, but we’re going to do Iran before Cuba.” Also on the subject of Cuba: “I do believe I’ll have the honor of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba in some form. I mean, whether I free it. Take it. I think I can do anything I want with it.”
To Conclude
The New York Times reporters mentioned above, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, have just published a new book about our American catastrophe: Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. (It is currently the #1 top selling non-fiction book in the U.S. on Amazon.com.) Ms. Haberman’s previous book, Confidence Man, is an excellent biography of Trump. (Unfortunately, it’s not available in Portuguese.)
I haven’t read the new book yet, but I’ve been watching the authors promote it by making the media rounds. In an interview with the British television station, Channel 4 (that you can watch on YouTube), Ms. Haberman recounted an anecdote from the book. It provides a fitting end to this installment of our newsletter.
“This desire to be one of the great men, capital G, capital M, of history, is what is driving him (Trump). And power and a willingness to use it is what is driving him. That was put into stark relief at this really remarkable moment when Jonathan and I went to the Oval Office on March 16 of this year to see him at the end of our reporting process. . . At one point we asked about power and how he was seeing himself in the context of power, just based on things he had been saying to people in public and elsewhere. And it was an astonishing moment. He had his omnipresent advisor, Natalie Harp, and he said, ‘Natalie, go get the thing from the historian.’ I’m paraphrasing.
She comes back with these two printouts that he says were from a historian, words by a presidential historian. And she hands them to us and the start of the document says, essentially, ‘Donald Trump is the most powerful person who has ever walked the face of the earth.’ And then he proceeds to tick off what he describes as the top ten: Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Tamerlane, Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the Caesars. You know, some of the great monsters and conquerors of history. And he was making no moral distinction at all between people who had murdered and people who had conquered or people who had, you know, built empires. It was that they had power and they were willing to use it, and that was how he was seeing himself.
The punchline here is that it turned out that the person who wrote it was not a historian. It was Gary Players’, the golfers’, former caddy and business associate.”
(To be continued . . . )