Hormuzing It Up

Hey, here’s a question for you: What American president ever said publicly that this country was going to “bomb the shit” out of another country? Could that have been Abraham Lincoln? No, I don’t think they even had planes in the Civil War years. How about Dwight D. Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy? Hmmm… Kennedy at least did begin the American war in Vietnam (even if he wasn’t yet bombing the shit out of that country).

The president after him, Lyndon Johnson, who had a knack for vulgarity, launched the major bombing campaign there (while at one point strolling the White House grounds, insisting, “I don’t know what the fuck to do about Vietnam”). President Tricky Dick Nixon followed up charmingly in Vietnam by insisting that, “if, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.” And then, of course, he did indeed bomb the shit out of another country by carpet-bombing Cambodia.

Still, none of that was broadcast publicly to the entire world. It simply came out later. Donald Trump, however, represents a first when it comes to so many things and that includes a recent violent form of presidential cursing in public, while threatening war with — don’t doubt it for a second — so much more to come.

Yes, leave it to “our” president to have employed such language publicly in an interview with a reporter at (big surprise!) Fox News when he said, in the midst of his war on Iran, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

Of course, the question, when it comes to that Gulf monarchy and longtime ally of this country in the Strait of Hormuz, is: in the way of what? Perhaps Donald Trump’s plummeting approval ratings? After all, they recently dropped from a distinctly less than spectacular 37% of all Americans to a grim 33% (and by the time you read this, they may be lower yet). Or his failures in the very war he launched so haphazardly and haplessly with Iran six months ago?

Or could he have meant that Oman might get in the way of his decision to relabel the Strait of Hormuz, now blocked by Iran, as “U.S. territory”?

Hey, that’s something that he recently claimed, all too publicly, might indeed happen, saying: “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.” And not long after, he insisted that, “essentially, that’s what it is.” (Unfortunately, in a mistake of the moment — and yes, even Donald Trump can make them — the American president evidently didn’t bother to tell Iran’s leaders, or any other leaders in the region, that he had indeed defeated them and taken full control of the Strait of Hormuz.)

And yet, just facing off against Iran in the first place, while displaying the urge to make that strait U.S. territory, couldn’t have been more rational or logical of him, right? After all, it’s located just to the east of New Jersey (by perhaps 6,500 miles), so what could possibly go wrong? And as if to make his point even more emphatically, he posted a map of the area on his social media platform at Truth Social with that very strait labeled “New U.S. Territory.”

So, give him full credit for Hormuzing it up the wazoo in this ever-stranger world of ours — or do I mean his?

Who Knows What the President of the United States Will Do Tomorrow?

Okay, but let’s be realistic. However bad any of that may sound, don’t forget his urge to shove South Korea off a cliff and make North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into his best buddy by having a chum-to-chum meeting with him this very year! And don’t forget as well that this is the president who has ensured that, when future visitors to the White House are done dancing in his new ballroom (which, if the Supreme Court doesn’t step in quickly, will be fully constructed and will double as a national security post with “top secret military facilities” and even “bomb shelters”), they’ll be able to head home from the helipad that workers are building on a nearly round-the-clock schedule — 20 hours a day, seven days a week — on the South Lawn of the White House. And hopefully, it will be finished two days before China’s Xi Jinping visits Trump in late September. (“We might make it for President Xi,” the president said recently. “That’d be nice but not imperative.”)

Phew! Sorry to pour so much into a sentence or two, but you understand, I’m sure. After all, you know just whom we’re dealing with and, in truth, I’ve barely started when it comes to “our” president!

I mean, a lawn south of the White House? Whoever needed that? Honestly, why shouldn’t the president of the United States bomb the shit out of it?

Let’s face it, “it” couldn’t be more obvious. Sorry, I couldn’t help using that second it, but the president — yes, president! — of the United States is now clearly living ever more in his own self-constructed fantasy world. And that should be considered an unnerving, if not genuinely dangerous (ir)reality for the rest of us.

I mean, who knows what Donald Trump will do tomorrow? Pause those Canadian tariffs again or send them even sky-higher (50% being a piddling amount after all)? Put his name and inscription (”Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump”) on — well, feel free to choose the place yourself: perhaps the front of the White House, the halls of Congress, or the entrance to the United Nations. Or, of course, he could simply focus on either putting his face on Mt. Rushmore next to Abraham Lincoln’s or, if that’s not possible, bombing the shit out of that mountainside. I mean, why in the world not?

And don’t think Donald Trump is finished yet. After all, only recently, six months after he began his failing war on Iran, he announced what, in essence, is likely to be an attempted full-scale economic war (”tremendous economic consequences“) on any country that even keeps trade relations with Iran. (“Today, I am announcing the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face tremendous economic consequences.”)

And hey, cheerily enough, that, of course, could include Iran’s largest trading partner, China, despite its leader’s scheduled visit with President Trump in Washington next month.

When it comes to the president who, more or less out of the blue, started a war with Iran, a country halfway around the world from the United States, and now is threatening to extend it to more of the planet, you might indeed say that, in Trumpian terms, he’s distinctly bombing the shit out of yet another country! Oh, and the one I distinctly have in mind is, of course, the United States of America.