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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on July 31, 2026 at 12:05 am
Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran is separated from Adolf Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union by a span of 84 years. Yet despite differences in geography and history, eerie similarities exist between the two.
Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941—after a series of quick military conquests: Poland (1939); Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France (1940); Greece and Yugoslavia (1941).
Similarly, before launching his assault on Iran on February 28, Trump had scored a number of triumphs–albeit of a non-military nature. A March 19, 2026 article in The New Republic offers a partial summary:
Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler
“In the first year since returning to power, Trump and his subordinates have pushed the country toward fascism and oligarchy. He has turned Washington into an orgy of corruption and self-dealing beyond even the most cynical observer’s imagination.
“He has transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol into a lawless paramilitary force that has besieged American cities and killed at least five U.S. citizens and 22 foreign nationals. He has abused Americans and their immigrant neighbors alike simply because he can.”
In his attempt to conquer the Soviet Union, Hitler made the fatal mistake of trying to conquer too much territory all at once.
In August 1941, Hitler diverted forces from the central push on Moscow to surround Leningrad and industrial regions in the South, which delayed the attack on Moscow. By the time Hitler decided to capture Moscow, the weather had turned cold and the Germans were exhausted and freezing.
As in the case of Hitler, Trump assumed that Iran could be forced to quickly surrender. But that effort has been handicapped by a series of shifting and contradictory goals:
- Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
- Destroying Iran’s missile capabilities.
- Annihilating the Iranian navy.
- Ensuring that Iran quit arming, funding and/or directing “terrorist armies” outside its borders.
In the opening day of the war, American and Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. By March 17, Israel announced that it had killed two more top Iranian leaders in airstrikes. Still, Iranians chose new leaders to succeed dead ones and went on fighting.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
On March 19, Israeli airstrikes hit Iran’s largest gas field—South Pars, which is part of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. In retaliation, Iran launched drone and missile attacks against energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait.
Iran also targeted Israel and attacked U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain and Jordan.
Hitler expected the Soviet Union to collapse in a matter of weeks. France, which supposedly had the strongest army in Europe, had collapsed in six weeks in 1940. Hitler believed that General Winter, which had defeated Napoleon in 1812, would not be a problem for the mechanized Wehrmacht.
Yet the Wehrmacht was far less mechanized than portrayed by German propagandists. It relied heavily on horses for approximately 80% of its transport needs throughout World War II. During the winter of 1941 – 1942, the Wehrmacht lost over 179,000 horses. In the Army Group Center sector, losses reached roughly 1,000 horses per day.
In movies like “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan,” Americans celebrate the D-Day landings in France, on June 6, 1944. But for Nazi Germany, “the real war” was in the East. There the Wehrmacht concentrated the largest proportion of its forces—and suffered 85% of its casualties.
By March 19, the United States had spent $12 to over $12.7 billion on military operations against Iran. And the Pentagon was asking for an additional $200 billion for the war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned “that number could move.”
On July 22, it moved—House Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027.
On April 7 the United States, Israel, and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, under which Iran would re-open the Strait of Hormuz. On April 11, Trump said that American ships had started “clearing” the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian government threatened to attack the ships, accusing the United States of a ceasefire violation.
On July 8, Iran struck more targets in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump declared the Memorandum Of Understanding between the two countries was “over,” and that he didn’t want to deal any further with Iran’s leadership
Following an attack by Iranian forces on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, on July 13, the United States began 13 consecutive nights of airstrikes on Iran, ending on July 24.
On July 27 Trump said he was ready for “strong military action” if talks with Iran failed, saying there’s “not much time” left for diplomacy
Bombing, however, has never by itself ended a war. Hitler’s terror-bombing of England only stiffened British resolve to fight on.
Trump could launch a ground troop invasion—but Iran is more than twice the size of Texas, covering about 636,000 square miles. That would require tens of thousands of troops—and almost certainly lead to a highly unpopular draft.
Aside from that, his only other choice is the use of nuclear weapons.
Both would be highly unpopular—especially in a midterms election year.
Like Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union, by July 28, Trump’s “two week” war with Iran had lasted five months—with no end in sight.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 30, 2026 at 12:13 am
Adolf Hitler had a warning for Donald Trump on the eve of his launching airstrikes against Iran.
A warning Trump should have heeded—but didn’t.
It all started on June 22, 1941.
On that date, Hitler ordered his powerful Wehrmacht o invade the Soviet Union.
Less than two years earlier, on August 23, 1939, he had signed a “non-aggression” pact with his longtime arch-enemy, Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union.
Since then, his army had conquered Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France.
Adolf Hitler with his generals
Now, he believed, it was time to “settle accounts” with the Soviet Union.
Only there could Germany obtain the “living space” it “needed” for its expanding population.
So at 3 a.m. on June 22, 1941, Hitler once again launched an invasion.
At first, Hitler felt giddy with excitement.
Turning to Alfred Jodl, his chief of operations for the Wehrmacht, he said: “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
German soldiers marching through Russia
But soon afterward—almost as if he had just looked into the future and seen that he had none—he told an aide: “At the beginning of each campaign, one pushes a door into a dark, unseen room. One can never know what is hiding inside.”
That certainly proved true for Hitler.
Within four years, he was dead and the Red Army occupied Berlin.
And now the law of unintended consequences may be coming true for President Donald Trump and the United States.
On February 28, Trump—in concert with Israel—launched a series of devastating, unprovoked airstrikes against Iran. Since then, Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have been all over the map with rosy predictions.
Donald Trump
- February 28: Trump posted on Truth Social that the bombing would continue “throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
- March 1: In a video Trump declared that the war would continue “until all of our objectives are achieved.”
- March 2: Trump: “Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”
- March 5: Hegseth to Pentagon reporters: “You can say four weeks [how long the war might last] but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three. Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo.”
- March 6: Trump: “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”
- March 8: Hegseth: “We’re willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful.”
- March 9: Trump: “No, but soon. I think so. Very soon” when asked by a reporter if the war would be over that week.
- March 11: “You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the, in the first hour, it was over.”
Hitler had been similarly optimistic about how long it would take to conquer the Soviet Union: Six to eight weeks, at the longest. And during the first three months of the war—July through September, 1941—that optimism seemed well-placed.
The Wehrmacht repeatedly lured Soviet armies into huge “cauldron battles,” then surrounded them, killing thousands and taking thousands of prisoners. By the end of September, German forces had captured or killed over 650,000 Russian troops in the Battle of Kiev alone, with total Soviet casualties reaching millions.
But then Hitler—and the Wehrmacht—paid a fatal price for their misplaced optimism.
The best—and most lethal—example of this hubris: The Wehrmacht went to war in summer uniforms on June 22—and were still wearing them in December.
Hitler placed infinite faith in the power of will to overcome all obstacles. When his soldiers were literally freezing to death before the gates of Moscow, Hitler believed that with “just one more push” the Soviet capital would fall.
When Heinz Guderian, his foremost expert on tank warfare, informed Hitler that German soldiers had no defense against the bitter cold, Hitler replied: They should dig foxholes.
Guderian replied that the icy ground was too solid to be punctured with spades.
Hitler’s reply: They should fire artillery shells into the ground to build foxholes.
This totally ignored the reality that, by December, 1941, the German army was dangerously short on munitions of all kinds.
Like Hitler, Trump seemed to consider himself omnipotent. Asked by a reporter how long the war would last, the President replied: “Any time I want it to end, it will end.”
Yet by the third week of the war, he began demanding—not asking—the assistance of NATO countries: We’ve had your back, now it’s our turn.
This totally ignored the fact that NATO exists to aid any of its members if it is attacked. After 9/11, NATO air force planes screened American airspace to prevent a repeat of similar carnage.
But NATO members are not obligated to join any nation in igniting a war. And that was precisely what Trump did on February 28—without consulting or even informing NATO of his plans to attack.
The only country that had known his intentions was Israel.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 23, 2026 at 3:13 am
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, in a moment of rare candor, once revealed his satanic ruthlessness to a group of fellow Bolsheviks: “To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed—there is nothing sweeter in the world.”
Joseph Stalin
On April 9, 2025, President Donald Trump revealed his intention to live by that belief. He issued a MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
Its purpose: To target Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for potential arrest and prosecution.
Krebs’ “crime”: Ensuring that the 2020 Presidential election was free of lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms.
Deprived of his expected support from Russian trolls and hackers, Trump lost.
Among the “charges” outlined in Trump’s memorandum:
“Krebs skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective.”
During 2020—Trump’s last year in office as President—COVID-19 ravaged the United States. At least 400,000 Americans died—many of them because they believed Trump’s claims that:
- His administration had it under control; and
- At a time when there was no vaccine against the virus, people didn’t need to protect themselves from it—such as by social distancing and wearing masks in public.
Chris Krebs
The memorandum continued:
“I hereby direct the heads of executive department and agencies to immediately take steps consistent with existing law to revoke any active security clearance held by Christopher Krebs.
“I further direct the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant agencies to immediately take all action as necessary and consistent with existing law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including SentinelOne, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”
SentinelOne is an American cybersecurity company in Mountain View, California, where Krebs serves as Chief Intelligence and Public Policy Officer.
“I further direct the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with any other agency head, to take all appropriate action to review Krebs’ activities as a Government employee, including his leadership of CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency].“
“This review should identify any instances where Krebs’ conduct appears to have been contrary to suitability standards for Federal employees, involved the unauthorized dissemination of classified information, or contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 (Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship).”
Donald Trump
Trump is speaking about the censorship of Right-wing speech, which is virtually non-existent. But he has no qualms about suppressing freedom of speech for his critics.
He blocked access by the Associated Press to White House events because it refused to bow to his demand that it refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
On April 9, District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled the administration’s restriction on AP journalists was “contrary to the First Amendment,” which guarantees freedom of speech.
The administration has appealed the verdict to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
According to Trump’s memorandum:
“As part of that review, I direct a comprehensive evaluation of all of CISA’s activities over the last 6 years, focusing specifically on any instances where CISA’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149.
“Upon completing these reviews, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall prepare a joint report to be submitted to the President, through the Counsel to the President, with recommendations for appropriate remedial or preventative actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of Executive Order 14149.”
Clearly, Trump seeks to find any plausibly legal excuse to destroy the man who dared come between him and his Russian backers in 2020—and who contradicted his lies about COVID and the election.
Donald Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly denied knowing anything about it. Anyone aware of his reputation as a notorious liar knew this wasn’t true.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
Among Project 2025’s priorities:
- Replace tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks to establish an absolute dictatorship under a Republican President.
- “Reform” the Department of Justice by making it the President’s personal law firm.
- Make the director of the FBI personally accountable to the President—as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
History-ignorant Americans are now discovering what it means to have lived in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin—where truth and integrity were punished and lies and treachery were rewarded.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 22, 2026 at 1:12 am
In the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.
Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Пресс-служба Президента РФ, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
At his command lay the resources of a series of powerful Federal investigative agencies:
“We had the Department of Defense Cyber Command. We had the National Security Agency. We had the FBI. We had the Secret Service. We also had representatives from the Election Assistance Commission, which is the federal independent agency that supports the actual administration of elections.”
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
The November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly. Deprived of his expected support from Russian trolls and hackers, Trump lost.
On November 12, to counter the growing chorus of lies from Trump and his Right-wing allies that the election had been stolen, Krebs put out the following statement:
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet more lies:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more.”
Five years later, on April 9, 2025, a re-elected Trump issued a MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
Its target: Chris Krebs.
Among other charges, Trump accused Krebs of suppressing “conservative or dissenting voices and distort[ing] public opinion.”
The two biggest and most influential social media platforms—Twitter (now X) and Facebook—are owned by avowedly Right-wing billionaires: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And they massively supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
After he incited a treasonous riot against Congress on January 6, 2021, both platforms briefly banned him from posting. But then both—fearing “retribution” if he became President again—once again gave him access to their audiences.
Immediately after losing the 2020 Presidential election, Trump began spreading “The Big Lie”: That he had been defeated by massive voter fraud made possible through Dominion Voting Systems.
In this he was backed by a major Right-wing propagandist: The Fox News Network.
On April 18, 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $797 million to avert a wrongful defamation trial. Dominion’s lawsuit would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election—all the while knowing they were lies.
So much for Trump’s claims of “widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 21, 2026 at 12:10 am
On the evening of July 16, President Donald Trump delivered a primetime television speech on election security—and the dangers of foreign interference. Specifically, he claimed that the country’s voting systems were vulnerable to being “rigged and stolen.”
But he provided no new evidence of a single fraudulent vote cast in any election:
“For many years I’ve called for bold, swift and decisive action to protect the integrity of America’s elections. Every American deserves to know that, when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system, and that is to make that system secure.
“Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard. Tonight, I’m announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
Trump claimed he was declassifying Intelligence documents that included allegations of Chinese efforts to influence American elections, concerns over voting machine security, and that noncitizens are found on certain states’ voter rolls.
“Allegations”—accusations—are not evidence. And the United States has never accused China of tainting or deleting voter records.
Donald Trump
“This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.
“Just as disturbingly, this vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you, the American people — our beautiful, our great American people.”
Yet “vulnerabilities” are different than actual evidence of election interference. And Trump provided none.
As usual, no Trump speech is complete without a boast of his own greatness:
“in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself. Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US president.
“They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job.”
Toward the end of his speech, Trump gave his reason for giving it:
“But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America Act. How easy is that to do, unless you want to cheat.
“And hopefully there will be no corrupt mail-in ballots, which, if you watched California and so many other places, mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt. So, you would have no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel if you’re going away on business or vacation.”
All 50 states allow mail-in voting (often referred to as absentee voting). However, the rules and requirements for who can access a mail-in ballot vary significantly by state. There’s no evidence of widespread fraud in mail balloting.
It’s important to remember that, for all Trump’s stated concerns about preserving election integrity, on July 9, he fired the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, which was created by Congress to help states administer secure elections.
The House passed the Save Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act) but it does not have the support of all Republicans in the Senate. Thus, it has no chance of becoming law this year.
So why is Trump so fired up about the SAVE Act? As Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW stated on the July 17 edition of The PBS Newshour:
“He’s very scared about what could happen if Democrats retake the House and retake the Senate. He has said as much on the record. If they take over, I will be investigated. And, quite frankly, there are reasons to investigate him and members of his administration.”
According to the Center for American Progress, a public policy research and advocacy organization, the SAVE Act would:
- Disenfranchise millions of now-eligible—and mostly Democratic—voters.
- Require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information.
- Require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship.
- Force more than 140 million American citizens to pay for a passport.
- Force up to 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name to obtain a birth certificate matching their legal name.
- Prevent Americans from registering to vote by mail by requiring documentation to be presented in person would prevent Americans from registering to vote by mail.
- Requite voters to appear in person, with original documentation, to even simply update their voter registration information for a change of address or change in party affiliation.
- These restrictions would be especially hard for more than 60 million Americans living in rural areas. (Ironically, millions of Right-wing Trump supporters living in rural areas would also be affected.)
- Drivers licenses—including REAL IDs—and military or tribal IDs would not be sufficient forms of documentation to prove citizenship.
Despite the disastrous changes this legislation would inflict on American elections, leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives—specifically, Speaker Mike Johnson—has declared that passing the SAVE Act is one of their top priorities this year.
So how did Donald Trump reward Chris Krebs, the man who prevented Russian interference in the 2020 Presidential election?
Trump fired him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on May 14, 2026 at 12:05 am
Among the outrages President Donald Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:
- Launched an unprovoked attack on Iran on February 28, believing that in six weeks he could force its Islamic rulers to abandon their plans to develop nuclear weapons.
- When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz—through which about 20%-25% of the world’s oil flows—Trump threatened: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
- He backed off—at least temporarily—only after legal experts and organizations such as Amnesty International warned that attacking civilian infrastructure would constitute war crimes under international law.
Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?
One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.
John D. Gartner
Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.
During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”
Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:
- anti-social behavior
- sadism
- aggressiveness
- paranoia
- grandiosity.
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.
Another psychiatrist who’s determined that Trump is “mentally compromised” is Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
And she offered her reasons for doing so as the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin writes, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath:
“The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Americans have long believed that they—and especially their leaders—are an “exceptional” people. As a result, they consider themselves immune from the threats of corruption and dictatorship that have plagued other nations.
Millions of Americans—including many Trump supporters—have been shaken by the revelations of the Epstein Files, which chronicle the sexual depravities of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Even more disturbing has been the knowledge that he and Donald Trump maintained a friendship for 15 to 17 years.
The Files so far released are replete with names of celebrities such as Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, Woody Allen, George Stephanopoulos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.
This has added to the shock and revulsion felt by millions of Americans. Yet they might have been less shocked had they read Gore Vidal’s 1959 essay, “The Twelve Caesars.”
Gore Vidal
Mark Coggins from San Francisco, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Vidal’s essay is an ode to The Twelve Caesars, a classic work of ancient biography by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus—known as Suetonius.
Suetonius, a Roman citizen and historian, chronicled the lives of the first twelve Caesars of imperial Rome: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.
Vidal sought to show the relevance of Suetonius’ work to present-day America: “It would be wrong, however, to dismiss, as so many commentators have, the wide variety of Caesarean sensuality as simply the viciousness of twelve abnormal men. They were, after all, a fairly representative lot.
“They differed from us – and their contemporaries – only in the fact of power, which made it possible for each to act out his most recondite sexual fantasies. This is the psychological fascination of Suetonius. What will men so placed do? The answer, apparently, is anything and everything.”
Thus the lesson taught by the celebrities—including Trump—who glommed onto Jeffrey Epstein: They differed from ordinary citizens only in the power they held over themselves—and others. And, reveling in that power, they felt free to indulge the most depraved fantasies, sexual and otherwise.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on May 13, 2026 at 12:33 am
Night at Camp David is a 1965 novel about the danger of a President of the United States going insane.
In a November 30, 2018 review of the book, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote of President Donald Trump:
“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.
“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”
And the nightmare isn’t over.
Among the outrages Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:
- Pardoned about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
- Signed 26 executive orders reversing climate change initiatives, eliminating DEI programs, changing the federal designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and initiating a federal hiring freeze.
- Fired the inspectors general—who are charged with protecting the government from waste and corruption—from more than a dozen federal agencies.
- Following Trump’s anti-DEI executive order, the Department of Defense deleted content that included the achievements of nonwhites—such as Navajo code talkers, black Tuskegee Airmen, Medal of Honor winners and women veterans.
- Fired Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from unfair, deceptive and fraudulent business practices.
Donald Trump
- Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
- Fired the non-partisan board members at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His toadies illegally renamed it the Trump-Kennedy Center and appointed him as its chairman—just as Joseph Stalin made himself arbiter of what was permissible for artists in the Soviet Union.
- When artists and audiences—outraged by the takeover—boycotted the Center, an embarrassed Trump ordered its closure, claiming a two-year repair renovation was necessary
- Purged about a half-dozen executive assistant directors at the FBI. These were some of the bureau’s top managers overseeing criminal, national security and cyber investigations. Their “crime”: Investigating Trump’s inciting the January 6, 2021 coup attempt and illegally holding highly sensitive national security documents after leaving office.
- Ordered the Justice Department to indict his critics such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
- Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
- Tried to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution— for U.S.-born children.
- Demanded a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
- Pardoned favored political allies and loyalists. Among these: Seventy-seven people associated with the Trump fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
- Angrily fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a weak jobs report, triggering fears about his extortionate tariff policy.
- Demanded that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banned the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.
- Ordered the closure of all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices.
- Demanded that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raised tariffs on Canadian goods.
- Shut down the Federal Government on October 1, when Democrats refused to agree to his gutting Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), causing 10-15 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage.
- Among those not getting paid: Air traffic controllers for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Owing to many controllers’ refusing to work, the FAA reduced air traffic by 10% at many airports.
- Shut off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the poor to pressure Democrats to support his gutting of healthcare programs.
- Issued executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
- Flooded the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago with federalized National Guard troops against state governors’ wishes during immigration crackdowns and civil unrest.
- Flooded Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, with 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who terrorized (and in two cases murdered) both American citizens and illegal aliens.
- Threatened Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
- Threatened Greenland—an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark—with invasion unless it agreed to acquisition by the United States. Since Denmark is a member of NATO, such an invasion would pit the United States against its own alliance.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 12, 2026 at 12:05 am
On the April 10 edition of The PBS Newshour, David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW—exchanged opinions on the mental health of President Donald Trump.
Although Brooks, a conservative, and Capehart, a liberal, usually find themselves on opposite sides of a subject, this time they reached a consensus: Trump is dangerously ill.
David Brooks: Last January, as we watched this spiral psychologically….I read Roman histories. And so you get Tacitus and Sallust and those old guys, because they had a front-row seat to tyranny. And they watched authoritarians, one after another, Caligula, all these guys. And the one thing they all said was that they deteriorate.
They create a situation around them, when the sycophants have to get more sycophant. Anybody who’s reasonable is either dead or gone. And then the urge to dominate, the lust for power becomes drunk. They become drunk on that. And they get more and more daring, more and more out of control, and then you get this spiral.
And our founding fathers, they understood this so well. They read Tacitus. They loved these guys. And John Adams said, if we get a leader like that, he will run through our Congress, our Constitution the way a whale goes through a net. And so they completely understood. And their worst nightmare is now happening.
The Constitution of the United States
Moderator Geoff Bennett: And, Jonathan, 61 percent of Americans, including 30 percent of Republicans, now say that President Trump has become erratic with age. That’s according to a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll.
The press corps — I guess we should hold up a mirror to ourselves. The press corps spent two years making President Biden’s mental fitness, his acuity the story. Why isn’t that same scrutiny now being applied to President Trump broadly?
Jonathan Capehart: Yes, exactly. That has been my question since January 20 of last year. We, the press, spent a lot of time talking about President Biden and his age because he looked old. He moved slowly. He wasn’t as vigorous and agile, supposedly, as the guy he pushed out of office and then the guy who was running against him.
And even little slips of the tongue were used to show, see, aha, he’s not all there. He’s losing his mind. How does that compare to what we’re going through right now? I wish people who have written books — people who have gone on air talking about President Biden nonstop, where are they now?
Where are those books now that we have a president who has given ample evidence, ample evidence that something is not right? Where are the people who are standing up and saying, you know what, something needs to be done?
And that goes back to some — you were talking about the founders. They were prepared for something like this. What they weren’t prepared for was the Article I branch just ceding all authority. What they weren’t prepared for were people from the president’s own party willing to either turn a blind eye or enable him to run roughshod over the Constitution.
Donald Trump
Even when you have got him out there threatening annihilation of a civilization, even when he’s started a war for no reason and the enemy is in a stronger position now than it was before he started this war of his own choosing?
At some point, Republicans writ large and those on Capitol Hill have to start standing up for the Article I prerogatives, but also start standing up for the country. I don’t know how much longer we as a nation can withstand this. And I know the world is beyond done with us, but I think they’re also frightened of us.
* * * * * * * * * *
This is not the first time the subject of Donald Trump’s mental instability has been raised. In 2018, during Trump’s first term as President, a 53-year-old novel was re-released: Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.
At the time of its 1965, release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:
Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia.
Hollenbach wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, he believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.
Its paperback edition offered a sentence that went straight for the jugular: “What would happen if the President of the United States went stark-raving mad?”
In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote:
“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 11, 2026 at 12:10 am
On April 10, David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW appeared—as they do every Friday—on the PBS Newshour to discuss the week’s political events.
Brooks is a conservative, Capehart, a liberal, but they exchange their often differing views in a calm, civil manner. But on this date, there was unanimity between them on the subject of President Donald Trump’s deteriorating mental state.
Moderator Geoff Bennett kicked off the exchange with this:
So, David, the president this week threatened to wipe out an entire civilization, and then he took a cease-fire deal 88 minutes before his own deadline. Is this maximum pressure or maximum chaos?
David Brooks: Maximum malevolence. We shouldn’t let that comment about the wiping out of civilization go by without saying what an antithesis it is of American history….We have always prided ourselves, whether — whatever stupid stuff we do, on not being a rapacious European-style imperial dominating power.
After World War II, we didn’t try to take over Germany and Japan. We gave them money so they could recover. Even George W. Bush, whatever you think of the war, the intentions were OK. But to threaten to wipe out a civilization is pure malevolence.
David Brooks
It’s an assertion of true evil. And it didn’t work. And so, if you want to know how the war is going, look at who’s moving. The U.S. used to have regime change. Now, today, Trump said just so we can stop the nuclear program. And the nuclear material have been unaffected by this war, by the way. So we’re pulling back our goals.
The Iranians, when they put forth their negotiating position, they’re sticking with the goals they had and then they’re adding more. We want to control the Straits of Hormuz. We want reparations. We want you to release all our money.
So they’re clearly on the offensive. And so if you…think America’s winning, why are we going backwards and why are we retreating?
Bennett: And, Jonathan, what does it mean for American foreign policy when the distance between the president saying on social media a whole civilization will die tonight and a cease-fire announcement is roughly eight hours?
Jonathan Capehart: It speaks to the chaos that….that characterizes the president himself, that characterizes how he is running his administration. I was on air Sunday morning….where he was demanding explicitly to open the Strait of Hormuz, you crazy bastards, from a president of the United States on Easter Sunday. To your point, this is not the America that we know.
The American president is supposed to be a statesman, supposed to be someone who is a reflection of our better selves or who we hope to be, who we project our image to be. And, right now, our image is so bad that we not only have the French leader calling out the American president, but the British prime minister called out the American president, basically lumping him with Vladimir Putin of Russia in terms of malevolent force on the world stage.
Jonathan Capehart
….This gets to the bigger question for me about….is the president all right? Because no American president ever has written the things, said the things, threatened the things that he did in the span of, what, 72 hours.
Bennett: Let’s talk more about that, because, last night, President Trump shared this graphic video of a woman being beaten to death. We’re not going to show that video, but you can see the screenshot of the social media message there on the screen.
And he used this video to attack former President Biden, Democrats, federal judges. A sitting president posting footage of a murder as political content, is there no line left?
Brooks: Apparently not. I think he is spiraling out of control. And I say that in part, and a little psychologically, narcissists tend to disinhibit as they age. And so they….just get more of themselves, which is not a good thing.
Donald Trump
But last January, as we watched this spiral psychologically….I read Roman histories. And so you get Tacitus and Sallust and those old guys, because they had a front-row seat to tyranny. And they watched authoritarians, one after another, Caligula, all these guys. And the one thing they all said was that they deteriorate.
They create a situation around them, when the sycophants have to get more sycophant. Anybody who’s reasonable is either dead or gone. And then the urge to dominate, the lust for power becomes drunk. They become drunk on that. And they get more and more daring, more and more out of control, and then you get this spiral.
And our founding fathers, they understood this so well. They read Tacitus. They loved these guys. And John Adams said, if we get a leader like that, he will run through our Congress, our Constitution the way a whale goes through a net. And so they completely understood. And their worst nightmare is now happening.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 26, 2026 at 12:17 am
Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran is separated from Adolf Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union by a span of 84 years. Yet despite differences in geography and history, eerie similarities exist between the two.
Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941—after a series of quick military conquests: Poland (1939); Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France (1940); Greece and Yugoslavia (1941).
Similarly, before launching his assault on Iran on February 28, Trump had scored a number of triumphs–albeit of a non-military nature. A March 19, 2026 article in The New Republic offers a partial summary:
Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler
“In the first year since returning to power, Trump and his subordinates have pushed the country toward fascism and oligarchy. He has turned Washington into an orgy of corruption and self-dealing beyond even the most cynical observer’s imagination.
“He has transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol into a lawless paramilitary force that has besieged American cities and killed at least five U.S. citizens and 22 foreign nationals. He has abused Americans and their immigrant neighbors alike simply because he can.”
In his attempt to conquer the Soviet Union, Hitler made the fatal mistake of trying to conquer too much territory all at once.
In August 1941, Hitler diverted forces from the central push on Moscow to surround Leningrad and industrial regions in the South, which delayed the attack on Moscow. By the time Hitler decided to capture Moscow, the weather had turned cold and the Germans were exhausted and freezing.
As in the case of Hitler, Trump assumed that Iran could be forced to quickly surrender. But that effort has been handicapped by a series of shifting and contradictory goals:
- Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
- Destroying Iran’s missile capabilities.
- Annihilating the Iranian navy.
- Ensuring that Iran quit arming, funding and/or directing “terrorist armies” outside its borders.
In the opening day of the war, American and Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. By March 17, Israel announced that it had killed two more top Iranian leaders in airstrikes. Still, Iranians chose new leaders to succeed dead ones and went on fighting.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
On March 19, Israeli airstrikes hit Iran’s largest gas field—South Pars, which is part of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. In retaliation, Iran launched drone and missile attacks against energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait.
Iran also targeted Israel and attacked U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain and Jordan.
Trump said there would be no further attacks on South Pars unless Iran attacked Qatar again. In that case the U.S. “will massively blow up the entirety” of the gas field.
Hitler expected the Soviet Union to collapse in a matter of weeks. France, which supposedly had the strongest army in Europe, had collapsed in six weeks in 1940. He believed that General Winter, which had defeated Napoleon in 1812, would not be a problem for the mechanized Wehrmacht.
Yet the Wehrmacht was far less mechanized than portrayed by German propagandists. It relied heavily on horses for approximately 80% of its transport needs throughout World War II. During the winter of 1941 – 1942, the Wehrmacht lost over 179,000 horses. In the Army Group Center sector, losses reached roughly 1,000 per day.
In movies like “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan,” Americans celebrate the D-Day landings on France, on June 6, 1944. But for Nazi Germany, “the real war” was in the East. There the Wehrmacht concentrated the largest proportion of its forces—and suffered 85% of its casualties.
By March 19, the United States had spent $12 to over $12.7 billion on military operations against Iran, which began on February 28.
And by March 19, the Pentagon was asking for an additional $200 billion for the war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said “that number could move.” When asked why so much more funding was needed, he replied: “It takes money to kill bad guys.”
It also takes money—lots of it—to keep Pentagon brass well-supplied with luxuries denied to Americans forced to live on Food Stamps.
In September 2025, the Pentagon spent a record-breaking $93.4 billion in a single month. While most of this was for military grants and contracts, a significant portion was used for high-end furniture, luxury food and musical instruments.
This spending surge, often called a “use-it-or-lose-it” spree, occurs at the end of the fiscal year as agencies rush to exhaust their budgets to avoid future cuts. Examples:
- Luxury Food: Lobster tail, $15 million on ribeye steak, $9 million on Alaskan King Crab, $25 million+ on salmon
- Furniture: High-end office furniture: $225.6 million, including $60,000 for Herman Miller recliners
- Instruments: $1.8 million: Steinway & Sons grand piano ($98,329), a $21,750 custom handmade flute and a $26,000 violin
- IT/Devices: High-Spec Apple iPad Air M3s and Samsung 98-inch monitors – $5.3 million
- Goodies: Ice cream machines, doughnuts, fruit basket stands – $275,000+
Meanwhile, Trump has called for huge increases to the Pentagon’s budget. In January, he posted that the 2027 fiscal year budget should be $1.5 trillion—a 50% increase.
“This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe.”
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy—and expensive—nightmare.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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ONCE MORE, INTO A DARK, UNSEEN ROOM: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on July 31, 2026 at 12:05 amDonald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran is separated from Adolf Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union by a span of 84 years. Yet despite differences in geography and history, eerie similarities exist between the two.
Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941—after a series of quick military conquests: Poland (1939); Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France (1940); Greece and Yugoslavia (1941).
Similarly, before launching his assault on Iran on February 28, Trump had scored a number of triumphs–albeit of a non-military nature. A March 19, 2026 article in The New Republic offers a partial summary:
Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler
“In the first year since returning to power, Trump and his subordinates have pushed the country toward fascism and oligarchy. He has turned Washington into an orgy of corruption and self-dealing beyond even the most cynical observer’s imagination.
“He has transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol into a lawless paramilitary force that has besieged American cities and killed at least five U.S. citizens and 22 foreign nationals. He has abused Americans and their immigrant neighbors alike simply because he can.”
In his attempt to conquer the Soviet Union, Hitler made the fatal mistake of trying to conquer too much territory all at once.
In August 1941, Hitler diverted forces from the central push on Moscow to surround Leningrad and industrial regions in the South, which delayed the attack on Moscow. By the time Hitler decided to capture Moscow, the weather had turned cold and the Germans were exhausted and freezing.
As in the case of Hitler, Trump assumed that Iran could be forced to quickly surrender. But that effort has been handicapped by a series of shifting and contradictory goals:
In the opening day of the war, American and Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. By March 17, Israel announced that it had killed two more top Iranian leaders in airstrikes. Still, Iranians chose new leaders to succeed dead ones and went on fighting.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
On March 19, Israeli airstrikes hit Iran’s largest gas field—South Pars, which is part of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. In retaliation, Iran launched drone and missile attacks against energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait.
Iran also targeted Israel and attacked U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain and Jordan.
Hitler expected the Soviet Union to collapse in a matter of weeks. France, which supposedly had the strongest army in Europe, had collapsed in six weeks in 1940. Hitler believed that General Winter, which had defeated Napoleon in 1812, would not be a problem for the mechanized Wehrmacht.
Yet the Wehrmacht was far less mechanized than portrayed by German propagandists. It relied heavily on horses for approximately 80% of its transport needs throughout World War II. During the winter of 1941 – 1942, the Wehrmacht lost over 179,000 horses. In the Army Group Center sector, losses reached roughly 1,000 horses per day.
Panzer tank
In movies like “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan,” Americans celebrate the D-Day landings in France, on June 6, 1944. But for Nazi Germany, “the real war” was in the East. There the Wehrmacht concentrated the largest proportion of its forces—and suffered 85% of its casualties.
By March 19, the United States had spent $12 to over $12.7 billion on military operations against Iran. And the Pentagon was asking for an additional $200 billion for the war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned “that number could move.”
On July 22, it moved—House Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027.
On April 7 the United States, Israel, and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, under which Iran would re-open the Strait of Hormuz. On April 11, Trump said that American ships had started “clearing” the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian government threatened to attack the ships, accusing the United States of a ceasefire violation.
On July 8, Iran struck more targets in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump declared the Memorandum Of Understanding between the two countries was “over,” and that he didn’t want to deal any further with Iran’s leadership
Following an attack by Iranian forces on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, on July 13, the United States began 13 consecutive nights of airstrikes on Iran, ending on July 24.
On July 27 Trump said he was ready for “strong military action” if talks with Iran failed, saying there’s “not much time” left for diplomacy
Bombing, however, has never by itself ended a war. Hitler’s terror-bombing of England only stiffened British resolve to fight on.
Trump could launch a ground troop invasion—but Iran is more than twice the size of Texas, covering about 636,000 square miles. That would require tens of thousands of troops—and almost certainly lead to a highly unpopular draft.
Aside from that, his only other choice is the use of nuclear weapons.
Both would be highly unpopular—especially in a midterms election year.
Like Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union, by July 28, Trump’s “two week” war with Iran had lasted five months—with no end in sight.
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