If you read Tabs yesterday — and if you didn’t, what is wrong with you, go read Tabs and come back, we’ll still be here — you saw that Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut made some comments on Wednesday about the Trump administration’s very near-term plans for the war in Iran. They were kind of terrifying comments!
How terrifying? Well, when a senator is discussing plans for a possible escalation of a war that has already bogged down thanks to poor planning and leadership from an 80-year-old demented potato, you do not want to hear the words devastating to our security interests, destructive of the rule of law, and insane. Especially that last one. We’re talking about a military led by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. Normal people’s idea of insane is their idea of world-historical genius.
Murphy was participating in a Q&A at the Middle East Institute on Wednesday. The questioner asked if, in classified briefings he got from military leaders, he had the sense that the military really agreed with the administration’s belief that bombing the living shit out of Iran again would lead to regime change.
After some blah blah about how the military isn’t as candid under this administration as it has been in the past (surprise!), Murphy said this:
“We did get the chance to have a fairly detailed conversation about what the war plan would be if we restarted military operations. You’ve heard a preview that it would be a short duration. I will just say this: Their plan is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.
What’s your favorite moment in that brief clip? Ours is the moderator’s reaction to the word “insane,” leaning forward as if she isn’t sure she heard him correctly. It’s a movement recognizable to anyone who has ever heard a particularly shocking piece of gossip, like when your best friend tells you she’s leaving her husband of 25 years for the woman who threads her eyebrows.
That was Wednesday. On Thursday, Trump and Vice President Couch Fucker canceled plans to attend election rallies in battleground states this weekend in favor of “tele-rallies” from Washington. And somewhere in there, Reuters reported that ExxonMobil and Chevron had cancelled some of their executives’ trips to a major oil industry conference in the United Arab Emirates next week due to unspecified “security concerns.”
It didn’t help that a story about the US military’s renewed interest in digging mass graves also appeared at the same time:
U.S. Army soldiers are training to bury fellow troops in temporary graves en masse for the first time in decades, rehearsing how the U.S. military would respond if it sustained a high number of casualties while fighting a still-blazing war.
The US military hasn’t needed to perform hasty mass burials in temporary graves on the battlefield since the Korean War, so you can see why people were jumpy when they read this. (For the record, we do not think the military is practicing mass burials for particularly nefarious reasons. The Pentagon also has plans for alien invasions, it’s their job to prepare for any scenario.)
One rumor has been that the administration was planning on ramping the bombing back up after Tuesday’s elections. That was the strategy war hawks were supposedly pushing back in the summer.
As far as Trump and Vance cancelling their trips, we thought it equally if not more likely that the president might be tired, senile, cranky, or simply in desperate need of a good crap. Or all those things at once:
Or most likely of all, the White House realized both men are about as popular with the public as diarrhea lettuce. Some campaigns have supposedly been telling the White House they would prefer if the historically unpopular president did not come anywhere near them. Maybe the administration was listening for once.
Then while we were writing this, the White House announced Trump would make his trips to Kansas and Iowa after all. So maybe they called off any renewed bombing campaigns. Or maybe Trump got mad that people were mocking him for being a decrepit old fossil with no juice whose rallies are more sparsely attended than a pauper’s funeral and demanded that he be allowed to go yammer about his admiration for John Husted’s ass on stage some more.
So at the end of the day, we seem to be right back where we started. The administration has what one senator described as an “insane” plan to start the war back up after the midterms and not before, despite what the president and vice president suddenly cancelling rallies the weekend before the election might have suggested. Whether Trump will use the lame-duck period to renew the war is not a given, but it would be unsurprising. Why not give a new Congress likely controlled by Democrats a massive war escalation to deal with on day one in January?
Or maybe it really is as simple as Trump got back to the White House Thursday night, took the mother of all poops in his golden toilet, and woke up Friday morning raring to go. With him, we can’t rule anything out.
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Dear evangelical Christians. We don't celebrate Halloween to worship the Devil. Sometimes it's just fun to dress up and pretend to be someone else. You know, like you do on Sundays.
The only thing I like to be insane is how good that donut was. That's it. Donut is my comfort animal. I love you donut. I'm not insane.