The Israeli-American attack on Iran has been defined more than anything by the nonsensical nature of the messaging, with statements listing any number of potential goals. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, always eccentric and erratic, has been ranting about an endless variety of topics, with each day bringing about new unhinged statements. It is as if we have watched the White House become a Greek tragedy before our very eyes, with Donald Trump in the role of a mad king. This represents an incredible fall for a man who defeated all of his opponents and orchestrated the greatest comeback in American political history. However, his advanced age and hubris seem to have got the best of him. Trump must on some level know that his attack on Iran was a strategic disaster, hence his spiraling behavior.
Looking back, it feels as if Trump’s story was always a tragedy and he is now in his last act: isolated, raving, and left with none but grasping attendants who hope to profit from their closeness to him while they still can.
Among American political figures, Donald Trump has always been the most like a dramatic hero, in that he is flawed, abrasive, attention seeking, larger than life, and remarkably successful. Once he entered the political stage, it was his personality which divided the nation more so than any of his policies. The portion of the public tired of our ruling class using custom and decorum to cover their avarice, violence, and incompetence were pleased with the idea of a brash, businessman president who was willing to be iconoclastic. To many, even among his opponents, his behavior was often amusing, if unfitting for a president. Among the “respectable” commentariat though, it was only when he was launching airstrikes that he was “presidential.” Nevertheless, by the standards of modern American leaders, the first Trump administration followed a mostly-restrained foreign policy, despite his dangerous hawkishness on Iran.
Then, for his play’s second act.
In 2020, for some reason, Trump embarked on the COVID debacle. My belief is he was convinced to pursue destructive COVID policies as part of a conspiracy against him by people who realized his weakness was being an elderly disease fearer as well as his general ignorance and incredible arrogance. Thus, he seems to have thought it was an easy win to wage an unprecedented war against a disease then declare victory and coast into re-election. It is not worth re-living the events of six years ago, but suffice to say it got out of control and he was unable to stop it. Then, of course, he was voted out of office due to a variety of things related to COVID mania (“emergency” rule changes as well as public sentiment about the year up to that point) and branded a traitor and insurrectionist, facing prosecution and thrown off of social media for the events of January 6. One would have thought this was his end, a sort of internal exile.
Yet, for his third act Trump came back from it all with a new coalition that delivered a popular vote victory, an astounding revival of the career of a man by then convicted of spurious felony charges and facing prison. I admit, I supported him for the first time in 2024, both believing we couldn’t have the narrative of the Mandarins winning and because Democrats antagonize me as much as Trump antagonizes Democrats. The Trump who returned to office victorious for the fourth act had grown only more bitter and erratic, but also more willing to attack at least some of the most annoying parts of the status quo. He seemed, in some ways, more prepared for the challenges of a job he first sought out of ego and reckless audacity. At the same time, no one has suffered more than Trump by the end of character limits on Twitter (or “Truth Social,” in his case) and we saw the transition from “snappy one-liner Trump” to “Boomer text wall Trump” and the introduction of the signature “Thank you for your attention to this matter” to his worst pronouncements.
Then, at the beginning of this year, Trump had Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro kidnapped and brought to him in chains. There was plenty to be concerned about with this operation, as I have written in this space, and it seems to have changed little for Venezuelans, but to the man on the street in America, it was an easy win. After all, as they slept, Trump overthrew one of our “enemies” in a military operation with no American deaths and then it was over. It seems success in Venezuela is where his natural tendency towards arrogance turned to madness. In some sort of mania caused by bad advice, as the curtains drew open on what seems to be his fifth and final act, he attacked Iran.
Attacking Iran was, in and of itself, a terrible decision. Worse though is that it seems to have not been thought through at all, and we have been subjected to new explanations daily, sometimes several at a time. True, Trump has a history of pulling off the seemingly impossible while leaving onlookers perplexed the entire time, but I believe that was the Trump of years past.
According to one source, he told the Turks through official channels he only expected the war to last “four days.” He killed the enemy leader in cold blood under some bizarre belief that he could help pick the next one and now laments having no one to negotiate with. He is said to want to declare victory, but no one knows what that means and Iran can still keep the crucial Strait of Hormuz closed, the very reason why the moderately sane presidents preceding him did not attack Iran. He is expressing surprise that Iran has now attacked our Gulf allies, the very thing they publicly said they would do. In his dissembling, Trump now says we went to war out of habit and for Israel, seemingly having ran out of guile in his mania. Any images of Iran he doesn’t like he claims are AI, denying reality with limitless resources to ascertain the truth.
Trump’s mania is not limited to Iran eithe. In a different screed, he completely personalized his political movement by saying MAGA is simply him and demanding fealty to his fellow deranged Boomer Zionist fanatic Mark Levin, writing, “Those that speak ill of Mark [Levin] will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound. THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM.” He also found time to write a 1,000 word “essay” about economic matters that reads like if you gave an a man suffering from dementia rage a blog as a joke. All of this from a man who controls nukes which can destroy the world.
The Trump administration is now but a mad man surrounded by ideologues and “yes” men trying to get out of it what they can. Iran not working out, he now says of our island neighbor of eleven million people, “I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth.” Trump is, at age 80, now regularly communicating like a man who has lost all attachment to reality but who is so excitable that he is about to have a stroke.
From my perspective as but a humble writer and student of literature, I must say that I know what generally happens at this point in the narrative structure of a tragedy.
