Who will stop Trump on Iran?

Donald Trump stands alone and is apparently frightened in his war against Iran. Former fan Marjorie Taylor Greene said she didn’t sign up for a war. Other MAGA Republicans are saying the same thing. So are members of the GOP in Congress.

Our NATO allies are hesitant to help him clear the Strait of Hormuz, which he previously claimed was already free. His counterterrorism chief Joe Kent quit in protest, writing in his resignation letter there was no imminent threat against the United States from Iran. According to officials within the administration and military, the Pentagon plans to seek $200 billion from Congress for the war and is considering sending more troops to the Middle East.

Trump tries to be defiant. On Tuesday in the Oval Office, he sat with his arms folded like a pouty child, declaring he can do it all by himself. He lashed out through his White House pep secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday morning. “The president is the leader of the most powerful country and military in the world,” she said. “Nobody tells him what to do.”

To Democrats on Capitol Hill, Trump has completely lost it. “We have a madman who is more interested in his ego and his legacy than the American people,” Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., told me. “And I’m not going to diagnose him from afar, but clearly, all his talk about end of life, his fear, his legacy — I’m wondering if he’s thinking about. The future of the American people or setting up his family post-death, and really thinking more about how he wants to go down in the history books versus what’s the right thing to do for our country. And that’s dangerous.”

This is not the Donald Trump from his first administration. His decline is rapid and frightening. As he spoke in the Oval Office on Monday, Vice President JD Vance hovered uncomfortably behind Trump’s left shoulder like a cartoon buzzard in waiting. The president rarely makes sense. He regularly stumbles over and mispronounces words in his public speeches. Late-night host Jimmy Fallon has on more than one occasion assembled a montage of those moments in a popular segment of his show. Trump routinely belittles everyone except himself while his administration harasses and deports immigrants, jails reporters, shoots citizens and rounds up protesters — then he condemns others for similar actions.

On March 4 in Nashville, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Estefany Rodríguez, a Spanish-language reporter for Nashville Noticias. She entered this country legally. She worked here legally. She is married to a U.S. citizen. 

Rodríguez had obtained a visa to escape threats in her native Colombia because of her reporting. Before her visa expired she filed an asylum claim. None of that mattered to Trump’s government. She is now in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, where she has faced “inhumane and difficult treatment,” her attorney stated.

This week, as that drama played out, Trump decried the slaughter of protesters in Iran. He spoke passionately about free speech and freedom of expression. He called the Iranian leaders losers, animals and scumbags. But since Trump’s own government has shot and killed innocent protesters, arrested reporters, as well as jailing and beating others — maybe he’d better save that particular criticism until he can first exercise a modicum of intelligent, adult behavior. After all, the U.S. also leads the world in mass shootings. 

Trump said that Iran’s slaughter of protesters is an example of an “imminent threat” to the United States, which is like saying a mass shooting in any American city is an “imminent threat” to Iran. 

He has begged for help from NATO to open up the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has held the strait hostage and reportedly more than 1,000 vessels are currently trapped there. Trump previously claimed the shipping lanes were safe because  of the good old USA’s butt-kicking performance in the war that we started in Iran for no reason.

On Thursday seven U.S. allies said they were ready “to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage,” through the strait. That contradicts what they said earlier, as well as Trump’s claims that we have “completely obliterated” Iran’s ability to make war. The Islamic Republic displayed its ability to continue the war on Thursday when it hit Qatar gas fields with a missile attack predicted to reduce natural gas production for the next three to five years.

Oil prices have soared. Trump has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil, and the happiest international criminal is Vladimir Putin in Russia. He’d love to break up NATO. It’s been his dream since he was in short pants, and as an added bonus with the U.S. bombing Iran, perhaps we won’t have enough weapons to share with Ukraine.

There’s unrest in Trump’s MAGA coalition, and Democrats are smelling blood in the water. Richard Ojeda, a former West Virginia state senator and U.S. Senate candidate who moved to North Carolina and was the surprise winner of the Democratic primary in the state’s heavily red-leaning ninth congressional district, said Wednesday morning that MAGA is waning and Trump’s charm is eroding: “I haven’t seen a MAGA hat or a MAGA flag in over a year. He’s angered everyone. He’s destroyed his reputation and he’s a danger to himself and everyone in this country.” 

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Internationally, America’s implosion as a world power under Trump is looked at much as one would gaze at the county fair’s sideshow freak. You don’t like what you see, but you can’t pull your eyes away from it either. How will it turn out?

Trump loves that aspect of his international allure and probably convinces himself that people really like him. His niece Mary Trump says the man has never been loved. She might be right.

Certainly, his streak continues. Swedish commentator Martin Gelin, writing in the Guardian on Tuesday, said the U.S. is no longer a democracy and is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey. There’s Turkey speed. There’s Hungary speed. And now, apparently, there is Trump speed. Gelin based his op-ed on “the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog,” the Swedish V-Dem Institute. Its conclusion: “Trump is aiming for dictatorship.” The institute says “the scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times.” America’s rank among 179 nations fell from 20th to 51st place.

Reporters Without Borders released a similar study in 2025 that said America fell to 57 out of 179 nations in press freedom. So much for our torch of freedom bringing light to the world.  

But all V-Dem did was point out the obvious. Trump’s aim for dictatorship, I thought, was only unrecognizable if you weren’t paying attention. I didn’t have that luxury in the first Trump administration. Now, none of us do. Trump is ignorant, arrogant and cares nothing about science, traditional politics, the arts and culture, and he lacks nuance and decency.

This brings us back to the president’s Iranian “excursion.” Trump’s actions have potentially provided the inspiration for future generations of terrorists who view America as “The Great Satan,” especially after all available evidence has shown that the Pentagon was responsible for killing 175 innocent school children in a strike on an elementary school that the Washington Post reported was apparently mistaken for a military base. 

He’s told us on at least four separate occasions how he’s “obliterated” Iran’s army, navy and their ability to make war or anything else. So why does he need help in the Strait of Hormuz? Why are we still at war? “Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — there is nothing they can do about it,” is Trump’s favorite go-to line whenever he is asked how the war is going. 

Some Americans have responded to Trump’s war reports like the prison gate girls from James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” shouting, “If you see kay. Tell him he may. See you in tea. Tell him from me.”

Facts show the war is escalating and Trump is appearing increasingly irrational. He contradicted himself several times in speeches on Monday and Tuesday, sometimes within the same minute — and he did this over two crucial international crises. The first was the war in Iran. The second was Cuba.

He said he could do anything he wants with Cuba, and it would be his honor to take Cuba. Take it where? To a barn dance? He admired the scenery in Cuba and said he was happy it wasn’t “in a hurricane zone.” It sounded like he was the star in a Marx Brothers satire — or in “Team America: World Police.”

Trump cannot string two cogent thoughts together. He’s better in the morning and fades in the afternoon. He sits all the time. Someone always hovers nearby. He’s rarely alone at any event,  which is usually heavily choreographed. There’s no spontaneity. There’s only vitriol as he insults reporters as he claims he can do anything he wants.

It would be nice if we had some adults running our government instead of the cast from “The Lord of the Flies.”

But Trump is beyond help. On Thursday he compared America’s bombing of Iran to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. In one sentence he offended both the U.S. and Japan. The cherry on top: He did this in the Oval Office with the Japanese Prime Minister sitting three feet from him.  

The man needs help. So far the Republicans remain too scared to call his bluff, although House Speaker Mike Johnson is obviously getting sick of him. Tuesday, the two appeared jointly at a public event. After the president said a GOP member of Congress was terminally ill and would probably be dead before June, Johnson had to clean up Trump’s mess. All he could say is that the president said the quiet part out loud.

Behind closed doors, most Republicans are done with the Donald. A few, like Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, are already speaking out. The question is now with the Republican leadership. How much longer will Johnson bend his knee? He has held his caucus together against all odds, considering their ineptitude and Trump’s.

No one is predicting that Johnson will turn on the president — now. That’s a fever dream. But how much further will Trump go down the road of destruction before Johnson says “enough”? It’s an interesting question that is being whispered about on Capitol Hill.

Most congressional Republicans feel the turn will come if they lose the House and Senate in the upcoming midterms. “It’s over one way or another after that,” a White House source explained. Others say that if Trump keeps going, the pressure point may come before November.

Jimmy Fallon will have a field day with that — if we survive the storm.