It feels like 1969 all over again. The United States is mired in a war few want, there is a criminal squatting in the White House and we’re on the verge of going back to the moon.
The difference is this time the president is actually a convicted felon who is quickly spinning out of control, and the conflict is being seen as a holy war by those waging it. And as the downward spiral of Donald Trump’s ship of state gains momentum, those working for him have adopted a Titanic approach: It’s everyone for themselves.
The president announced on Thursday he had fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, apparently upset with the way she handled the ongoing Epstein scandal and because she didn’t pursue Trump’s political opponents with the vigor he demanded. While reportedly not unexpected, Bondi had hoped to make what the New York Times called a “graceful exit” this summer. She should have known there is no grace with Donald Trump. Her firing capped a week in which the president appeared increasingly out of control.
Many of us who covered Trump’s first administration heard him on occasion screaming at someone in the Oval Office. But I’m told by those unfortunate enough to be there these days that the yelling is more frequent and less restrained — and sometimes peppered with colorful metaphors more akin to a sailor on shore leave.
On Monday, a source inside the White House said they heard Trump yelling from the Oval Office “Get him out.” Moments later they witnessed deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth scrambling like frightened puppies. This is, of course, why the press is no longer allowed in the “Upper Press” offices. Many of us who covered Trump’s first administration heard him on occasion screaming at someone in the Oval Office. But I’m told by those unfortunate enough to be there these days that the yelling is more frequent and less restrained — and sometimes peppered with colorful metaphors more akin to a sailor on shore leave. These same sources have told me that Trump has considered ousting and replacing both Miller and Hegseth. The only one who seems safe is chief of staff Susie Wiles.
Hegseth could be the next to go. On Thursday he fired Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, in a move that not only reflects the secretary’s growing hostility with the Pentagon’s military leadership, but that could also underscore his desire to have a scapegoat for the miasma the Iran war has become. “No one can protect themselves from their own incompetence,” a former Bondi staff member told me.
The day before, Trump even singled out Presidential Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt for retribution, saying out loud, while reporters asked him questions in the Oval Office, that maybe he should get rid of her. He paused. “No, I think I’ll keep her,” he said, as Leavitt chittered nervously off-camera, before falling silent.
Meanwhile, retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who was the first Republican to call for the resignation or firing of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, now has his sights set on Miller. The architect of Trump’s mass deportation policy “should go,” Tillis told CNN’s Jake Tapper, characterizing Miller’s role in the administration as a “big problem.” The senator added that it was Miller who initially said the U.S. should “go after Greenland,” and who has been “repeatedly responsible for embarrassments for the president of the United States by acting too quickly speaking, first, and thinking later.”
But it isn’t just Miller who is embarrassing the president with his Titanic moves. The Financial Times reported on March 30 that in the weeks leading up to the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, a broker for Hegseth sought to make a multi-million dollar investment in major defense companies. On X, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell demanded an “immediate retraction,” calling the report “entirely false and fabricated” and “yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public.”
But White House insiders say this isn’t why Hegseth is on the outs with his boss. According to several sources close to the president, the defense secretary is “making the president look bad.”
The pilots of an Apache attack helicopter were suspended this week after doing a flyby of Kid Rock’s home in Tennessee. Trump, while joking that maybe they were defending the musician, said “Well, they probably shouldn’t be doing that because you’re not supposed to be playing games, right?”
Hegseth cancelled the suspension, absolved the pilots of any wrongdoing and said there would be no investigation. According to some, that made Trump “look weak,” although others said it could well have been Trump’s decision. But what has Trump “really upset” with Hegseth and, by extension, with Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance, are their apparent attempts to “take the lead” on what they have essentially characterized as a “holy war” against Iran.
On Sunday Pope Leo XIV said that God “does not listen to the prayers” of individuals who start wars, as Trump’s war with Iran continued: “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.”
Until recently, Trump had not leaned into the Bible to justify the war. Hegseth has prayed for “overwhelming violence” against Iran and invoked “divine purpose,” sounding like a preacher during his Pentagon briefings, behavior that insiders say has made the president squirm.
“If Trump showed up in church it would probably burst into flames, or he would,” more than one member of Congress in both parties have said. Trump doesn’t go to church. House Speaker Mike Johnson does. He loves evoking Christianity in governing. So does Leavitt, who began her White House briefing on Monday by calling our attention to the fact that she prayed before coming out. “Did you hear the amen?” she asked us before mentioning the Bible in several of her answers and claiming the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics.
Then there’s Vance. He told an interviewer over the weekend that UFO sightings were actually demons from the Bible.
As John Fugelsang, the bestselling author of the book “Separation of Church and Hate,” explained, “Right wing Christianity doesn’t follow Jesus. They use him. Their religion is power.”
And if Trump loses conservative Christians, he loses power.
As Trump spirals, he is growing increasingly unhappy with those who are fighting to prevent, but also to survive, his coming fall. The president may rail against those who work for him, but he need not look anywhere else than in the mirror to find who he can blame for his descent.
As Trump spirals, he is growing increasingly unhappy with those who are fighting to prevent, but also to survive, his coming fall. The president may rail against those who work for him, but he need not look anywhere else than in the mirror to find who he can blame for his descent. His move to declare a holy war against Iran is frightening, but so is everything else he’s done. Most recently, he threatened to withdraw from NATO because our allies have refused to back our invasion of Iran, ignoring the fact that the alliance came to our defense after 9/11.
NATO is a defensive alliance originally built to be a roadblock against the hegemony of the Soviet Union and now, by extension, Russia. Only Vladimir Putin, who has provided intelligence to Iran to help them target U.S. forces, is cheering for its demise. As a former member of the National Security Agency told me, “[Trump] threatened our allies for not being willing to support this illegal war, but he gave our adversaries a pass for doing things that actually contributed to attacks on our troops. Where is the accountability? Stunning.”
The president doesn’t even honor those who serve. In a decision that carries the stink of Stephen Miller, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will reportedly be stationed at a Marine Corps graduation ceremony in South Carolina. A retired Navy admiral I talked to said he found the decision “despicable and un-American, and so should the Pentagon. That they aren’t resisting this incredibly bad idea speaks volumes of how little a spine Hegseth actually has.”
Hegseth’s lack of spine and Miller’s anger aside, they still appear to be the driving forces behind Trump’s public statements — and all three of them echo each other. The president appeared before the nation Wednesday night to defend his war, which he has repeatedly claimed is nearly finished. In his rambling monologue, he claimed he just wanted a deal for Iran to not build a nuclear bomb – an agreement we already had before Trump went and broke the deal during his first administration and started a war in his second. He said the U.S. would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages where they belong,” and he claimed to have achieved “regime change.” But the regime is the same. Once again, he claimed we were close to finishing the job. Iran, he said, had been completely obliterated, yet it clearly hasn’t. Our allies should gather some courage and re-open the Strait of Hormuz for themselves, he said, because the U.S. doesn’t need it. But then he said it doesn’t matter anyway because the strait would magically open itself up at the end of hostilities, which he claimed will happen “soon.”
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So why are we still there?
Trump cannot control the hell he has unleashed. Yet it is increasingly obvious he’s becoming more comfortable with it being called a holy war and refusing to recognize any faith other than the Christian faith.
This is the scariest part of Trump. Wednesday was Passover for Jews, something Trump failed to mention during the Easter luncheon at the White House. The closest he came was in saying, “I know you’re big Israel fans. Frankly, evangelicals like, and Christians — I think they like Israel more than Jewish people like Israel, if you wanna know the truth. It’s really true.”
I’ve covered every president since Ronald Reagan. They all mentioned Passover. Trump once did as well. Not now. He may be angry with his Cabinet and his staff, but the tail is definitely wagging the dog.
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On Wednesday afternoon I watched the Artemis II launch with a sense of deja vu. I was filled with the same hope I had as a pre-teen watching Apollo 11 blast off for the historic moon landing. Before leaving, the Artemis II crew said they would be orbiting the moon “for all humanity.” Apollo 11 astronauts promoted “peace for all mankind.”
Nothing that Trump does has that ring to it. Nothing he does is for anyone but himself. As much as he wants the biggest ballroom or presidential library, or his name on American currency or on the Kennedy Center, nothing he does can erase the stain that he is.
If you care to see how a real team works, take a look at the thousands at NASA, and the thousands more who work for the contractors that built the Artemis II rocket and the Orion space capsule. This week, as the crew of four astronauts lifted off to the moon for the first time in 54 years, they renewed the hopes of a ravaged nation.
Their actions will stand the test of time. Trump and his team will be buried by it.
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