The good thing about a Trump presidency is that it reveals the fundamental necessity of government. Not just at the small stakes, “shouldn’t the government be looking out for the well-being of its people” way, but in the big picture, “shouldn’t the President have to tell the people about a war he wants to start before acting upon it” way. Foolish naysayers of Donald Trump’s dealmaking artistry will claim he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but would a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing post an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus in the middle of a feud with the Pope? We didn’t think so.
In his effort to outrun the darkness of another Middle East conflict that should not be, on tonight’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart did his best to map Trump’s Iran strategy onto the lessons found in Trump’s ghostwritten mythos, The Art Of The Deal. Sure, it’s been weeks of statements made and statements retracted, but Trump’s most ardent supporters know this guy isn’t playing Chutes And Ladders. President Deals is playing third, fourth, and even fifth-dimensional chess, which is why any time he announces that the Strait of Hormuz is open for business, it’s quickly refuted by reality. A masterful gambit as always, sir.
Tonight’s hefty, 22-minute monologue goes through Trump’s greatest hits from the war, covering such golden oldies as demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” to begging “open the fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards.” There was the time he threatened to destroy a whole civilization and got out meme’d by Iranian Lego fans. He even threw J.D. Vance at the problem, which we’re reasonably sure is chapter nine of The Art Of The Deal.
Sadly, after two months of magical thinking, the war continues. That is, unless you consult Trump’s social media ramblings, in which case, we’ve won the war six or seven times at this point. We’re only still fighting there because he’s an artist who puts down the pen when he’s good and ready, unlike Biden, who used something called an autopen.
“It’s a cycle of demands, and threats, and premature declarations of victory that allows the negotiator enough wiggle room to, at almost any point, claim that they’ve achieved exactly what they’ve set out to do,” Stewart recaps, “ultimately achieving a nuclear deal that will probably be worse than the nuclear deal Trump pulled our country out of with Iran to start a devastating war that has killed thousands of innocent Iranians, 13 American soldiers, eroded our credibility as the leader of the free world, sabotaged the world economy, and will cost the American taxpayers, who knows, maybe trillions.”
Fear not, we’re in the hands of an artist.
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