Iran doesn’t have midterms

Do you want to know what our president spent today doing? He posted 36 times on his Truth Social account endorsing Republican candidates running in primaries for Congress. One after another, he posted crap like this:

Congressman Glenn “GT” Thompson is a Tremendous Champion for Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District!

Congressman Rob Bresnahan is a terrific Representative of Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District!

When he wasn’t endorsing Republicans, he was attacking the ones he doesn’t like, Thomas Massie first among them.

Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, a place I love, and won big SIX TIMES, including all Primaries, must be thrown out of office, ASAP!

Trump just couldn’t resist reminding all his fans that he won Kentucky SIX TIMES.

Of course you know who didn’t spend the day endorsing candidates for primary elections: The leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They don’t have elections, and they don’t have to worry about the kinds of polls that have recently been hitting Donald Trump like machinegun fire: His job approval is at 37 percent in the Times-Siena poll published today. His numbers on how he’s handling the war against Iran are even worse: 31 percent approve, with 65 percent of all Americans disapproving. On “cost of living,” a pretty good bellwether for the economy, Trump is at 28 percent approval. Other recent polls have said the same. CNN found only 30 percent approve of his handling of the economy, with 77 disapproving.

Buried beneath all the political endorsements and whining about how he’s covered in the press, Donald Trump made the announcement that he won’t be bombing the shit out of Iran tomorrow. Trump claimed he was “asked” by the heads of state of three Gulf countries – United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia -- to “hold off our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow.”

You bet he was asked to cancel the bombers. Just yesterday, an Iranian drone hit what was described as an electrical generating station next to one of the UAE’s two nuclear reactors, the only ones that have been built in the Middle East. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said today that the Iranian drone strike has caused that reactor to rely on emergency diesel generators. This sounds rather benign until you realize that nuclear reactors rely on electrical power that comes from somewhere else to run the reactors. That electricity, for example, runs the control rooms of the reactors, the pumps that supply the cooling water to the reactor cores – pretty much everything that keeps the reactor from melting down, in other words.

Iran targeted the UAE far more than other Gulf countries during Trump’s war, firing 563 ballistic missiles and more than 2,200 drones at the UAE. On some days, the UAE saw more than 100 missiles and drones aimed at targets within its borders. So, almost immediately after Donald Trump rattled what’s left of his sabers, telling Iran “the clock is ticking” and if Iran doesn’t “move fast” on accepting U.S. negotiating terms, “there won’t be anything left,” Iran hit the one nuclear reactor in the Gulf. Hours later, the president of the UAE joined the Emir of Qatar and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia begging Trump to back off.

That wasn’t predictable, was it?

Hmmmmm…what else happened over the last few days? Oh, I remember! U.S. intelligence sources told the New York Times that Iran has maintained about 70 percent of its ballistic missile capability after Trump’s and Hegseth’s almighty bombing campaign. Thirty of 33 missile sites overlooking the Strait of Hormuz are back on line. Those would be the ones that target ships in the Strait if Iran decides it’s not only going to blockade the Strait with threats but start blowing tankers and cargo ships out of the water. All those strikes Hegseth assured us had “destroyed” Iran’s missile capability? Well, it turns out that the missiles themselves weren’t destroyed. All the U.S. was able to do was hit the entrances to the caves and tunnels, and Iran has spent the ceasefire digging out the rubble covering the tunnel entrances and moving mobile missile launchers to new locations.

Iran’s underground missile storage facilities are largely intact, as are the country’s underground stockpile of drones and drone manufacturing plants.

We are now aware of who else knows all this: the nations of the Gulf who got hammered by Iran during the war. They know that the drone hit on the UAE’s nuclear facility was just Iran dropping a hint – and a rather dangerous one – of what is to come if Trump orders another bombing campaign on Iran.

While Iran has been busy repairing its military installations and getting ready for a new U.S. strike, Trump was in China begging President Xi to order some civilian airliners from Boeing, bragging on the way home that they are going to buy 200 aircraft, rather than 150, which Trump claimed they had planned on buying. Reports since his trip say that China has not placed an order with Boeing, that the 200 number could end up being smoke and mirrors, and that was the big accomplishment out of his three days of pomp. Late reports say that Trump didn’t even eat the food he was served at the banquet put on in his honor.

Today it was reported that Xi and Putin exchanged “congratulatory letters” in advance of Putin’s visit to China later this week. Gee, I wonder what Xi was congratulating Putin for. Could it be reports that Russia has helped Iran by supplying intelligence on where U.S. assets are held in the Middle East and Europe, as well as providing satellite intelligence on flight patterns of U.S. attack aircraft? Recall that Iran was able to shoot down one F-18 before the ceasefire began, which must have sent some chills down some Pentagon spines.

Congrats, Vladimir! What do you know about U.S. naval jet flight patterns in, let’s see…the South China Sea? How about flight patterns for U.S. jets flown by the air force of Taiwan?

You know, and China knows, and Russia knows, and Iran knows how Donald Trump spent the weekend before the national security meeting he had scheduled for tomorrow in the Situation Room. Playing golf.

That’s what most presidents do two days before they’re going to order the resumption of bombing of a serious adversary that is causing the largest disruption in the world economy since the crash of 2008. They play golf. Then they go on social media and complain about a New York Times reporter being a “traitor” because he reported, accurately, that the Pentagon had not been exactly straight with the American people about the damage that had been done to Iran during the war.

Everything about this war is way, way out of the control of Donald Trump. He knows that he’s going to have to settle for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear facilities that won’t even be as good as the one he cancelled that was negotiated by his nemesis, Barack Obama. There are multiple reports that Trump asked Xi for help with Iran and was turned down – by the guy who gets tons and tons of his oil from Iran and presumably has some juice with its leaders. Trump knows that his war is so unpopular with the American people that it’s driving his overall numbers to record lows for a president at this point in his second term in office.

And he knows that the midterm elections are less than six months away.

Boy, I bet he’s glad that he’s got he game of golf to calm his nerves. Nothing like driving your own personal golf cart emblazoned with presidential seals and cheating your way to another “win” over whatever hapless supplicant you’ve chosen to play against this week.

Are you listening, Lindsey? There’s a hapless supplicant position open for next Saturday. Maybe by then Trump will have changed his mind about bomb-bomb-bomb Iran and you guys can pick targets while you’re playing the back nine at Bedminster. What fun!