The Cult of MAGA takes the ignis fatuus of Iranian wickedness as gospel truth.
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
—Winston Churchill
In the corrupt and bought-out halls of Congress, obvious lies told by political careerists are passed off as unvarnished truth. On Saturday, April 4, Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told a whopper.
“Our president didn’t start this war. He’s finishing it,” Emmer told Fox News with a straight face, even though it is obvious the opposite is true.
President Trump and his controller, Benjamin Netanyahu, aka Mileikowsky, started the war that Trump called an “excursion.”
Emmer is merely doing what he is paid to do—and quite handsomely. He received $1,984,488 from the Israel lobby. He trekked to Israel and kissed Kotel, otherwise known as the Wailing or Western Wall, a supposed remnant the Second Temple built by Herod the Great, constructed on the site of the First Temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II. Archeologists have a problem with this storyline. Skeptics believe the wall is part of Fortress Antonia, built by the Romans in the First Century AD.
Maybe Tom was sleeping off a drunk on February 28 when Israel and the United States attacked Iran while supposedly engaged in a third round of talks in Geneva. He’s not alone, of course. The majority of Republican lawmakers in Congress support military action against Iran, while nearly all Democrats oppose it, though no doubt they would have supported it if a Democrat president had initiated the undeclared and illegal war.
A majority of the American people oppose the war, but surveys and polls indicating overwhelming opposition are ignored by the oligarchy and its selected political class. Congress listens to the people every four and eight years. Promises are routinely issued, then summarily broken, and yet far too many Americans—as the banker David Hannum allegedly said of P. T. Barnum’s role in the archaeological Cardiff Giant hoax—are suckers, and there is a sucker born every minute.
The Cult of MAGA takes the ignis fatuus of Iranian wickedness as gospel truth. The lies are now routine. For instance, Trump claimed Iran’s leadership informally offered him the position of Supreme Leader, a claim so bizarre it was immediately discarded as the onset of dementia.
Trump said Iran was negotiating, even though Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Iranian parliamentary speaker, said no negotiations were held with the US, and added “fakenews is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
The president aped Bibi, insisting Iran is closing in on developing a nuclear weapon. Joe Kent, the former counterterrorism chief who resigned over Trump and Bibi’s war, said during an interview US intelligence agencies agreed that Iran could not develop a nuclear weapon. In 2024, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report stating the “Intelligence Community continues to assess that as of 26 September 2024, Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” Trump may not be aware of this assessment. He does not read and does not have tolerance for intelligence briefings.
Trump argued Iran had somehow acquired a US Tomahawk missile and used it to bomb the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, murdering at least 175 people, mostly girls. He also said Obama handed over $1.7 billion in cash to Iran. Trump left out, or possibly was not told, the money in question was frozen by the US after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In other words, Obama was returning stolen goods.
The editorial board of The New York Times, a staunch establishment newspaper notorious for running pro-war propaganda during the neocon instigated Iraq War, excoriated Trump for his “stream of falsehoods about the war.”
The president was only a few minutes into his Feb. 28 announcement of the start of the conflict when he offered an obviously contradictory rationale for it. He repeated his claim that American attacks last June “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program while also citing that program as a reason to go to war.
Trump is ad-libbing a war. He responds to the media with off-the-cuff and often meandering and incoherent responses. His frame of reference is shaped by what is said on Fox News. Trump’s advisors and confidants—son-in-law Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, Susie Wiles, and additional characters outside the administration (Lindsey Graham, Mark Levin)—formulate Trump’s foreign policy while manipulating him through cringeworthy blandishment.
“Trump’s behavior is characterized by grandiosity, exploitation of others, and a constant need for admiration,” writes Lilian Strobl.
His frequent boasting, self-aggrandizing rhetoric, and tendency to surround himself with sycophants who feed his sense of superiority are telltale signs of a narcissistic personality. This grandiosity can be seen in his frequent declarations of his own greatness—whether through claims of being the “greatest president,” a business magnate, or a uniquely successful leader. Trump’s continuous self-promotion, despite mounting evidence of missteps and contradictions, points to the fragility of his self-esteem.
Strobi writes that narcissists of Trump’s caliber exhibit a defense mechanism called “splitting,” the tendency to view oneself and others in diametric, black and white, good and evil terms. “In the case of Donald Trump, this splitting is evident in his treatment of political allies, adversaries, and even the American public.”
This is precisely how Trump views Iran. The mullahs are bad, whomever he picks (think Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela) is good, until they are not, as is the case with many of his appointees, from John Bolton to Pam Bondi.
“Iran was the perpetrator of hate, a very evil place. And I think it’s going to be a lot different in the coming years,” Trump said in a press conference last August. On April 4, the president delivered an Easter message. He said Christians worldwide can “live every day with hope in God’s promise, knowing that in the end, evil and wickedness will not prevail.”
Needless to say, this is extremely dangerous. In recent decades, the Executive has acquired power transcending the concept of three branches of government designed to separate powers as enumerated in the Constitution (Articles I, II, and III). Trump has routinely exploited presidential directives. He has signed 92 executive orders that fundamentally alter our constitutional and legal framework.
Elect a malignant narcissist and the people get lies, falsification, distortion, equivocation, and dissimulation. If you cast a vote for a megalomaniac, you get what’s coming to you. In the case of Trump, you get war, and quite possibly a final war escorting nuclear winter.
Article posted with permission from Kurt Nimmo
