U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he attends the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 17, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump is “crazy” and “enamored with war,” warned a former Republican strategist for President George W. Bush in a Monday Substack post.
“Do you think that Donald Trump is together enough to realize that he's being manipulated by Lindsey Graham?” Schmidt said, referring to the Republican South Carolina senator widely viewed as influencing Trump’s hawkish foreign policies. “This is crazy. But before you watch it, keep your eye not on Lindsey Graham.”
Schmidt went on to predict Trump will soon target Cuba, based both on the president’s rhetoric and on the strong influence of Trump’s equally hawkish Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. From there, he pointed out that America is already stuck in a quagmire in Iran despite Trump’s assurances that the war would end quickly.
“We are but 19 days into the quagmire in Iran,” Schmidt wrote. “The Marines are on the way. There is no plan to end the war — only strategies that will escalate it. The world's flow of oil remains shut down through the Strait of Hormuz. And all of this is because Donald Trump is incapable of listening. All he does is talk. Donald knows he can never be told no. And so now oil is careening ever higher.”
Schmidt also warned about the ominous precedent set by Trump threatening media outlets that do not favorably cover his war against Iran.
“Trump demanding the media comply — not with reality, not with what's actually going on, but with his version of the truth; it's madness, all of it, really,” Schmidt wrote. “Here's Donald, supreme warlord of America in our 250th year. On to Cuba next. And who knows where after that?”
He concluded, “War everywhere — the president of peace, winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, Donald Trump. He's just getting started. It's time to put a check on him. Let's vote all of these people out.”
Schmidt has previously said that Trump’s inability to win the Iran war is “unpardonable” in the context of American politics, and added that it is ironic that Trump once demanded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“He wanted the Peace Prize, and when he couldn’t get it, Trump lost his mind,” Schmidt said. He then quoted a February letter Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in which he raged about not receiving the prize.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump told Støre.