Ex-GOP aide calls out Trump's 'fool' failures

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the signing ceremony for an executive order on mail ballots, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 31, 2026. REUTERS Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump is failing both with managing the American economy and prosecuting his war against Iran — and a top political strategist, one who advised the previous Republican president, characterized the current situation as that of a “lost war led by a fool.”

“The economy is in free fall — it's in a state of collapse,” Steve Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush but is critical of Trump, posted on X on Tuesday. “There are fuel shortages all over the world, and diesel is $7 a gallon. In California, there will be food shortages because fertilizer can't make it through the Strait of Hormuz, and neither can hydrogen or helium, or dozens of other precursor agents that are necessary to sustain the global economy.”

He concluded, “This is a lost war led by a fool.”

Schmidt is an outspoken critic of Trump, frequently describing him as far to the right of the Republican Party that Schmidt worked for during the Bush administration. Earlier in April he described the US under Trump as “an age of epic cowardice of selfishness of greed,” and he called the president and his associates “despicable, villainous people, and I think the High Court of History is going to judge them very, very harshly.”

He also has turned to religious language to explain his criticisms of Trump. In March Schmidt argued that even a supposedly moderate member of Trump’s cabinet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had displayed a “rotten” character by attending a summit with one of the insurrectionists who helped Trump attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“Things are rotten in America,” Schmidt argued. “The president is rotten, and so is his villainous Cabinet.” Describing Enrique Tarrio as a “Proud Boy terrorist” because of his conviction for conspiracy for his role in Trump’s attempted coup, Schmidt cited this as an example of the “sickening picture — an MRI — that exposes the rot of Rubio’s character” and epitomized the rot in the overall administration.

“The scripture-quoting hypocrite is directly, personally and morally responsible for the destruction of American aid programs that will cause the deaths of 14 million human beings by 2030 before the bell tolls at the end of these rotten years,” Schmidt wrote at the time. Similarly his Tuesday video underscored the administration’s religious hypocrisy with a clip of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth using the Bible to vilify journalists who criticize the Iran war.

“Our press are just like these Pharisees — not all of you, but the legacy, Trump-hating press,” Hegseth said in the Tuesday clip. “You're politically motivated. [Your] animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors.”

Earlier in April, Schmidt expressed dismay for the overall tendency of the Trump administration to talk like a theocracy rather than a democracy.

“I want this religious extremism, I want this religious nuttery, I want this religious nationalism, I want this evil buried under a concrete f—— sarcophagus,” Schmidt said on his podcast at the time. On another occasion earlier in April he wrote on his Substack that “the separation of church and state is foundational to American civilization. In fact, on the list of the greatest American inventions, the two at the top — competing for gold and silver — are the peaceful transition of power and the separation of church and state. These are brilliant ideas, the greatest in all of history.”

From Your Site Articles