U.S. President Donald Trump reacts at the end of the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 24, 2026. REUTERS KEVIN LAMARQUE
Conservative columnist Kevin Williamson warns people “not to make the mistake of overcomplicating [President] Donald Trump.”
“He’s a simple man whose actions are … described as the ordinary daily application of his vices: laziness, vindictiveness, greed, vanity, arrogance, cowardice, and, above all, stupidity,” said Williamson in the Dispatch. “He is a rage-addled dimwit with a savantic gift for manipulating lesser fools and a vulnerability to manipulation by men who are similarly vicious but more capable: Vladimir Putin, J.D. Vance, Stephen Miller, even one or two of his idiot children.”
“Stronger men can push him around, and weaker men succeed by flattering him,” added Williamson. “His enemies can manipulate him at least as easily as his allies.” Nevertheless, Trump must be taken seriously — at least “in the sense that one may take a brain tumor as a serious thing but not a thing you’d have an argument with or lose a chess match to.”
Leaders in Iran appear to know this.
“Trump’s escalating threats against Iran leapt very quickly from mere war crimes to outright genocide, and the bosses in Tehran ran that through their Trump decoder rings to reveal the true message: “I am terrified by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and have no idea how to get myself out of this mess,” said Williamson.
Tehran took him up on his ceasefire talk not because they were “cowed by his imbecilic threats” but because a ceasefire brings reparations and a promise to pull U.S. forces from the Middle East, along with other bountiful demands.
And of course, Trump went for it.
“To whom could he turn for advice?” asked Williamson. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio is an oleaginous little sycophant, and he probably is the best of the lot, standing head and shoulders above Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a Fox News clown whose great achievement so far has been to avoid appearing obviously drunk on the job.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, meanwhile, is a “conspiracy kook and Putinist who is so wildly incompetent that even Trump seems to have noticed; Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gabriel Jr.’s great qualification for the post is having been a producer on Laura Ingraham’s insipid talk show.”
Winning in Iran is a political project, requiring intelligence, imagination, and courage, said Williamson, “qualities that Donald Trump does not possess.”