President Donald Trump wants to end the war in Iran but cannot figure out how, according to a pair of journalists from the conservative website The Bulwark.
Noting that Trump’s approval rating according to a recent AP poll is 33 percent and he recently lost an important redistricting referendum in Virginia, journalist Sam Stein told colleague Tim Miller on Wednesday that “I think he clearly is tired of this s—— and wants to figure out a way out of it. So it's not that he's not feeling the acute political and economic pain here. It's just that he's in a game of chicken.”
Stein added that “there's a larger thing here, a theme through all these stories that I'm going to get to later, but it boils down to this: Donald Trump starts s—— without ever knowing what the off-ramp is going to be. It's the same with Virginia and redistricting. It's the same with Kevin Warsh in the Fed nomination. He always starts something and he has no idea how to figure it out and finish it off. And this is just what's happening in Iran.”
Seizing on Stein’s point, Miller alluded to the fact that on Tuesday the president called for an abrupt ceasefire against Iran, which given the lack of predicating circumstances led many to call it “TACO Tuesday” — that is, “Trump Always Chickens Out” Tuesday. The Independent reported the story with the headline “Trump extends ceasefire deadline with Iran in latest example of ‘TACO’” while The Daily Beast used “TACO Trump Gives Iran an Indefinite Ceasefire.”
“One of the limits of madman theory is that you always have to be the craziest man,” Miller told Stein. “And right now, he's in a game of chicken with ... the craziest sons of b—— in the world. And so it's like, 'okay. So now... now what?' And you can see what happens, which is he says, ‘Oh, I'm gonna end their civilization,’ or, ‘Oh, I'm not gonna extend the ceasefire,’ or, ‘We're gonna go back at their power plants.’ And then when push comes to shove, it's like he doesn't want to do it.”
While the “madman theory” was popularized by another controversial Republican president, Richard Nixon, Trump’s predecessor used this approach only sporadically, only after deliberately plotting his implementation — and could point to achievements like ending the Vietnam War, preventing nuclear war in the Middle East and opening up relations with China. By contrast, as Stein and Miller noted, Trump seems to act impulsively.
“But like, you can tell ... he's trying to veer off,” Miller said. “He's the one with the itchy turn hand.”
Stein replied, “It is a weird situation where it's like, who is the biggest nihilist?”
When AlterNet reached out to the White House earlier in April for comment on criticisms of Trump’s policies in Iran and their impact on the economy, White House spokesman Kush Desai told Alternet that “President Trump has been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and the Administration went into this military engagement with a plan to mitigate these disruptions to America’s long-term economic resurgenceAs energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”
