He has to fear every book that comes out -- he is a con man and every book exposes him a little more, rips away a little more support he had. That is what happens with con men, they get exposed.
Tonight, he was going to send Iran back "to the stone age" and? He backed out as usual. Now he is declaring that they have two weeks to do what he says. TACO man (Trump Always Chickens Out).
This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for today:
President Trump said on Monday that a cease-fire proposal put forth by mediators between the United States and Iran was a “significant step,” but he warned that it was “not good enough” as his deadline of Tuesday evening for a deal approached.
Iran, for its part, rejected any proposal for a cease-fire, mandating that any peace plan include a complete end of hostilities. Diplomatic talks coordinated by Pakistan and other regional countries were continuing, officials said, even as there appeared to be little agreement on what any cessation of hostilities would look like.
If Iran does not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, Mr. Trump has threatened to launch a massive attack targeting bridges, power plants and other civilian facilities that would, in his words, send Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” But the president has also extended self-imposed deadlines in recent weeks, and diplomats around the world were asking whether Mr. Trump would find an off-ramp again or if he would follow through this time with what could be a gigantic conflagration.
Amna Nawaz:
For perspective now on President Trump's talk about bombing all of Iran's bridges and power plants and whether that's legal under international law, we turn to retired Lieutenant Colonel Rachel VanLandingham. She spent 20 years in the Air Force and is now a professor at Southwestern Law School.
Welcome back to the show.
You heard in our reporting there the repeated threats by President Trump to bomb Iranian infrastructure. He said specifically there's a plan to decimate every bridge in Iran, to destroy every power plant. You have heard the concerns, Colonel, about this potentially being a war crime.
Based on your expertise, is it?
Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham (ret.):
He's both threatening a war crime and he's engaging in a war crime through that rhetoric itself. And I will explain that.
First of all, the law of war, that's not just international law. It's U.S. law. And our military members are deeply trained and steeped in this law. The law of war prohibits measures of intimidation against a civilian population, including threats of violence whose primary purpose is to sow terror amongst that civilian population.
Those civilians whose electricity ensures that there's refrigeration for their medicine for those that are dependent on refrigerated medicine, that provides electricity to hospitals, where there are lifesaving operations ongoing, where babies are being born, whose electricity is helping ensure that the water is purified and clean, they are terrified.
It's reasonably foreseeable to believe that such rhetoric will sow terror amongst the civilian population, and, therefore, one can infer that that's what President Trump intends. So he's committing a war crime just through that language.
Second of all, he's threatening to make our military engage in war crimes and therefore stain their honor and their soul and come back with moral injury. Why? Because threatening to destroy every bridge and every single power plant in the entire state of Iran is called an indiscriminate attack. That is a war crime.
Why? Because the law of war says we don't engage in total war for anymore. We don't believe that children are the enemy and that civilians are the enemy. The law of war says, look, we're going to divide the battlefield, which in modern days is often a city like Tehran, into civilian objects, and they're protected, and civilian people, they're protected.
And then there's military targets, lawful military objectives that make an effective contribution to military action and whose destruction provides a definite military advantage. We divide the world into those two camps. By saying we're just going to bomb everything, bomb every single bridge, every single power plant that serves civilians, that is threatening indiscriminate attack.
And it is one of the most horrible war crimes there are because it brings us back, straight back down the slippery slope to total warfare.
Amna Nawaz:
Well, Colonel, let me ask you, if I may, if the military and their lawyers can argue that, yes, the power plants provide electricity to civilians and they use these bridges, but that the regime also gets electricity from these power plants, that these same bridges are used by members of the Iranian military forces, does that justify making them targets?
Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham (ret.):
You have to make an individual case-by-case analysis of each bridge and every power plant that is being considered to be a lawful military objective, because, first of all, just saying, by its use or intended use, has to make an effective contribution to military action, not the regime in general, but to military action.
Second -- and so a bridge, therefore, like the bridge that was destroyed last week, a bridge could make an effective contribution to military action because it's being used as a resupply line. Logistical lines are often a legitimate lawful military objectives in war, despite the fact that they also have a civilian use.
Their destruction at the time has to provide a definite military advantage, but that's not the end of the analysis. The law of war goes even further to say, OK, once you have determined that there's some kind of military connection here, there's a connection to military action, and this destruction or disablement will produce a military advantage, then you have to look at, will civilians be harmed?
And, of course, by taking out power plants that are civilian in nature, civilians will be harmed, because civilian power plants provide civilians electricity to their homes, to water purification plants, to hospitals, you name it, right?
This is why the United States strongly condemned Russia and our State Department concluded that Russia was engaged in war crimes of indiscriminate attacks because it was taking out power plants, electrical infrastructure in Ukraine during the dead of winter, in which Ukrainians were plunged into life-threatening cold without the definite military advantage.
Amna Nawaz:
So, Colonel...
(crosstalk)
Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham (ret.):
So, the next step that you -- go ahead.
Amna Nawaz:
If I may, let me just ask you this then. At this point in time -- we have a minute or so left -- what would your advice be to U.S. military commanders if they receive these kinds of orders? What's your message to them?
Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham (ret.):
Follow your oath to the Constitution and to the law. Follow, trust your training. Ensure that there's discrete analysis done on every single power plant that's on a targeting list, on every single bridge to ensure that, not only it's a lawful military objective, but that proportionality, that the harm to civilians, right, is not excessive compared to the direct and concrete military advantage to be gained.
And that means that most of these indeed will not pass that test. And that's what our military professionals are trained on. And I really hope they go back to that training and that they're taking these threats of war crimes given by the commander in chief and filtering them through their own training and their own conscience and their own legal obligation to follow the law of war.
Because these are war crimes that they don't follow those steps. And those war crimes do not have a statute of limitations. And many of our -- and it has universal jurisdiction. And so many of our allies could -- if you want to travel to Europe, ensure you don't get engaged in a war crime.
Sarah Ewall-Wice (THE DAILY BEAST) reports that he also attacked Joe in front of children at Monday's Easter Egg Roll:
The
president, 79, was participating in activities at the annual Easter Egg
Roll on Monday, but he couldn’t keep his mind on the holiday spirit and
resorted to political attacks while mingling with children.
Trump was sitting at a table with a group of young children and started signing autographs.
“Biden would use the autopen,” he told the kids.“What?”
one confused kid could be heard responding. It wasn’t clear whether he
was too young to know about the former president or didn’t know what an
autopen was.
“He’d have an autopen follow him,
Joe Biden,” Trump told the group. “He didn’t sign. He was incapable of
signing things, so they’d follow him around with a big machine. You know
what it was called? An autopen.”But the president was not done talking about the autopen as the children continued with their activities.
“And
he’d have the autopen sign for him. He’d take the paper, hand it to his
guys. Sign it with an autopen. Give it back,” Trump told the confused
children. “Not too good, right?”
As he spoke, some of the children looked around, as if they were no longer interested in hearing what the president had to say.
His vile Sunday comments -- on Easter Sunday, no less -- were beneath the office of the President. Pablo O'Hana (METRO) observes:
Trump’s
Republican Party is dead. Not only in its soul, but in the essential
qualities that once defined it. While it may still win seats in the
Midterms and retain the loyalty of millions, what truly matters has been
lost. The capacity for independent judgment, for institutional
self-respect, for the basic reflex of saying ‘No, not this’, is gone.
Donald Trump’s Easter Sunday post, in which he threatened to bomb
Iranian power plants, dropped the f-word into the public record, and
signed off with ‘Praise be to Allah’, is not an opportunity to wake up
Republican Party officials, members and voters. It is simply more
evidence that they may be breathing, but in reality they’re dead inside.
We have been here so many times before that Trump reaction commentary
has become its own genre, with its own predictable arc. Something
happens. Jaws drop. A Republican or two issue carefully worded
statements expressing concern. The news cycle moves on. Nothing changes.
The words are not just shocking. They are unhinged.
“Power
Plant Day… Bridge Day… Open the f***in’ Strait… you crazy b*******… or
you’ll be living in Hell.” Posted in a frenzy, laced with threats,
profanity and mockery, it reads less like the considered voice of the
leader of the free world and more like the rant of a barroom bully
spoiling for a fight.
And yet
this is Donald Trump, the President of the United States, broadcasting
to the world. This is what American leadership looks like now. The post
lays bare something far more dangerous than bluster. It shows a man
losing control of events, of strategy, and increasingly of himself.
There is no telling how bad the war and the economy will get, but one thing is starting to become certain: The war in Iran and the escalating economic damage from it is getting in the way of Trump’s true love, which is waging culture wars that stir up the ugliest impulses within the MAGA base. The president desperately wants everyone to stop talking about oil prices, bombed schools and the Strait of Hormuz, and get back to stoking racist hysteria and leading revenge campaigns against his perceived enemies.
Trump’s desperation to refocus attention on his obsessions and grievances was on full display over the weekend. For nearly two days, the White House avoided press questions about the downed fighter jet, presumably to shut down any discussion of the rescue mission that was underway. Instead, the president bellowed a few of his incoherent threats at Iran on Truth Social, but largely focused on his usual obsessions: complaining about ABC News and the New York Times, posting misleading polls to convince himself he’s popular and repeating white nationalist slogans about non-white immigrants. It was only after both Air Force servicemen were recovered that Trump deigned to acknowledge the situation — and of course, to take credit for their rescue.
Trump and his allies are working in tandem to redirect attention away from the war and onto their culture war fixations. On Wednesday, as the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about birthright citizenship, White House staffers and some of the more odious members of Congress fanned out on X, cheerleading for the justices to strip children born to immigrants of their citizenship. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the 14th Amendment ” the gravest and most preposterous of all constitutional abominations.” On Truth Social, Trump tailored the sentiment to his vocabulary level, calling the constitutional guarantee “STUPID.” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, one of the most compulsive MAGA social media users in Congress, tweeted, “The Constitution isn’t a national suicide pact.” The following day, Trump kept whining after realizing the Supreme Court looks likely to rule against him. “Kangaroo Court!!!,” he posted on Truth Social, along with a Fox News video claiming birthright citizenship is a “constitutional wrong.”
Despite the administration’s hyperbolic efforts to portray a 158-year-old amendment as an immediate threat to civilization itself, Trump and his allies could not turn media attention away from the very real disaster that is the Iran war. Thursday’s headlines were dominated by the surge in oil prices that followed Trump’s failure of a speech. It’s not that the press ignored the birthright citizenship case, but most coverage outside of Fox News focused on how skeptical the justices were of the president’s position.
Read NBC’s Story Here
Today, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), demanded more information following reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked or delayed promotions for over a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military.
Gillibrand’s letter to SASC Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) requests a closed hearing concerning Secretary Hegseth’s actions to examine whether they may have been motivated by politics or inappropriate bias.
The full letter can be found here or below:
Dear Chairman Wicker,
I am writing to request a closed hearing concerning the Secretary of Defense’s decision to withhold promotions for officers selected for promotion to general officer. Public reports allege that these holds may have been motivated by political ideology, inappropriate bias, or immutable and constitutionally protected characteristics rather than merit. Military advancement must remain strictly meritocratic and based on performance.
As a former Chair of the Personnel Subcommittee, I know that there are many appropriate reasons for withholding promotions, and examining the basis of the holds often involves sensitive or adverse information that warrants certain privacy safeguards for the officers in question. It is critical that we both assert the constitutional oversight role of the Senate and ensure that our military is selecting the best candidates for promotion to general officer based solely on merit, free of unlawful bias or prejudice. A closed hearing will ensure that we can protect the privacy of these officers while gathering information to understand the justification for withholding their promotions, with the goal of demonstrating to our colleagues in the Senate and to the American people that they can remain confident in a military promotion system based on individual merit and demonstrated performance.
Sincerely,
###
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