Trump at a cabinet meeting on March 26 — the first one since the US and Israel began attacking Iran on February 28. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning. You’re going to come to me and go, ‘Please, please, we can’t win anymore,’” - Donald Trump in May 2016.
I realize I’m showing my age, but I vividly remember the week the Iran-Contra revelations hit the news. I was a politics nerd and Thatcher-Reagan fan, and all I can say is that it was like a sudden, huge change in the air pressure. The era of Reagan’s sunny sincerity came to a swift, screeching halt. He’d lied, we all realized — which in those days, actually mattered. In a single month, he dropped close to 20 points in approval.
He recovered in due course but never completely. Something had been punctured, something essential to his brand. The same can be said, I think, of George HW Bush’s courageous decision to raise taxes in a budget reconciliation bill in 1990. It was good economics, but the betrayal of the pledge he made to the base was just too crude in the end to overcome. They had read his lips.
And so I find myself asking what happens when a president who campaigned on lowering inflation and never going to war in the Middle East … decides to go to war in the Middle East and thereby fuel inflation. What happens when a president who became his party’s nominee three times because he spurned neocon wars … turns around and embraces the regime-change war the neocons have been pushing for decades?
The Trump cult has survived so much. But this? I wonder. Those who joined MAGA for reasons other than celebrity worship have been publicly humiliated. Caldwell, Ahmari, Greene, Kelly, Carlson, Fuentes, Owens et al (in descending order of respectability) have all gotten off the train. Tucker even apologized this week! And yes, the internet and podcastland are not reality — but these people do represent a real swathe of real opinion. To realize Trump has preferred Miriam Adelson’s vision to theirs all along must burn.
That’s the first strike against MAGA: the decision to go to war at all.
The second strike is how Trump has actually conducted the war itself.
For even the most propagandistic pro-Trump outlets, it’s just unspinnable. Gerard Baker’s timeline captures the madness of it all:
Unconditional surrender. Regime change. Partnership with regime for tariffing the strait. Close the strait. Open the strait. No nukes. Some nukes. No missiles. Some missiles. Civilization wipeout. Ceasefire. War. Peace. And if all that fails, we’ll take the JCPOA.
This is the art of the deal? Please. Day-by-day contradictions, countless red lines crossed and crossed again, weird declarations of total victory, followed by even weirder threats to blow everything up again: at some point, even Goebbels would give up. Five deadlines have been set and five deadlines have passed without Iran capitulating. We are burning through munitions so fast — a staggering billion dollars a day — we’re now exposed globally. The memes are just brutal. As Tim Dillon notes, the IRGC mullahs are actually beating Trump at shit-talking. He can’t even win at that anymore. And the Lego movies! My God, the Lego movies.
And your average American can see something very fucking obvious: Trump is completely out of his depth. He went to war impulsively. He never expected the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz; and then they did. And he can’t re-open it. In fact, he decided to close it again. Or something. That’s left us with a choice between a global recession and higher prices ... or ground troops and an open-ended war of regime change? Americans can see we’re stuck, and even Karoline “Baghdad Bob” Leavitt cannot spin it away.
Maybe a miracle will happen, and Iran will suddenly capitulate after another round of famed American “death and destruction.” Or China will lean on the mullahs to save world trade. But surely the likeliest result at this point is that Xi will not get in the way of the US making a mistake, and Trump will not send the ground troops for a deeper war. So we’ll have to find a way to sign a deal very similar to Obama’s at some point — a humiliation as delicious for Trump’s critics as it is total for the US. And who knows how long that usually arduous process could take?
Two friends of mine and early cheerleaders of the war, Niall Ferguson and Eli Lake, are bellwethers of a kind. As the war began, Niall wrote a paean to “regime alteration,” even as he acknowledged the risk of the Strait of Hormuz closing. He nonetheless wrote: “One thing I can confidently promise about the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic: It will not last long.” This week, he noted that “the consensus in prediction markets is [that the Strait’s closure] will be over by the end of May, but remember: It took Henry Kissinger more than four months to get the 1973–1974 oil embargo lifted.” The title of Eli’s new piece tries to get out in front of what’s coming: “Why Trump’s Iran Deal Is Not Like Obama’s Iran Deal.” Cope.
But even if Trump pulls this off tomorrow, and Iran blinks back, the hit to the global economy remains. The Pentagon just told us it could take six months to clear Hormuz of mines. That’s a major global energy crisis — “the biggest in history,” says the head of the IEA. And it’s not just oil; it’s also fertilizer, sulfur, helium, aluminum, and methanol. Food prices could soar. Farmers are going to be hit. And this pain will matter. In 2024, many low-info voters simply recalled the Trump boom-times before Covid, so they gave him props on the economy. But this term, inflation has gone up, growth has slowed, and the mood is more stagflationary than boom. That’s fatal to the core brand: a political Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney moment.
Do the polls bear any of this out? Yes they do! Trump’s 40 percent floor has finally collapsed. AP found a mere 33 percent approval this week, with just 23 percent approval among Independents. On the “cost of living” — one of the key issues that elected him — he’s at 23 percent. More striking: even 31 percent of Republicans now disapprove of his performance (higher than at any point of Democratic disapproval of Biden); and in another poll, 21 percent of Republicans support impeachment. A solid majority does not believe he has the “mental soundness” to be president. No shit.
When you examine the intensity of feelings, it’s worse. In another new poll, strong disapproval is now around 48 percent, and strong approval just 17 percent. NBC News found those numbers as 50 percent and 20 percent, respectively. More salient: “Among self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, the share of ‘strong’ Trump approvers has dropped from 63 percent in January of 2025 to 38 percent today.” That’s a sea change. I think this time, it’s real.
Is Trump going to prove the naysayers wrong again? Some will rally to him regardless, but his blasphemous tweets have unnerved Christianists, and his early-morning rants on social media are making the madness more visible. In previous messes, Trump also had someone else to blame or play off — from Hillary to Mueller to Schiff to Kamala. This time, the crisis is entirely self-inflicted.
No Democrat made him go to war; no judge; no law firm; no university; and no newspaper. He did it all himself, with a little help from Bibi. And at some point, even with this genius con-man, accountability happens. It’s coming. Fast.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my take on DC improving under Trump; a chat with Greg Lukianoff about current fights over free speech; dissents over my column on the Pope and the war; five notable quotes from the week in news, including two Yglesias Awards; 18 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of turning a pot into a rocket; a window view from Arizona that looks like a painting; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
Thank you for this extraordinary piece of writing. I have been freeloading on your work for too long now, as a non-paying subscriber, but this piece has convinced me that it’s time to belly up to the bar (as we say) and properly support your work. So I have become a paid subscriber as of today. Thank you again for your deeply thoughtful reflections in these wild and perilous times.
Trump’s Big Beautiful DC
When I first got back to my winter home last fall, I noticed something had shifted. The economy was obviously hurting, and restaurants were shuttering. But a new calm was noticeable.
(Read the rest of that piece here, for paid subscribers.)
New On The Dishcast: Greg Lukianoff
Greg is a lawyer, journalist, and author. He’s the president of FIRE — the best free-speech group out there. His books include The Coddling of the American Mind (written with Jonathan Haidt), The Canceling of the American Mind (written with Rikki Schlott), and War On Words (written with Nadine Strossen). You can find him on Substack at The Eternally Radical Idea.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on whether Biden or Trump has been worse on free speech, and how to decrease wokeness on campus. That link also takes you to commentary on our recent pods with Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power and Derek Thompson on finding meaning online. Readers also continue to debate the war, and I respond throughout.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Tom Junod on his dad and masculinity, Jerusalem Demsas on the state of the left, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” HW Brands on the life of George Washington, Ben Rhodes on Iran, Harvey Mansfield on modernity, John Gray on Trump’s new world, and Robby George on everything. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Here’s a review of the Dishcast from a new paid subscriber:
Great guests. Thorny questions. No answers. Keep up the good work!
A reader is none too pleased by last week’s column, “And Augustine Wept”:
What a bunch of bullshit. Augustine’s just-war theory makes very clear that war is OK if it’s undertaken to stop a greater evil — in this case, Iran getting a nuclear weapon. He also makes clear that war is OK if the threat is imminent. Iran told us [“Witkoff told Fox News’ Sean Hannity”] two months ago that they were a few weeks away from having 11 bombs. If that’s not imminent, I don’t know what could be.
Pope Leo might as well shut up about our operation unless he also at least makes a statement about the 40-50,000 Iranians who have been killed by their government in cold blood in the past few months.
Pope Leo did just that. Maybe too late. Another dissent:
Are you concerned that Pope Leo so directly and vehemently opposing Trump on Iran could risk him becoming, to many, a partisan pope? To me, what David Axelrod is apparently trying to engineer, reportedly with some success, is just a more subtle and clever version of what Trump seems to expect or demand from Pope Leo: a pope who associates himself with one party and much of its broader agenda. The risk, to me, is that Leo could end up looking like just another Chicago south-sider politician who favors relationships over consistent principle.
Sure there’s a danger. I’d advise less war-talk, not more. But this war is so egregiously morally out of bounds, he absolutely had to say something. And the Axelrod angle is Fox/CBS-style bullshit, I’m afraid.
More dissents are over on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as gerrymandering in Virginia, Hasan Piker, and The Bell Curve. Examples:
“If America’s so rich,” writes Derek Thompson, “how’d it get so sad?”
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription. Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. From last week’s contest, here’s our sleuth who goes by “the Intrepid Couch Traveler”:
So after extensive research, focused mainly on the color of the satellite dishes, I have narrowed our location down tremendously. I have determined it is coming from only one of the seven continents. It only took me half an hour to eliminate Antarctica as a possibility. The rest took longer.
But it appears the dishes are from Claro TV. And thank God they are not a global company — merely a continental one, across large parts of South America.
But then, despite two weeks to solve this one, I somehow ran out of time. So, it’s time for the patented Intrepid Couch Traveler dart, which landed on São Paulo, Brazil:
From a fan of the VFYW:
I’ve re-upped my Dish subscription and now remember why I gave it up: I forgot what a fun time-suck the VFYW can be. If I give myself more than 15 minutes on this damn game, my husband will divorce me.
