There Is No End Game

14 July, 2026 Daily News

Trump says U.S. military will reimpose blockade on Iranian ports: Washington Post

Last night in the Oval Office, Donald signed proclamations stripping federal protections from millions of acres surrounding Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah. The move clears the way for expanded drilling, mining, grazing, and commercial development across landscapes rich in archaeological sites, fossils, and lands sacred to Native American tribes.

This is what Donald said:

We’re terminating certain monuments. They call it monuments, not the ones we have outside, but these are large thousands of acres. It’s a total of almost three million acres and we’re going to be discussing it. But in fact, I think we’ll start discussing it right now before I sign. After that, we’re going to be signing two documents that are close to a million and a half acres each.

I keep making the same point because it bears repeating. This is what happens when we put men in power who are so rapacious, so greedy, that they care nothing about our natural resources, the natural beauty of this country, our history, or our traditions if those things stand in the way of making another dollar.

This decision will have an enormous deleterious effect on this country, especially on the wildlife and the people who have long treasured these extraordinary public lands.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is exactly what happens when we continue empowering people who value nothing if it gets in the way of their ability to make a buck.

Having, with the stroke of a pen, put at risk wildlife and landscapes that had, until now, been protected, Donald’s press conference quickly turned to his illegal and unconstitutional war of choice against Iran.

He was asked how long he expected the war to continue.

His answer was revealing.

Donald: Well, I think it’s going very fast. We’ve demolished their military. We’re hitting them very hard. We had a deal yesterday or the day before yesterday. It was all done. And then they broke up that deal immediately because they found out there was something in the deal they didn’t like. And they’re wired differently and we’re not going to put up with it. We are just going forward. We’re attacking them tonight. We’re taking out all of their capability for anything having to do with the strait, with the Hormuz Strait. And I think in the end, we will end up controlling the whole thing.

So which is it exactly?

According to Donald, we have completely annihilated Iran’s military capabilities.

At the very same time, he insists we must continue bombing Iran in order to destroy those same military capabilities. Both things cannot be true. Then there is the matter of the Strait of Hormuz itself.

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. The United States has no sovereign claim to it whatsoever. Donald talks about “controlling the whole thing” as though the United States can simply declare ownership over one of the world’s most strategically important shipping lanes. It cannot.

What Donald is really trying to do is restore the situation that existed before he launched this illegal and unconstitutional war of choice.

He was then asked whether a negotiated settlement with Iran was still possible.

Donald: We’re hitting them very heavy tonight as you know. We’re hitting them. We have tremendous amounts of ammunition. We have numbers that we haven’t had in years and we’re hitting them very hard and it’ll continue and we’ll see what happens. But we’re knocking out all of their offensive capability and we’re controlling the straits. We’re putting the blockade back. And it’s a blockade not for anybody but Iran. In other words, anybody doing business with Iran can’t go through. Everyone else will be able to go through. So it’s a blockade. It’s a very strong blockade. The blockade was probably more effective even than hitting them, but I think the combination is the thing that really does.

When asked directly whether a deal remained possible, he simply replied:

Yeah, I think a deal is possible. Sure. I do.

Well, I certainly hope so.

He’s the one who is desperate to make a deal. Since the beginning of this war, which has already cost American taxpayers well over $100 billion, the United States has become weaker, not stronger. Donald lost this war on day one. We continue depleting our military stockpiles while making ourselves increasingly vulnerable to future conflicts.

Iran, meanwhile, has only become stronger strategically.

And despite everything Donald has claimed, nothing has actually been done to rein in Iran’s nuclear program.

Why?

Because years ago Donald ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and has done nothing to replace it with an agreement that actually prevents Iran from enriching uranium or developing nuclear weapons.

Donald continued defending his bombing campaign by insisting previous presidents should have attacked Iran years ago.

Donald: This should have been done by Bush and Obama and Biden and people before them, frankly. It’s 47 years they’ve been ripping off everybody and really hurt again, killing thousands of people. So they killed 52,000 protestors, but they killed many, many people with Soleimani who I killed in the first term. Soleimani killed many people, many, many people. And not only killed. When you see a young former soldier walking around with no legs, no arms, a face that’s been horribly, horribly hurt, that was done by Iran.

My brain completely short-circuited. I often say we should never put somebody in power whose only concern is making money. Perhaps we should also stop putting people in power who seem genuinely fascinated by mutilation and physical violence.

That is not strength. It is not leadership. It is certainly not foreign policy. Donald appears to revel in this kind of destruction because he is so deeply damaged and so profoundly depraved. And that is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all.

This war is no longer being justified by any coherent strategy. Every time Donald speaks, the rationale changes. One day it is about nuclear weapons. The next day it is about controlling shipping lanes. Then it becomes protecting allies or exacting revenge.

The objectives continue shifting because reality keeps exposing the failures of the previous ones.

And that is precisely what makes this conflict so dangerous.

Donald also seems to believe the United States should be reimbursed for guarding the Strait of Hormuz. Except that is not what is happening. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States responded by attempting to blockade that closure, which makes very little strategic sense. Then again, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about.

Donald: Because they’re stone cold crazy. They are crazy. We can get reimbursed. And we’re not going to put it up. Yeah, I want to be reimbursed because we’re protecting a very rich portion of the world. We’re spending money. And so what we’ve done is we are going to be reimbursed for protection by the countries that we’re helping. For instance, you look at the five countries. You have Saudi Arabia, you have UAE, you have Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. They will do very well. But we think it’s appropriate. We don’t need them. We have more oil than any other country in the world.

So now we have yet another justification for this war. Apparently, it no longer has anything to do with preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It no longer has anything to do with protecting the Iranian people from their authoritarian regime. Instead, Donald now says the purpose is to protect wealthy allies and then send them the bill afterward. That is not how alliances work, and it certainly is not how international law works. You do not get reimbursed for the costs of a war you chose to start. You admit you made a catastrophic mistake, accept responsibility for the consequences, and work to end the conflict. Of course, Donald is incapable of doing any of those things.

It is worth noting what other members of the Trump regime had to say about Donald’s proposal to impose tolls and fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Rubio: It’s an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. We believe international waterways should be free of tolls. I know of no country on the planet that supports tolling or fees for the use of the straits. Trying to impose a tolling system is a form of international extortion. There is zero support among the Gulf countries for any sort of toll or fee for the use of international waters.

It should surprise absolutely nobody that Donald’s claim that he would impose a twenty percent toll on ships using the Strait of Hormuz quietly disappeared. Did he abandon the idea because his own Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense explained that it violated international law? No. He abandoned it because he spoke with kings, emirs, and other leaders he happens to like, and they asked him not to do it. Once again, American foreign policy appears to be dictated not by strategy or law, but by whichever conversation Donald had most recently.

Donald ended the press conference by returning to one of his favorite obsessions. He called CNN “fake news,” claimed the network’s reporting was treasonous, and insisted that Iran desperately wanted to make a deal.

Donald: Their leadership is all gone. Their first-tier leaders are all dead. Their second-tier leaders are all dead. Their third-tier leaders, who we’re dealing with more or less, some of them are already gone. And then you read fake news like your network, CNN. You have them say, “Well, actually, aren’t they doing quite well?” Let me just tell you, they have inflation of over 300 percent. They don’t have any military. There’s not a thing they can do about it. All they have is fake news because the fake news would rather see us lose the war than win the war, which is really treasonous. We’re doing another very major attack tonight. They want to make a deal. We made a deal two days ago, and they want to make a deal. They’ve been negotiating for forty-seven years, but nobody’s ever hit them militarily. We’re hitting them very hard.

Nobody has been reckless enough to launch this kind of military campaign because, from every available indication, it is not going well for the United States. It certainly is not going well for the Iranian people, although Donald has demonstrated repeatedly that their suffering is of little concern to him. And the idea that CNN is somehow committing treason by reporting verifiable facts tells us everything we need to know about how Donald views a free press.

What actually sounds treasonous? Inciting an insurrection against your own government. Stealing highly classified documents. Potentially exposing those documents to unauthorized people. Those sound considerably more like acts of treason than journalism ever could. But Donald has always projected onto others the very conduct of which he himself stands accused.

The bottom line is remarkably simple. If we have completely obliterated Iran’s military capabilities, as Donald repeatedly claims, then this war should already be over. If Iran is desperate to make a deal, and if a deal supposedly existed just two days ago, then why is there still no agreement? Donald will never answer those questions because doing so would require him to admit failure. He will never acknowledge that this war has weakened the United States, depleted our military resources, cost American taxpayers more than one hundred billion dollars, and left us no closer to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons than we were before he tore up the JCPOA years ago.

There is no coherent strategy here. There is no endgame. There is only Donald’s determination to avoid admitting that he was wrong, no matter how much longer Americans are forced to bear the consequences.

And while he continues changing the justification for this war every time he steps in front of a microphone, one other fact remains impossible to ignore: Donald Trump is mentioned more than one million times in the more than three million pages of Epstein documents that have been released thus far. That is a story the Department of Justice still refuses to explain.