A Series of Comments Written on Steve Schmidt Substack Columns, March 9-April 13, 2026
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August 2018)
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"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO." (S. Jonas, July 2025)
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"First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." Pastor Martin Niemoller (c. 1946)
Introduction
It is widely agreed (including in Iran) that Trump started his war because of one word: "Epstein" (click here). It may have gone on to other ego/political needs of his (virtually all of Trump's "political needs" have a strong dose of "ego" in them). But the achievement of the type of "regime change" in Iran that Trump is demanding (and the wide-eyed Cold Warrior John Bolton is demanding as well [see The New York Times, April 6, 2026]) has been achieved historically only by full military occupation of a nation (see World War II). And, oh yes, the only way that the US can guarantee the "opening of the Strait" is by having US military forces occupy both sides of it, indefinitely. Small boats, armed with small mines, can keep it functionally blocked indefinitely.
In normal times, what both Trump and Bolton are proposing (and the former, as of 4-14-26 is beginning to put into action by ordering a naval blockade of Iranian ports on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman) would amount to a Declaration of War by the United States on Iran. Constitutionally, for the United Sates to do this would require a Declaration of War, to be authorized by the United States Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. But of course, with the Presidency in the hands of Trump and the Congress in the hands of a totally subservient majority in each House, these are not normal times in Constitutional terms. So Trump goes right ahead and does what he does/wants-to-do on any given day. Whether the Trump/Bolton Blockade will be able to counter an Iranian fleet of small boats remains to be seen. Hopefully, it will not require the sinking of an oil tanker or a container ship to reveal that the Trump-blockade is not working.
As to "what makes Trump work," a question posed in an email "poll" that I received, I think that it is very simple: nothing has changed in his thought-processes, except that they go a little slower. No, I do not think that that "Trump is going nuts." It is, unfortunately, the same old Trump (see, e.g., his attacks on the Pope[!]). As I have always done, I think that Trump makes his decisions based on two factors, first the Racism/Sexism/Xenophobia that have driven him for the whole of his life (and drove him to the Presidency), and the demands of the Billionaire/P2025 crowd who supply "his" policy decisions.
And now on to some of the notes that I posted on Steve Schmidt's website between March 9, 2026, and April 13, 2026.
* On March 12, 2026, Michelle Goldberg published an opinion piece in The New York Times on an up-and-coming Far-Right-Winger named James Fishback (click here). With different names and places and dates of course, it is a column that, before the "Beer Hall Putsch" of 1926 in Munich, Germany, could have been written about an up-and-coming young Nazi orator named Adolf Hitler. Of course, "today's guy" is a Republican.
* March 17, 2026. Trump and Brendan Carr (the new chair of the FCC) are using the wrong term when describing the media they don't like as "fake news." They really should be using the original, developed about a century ago by Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi Party: "Die Luegen Presse," "the lying newspapers. "
* March 18, 2026. How delightful that Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin (who pronounces his name LeVIN --- why? to try to hide the fact that he, like me, is a Jew[?]), two far-right-wingers, are at each other's throats over Trump's Epstein-War on Iran. YUM! After all, they both support the P2025 TrumpRepubloFascist campaign to destroy our tri-partite US Constitutional Democracy, (Click Here). (I guess that they split in Trump's War because they do or do not think that it is helpful in getting to the goals they have set for the TrumpRepubican Party: see P2025.)
* March 20, 2026. I recently posted a review of major wars in Europe and North America over the last 1000 years or so (click here). Only three of them were the result of surprise attacks, and two of those were undertaken while negotiations were going on: "Pearl Harbor," and Iran. (No negotiations were taking place at the time of the Nazi surprise attack on the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941.) Some company Trump is keeping, and given the totally horrible remark about the Pearl Harbor attack that he made in front of the Japanese Prime Minister (click here), he is proud that he is in that company. All other wars were declared, or fully expected, as with troops lining up (or preparing to, upon respective battlefields), or ships moving through the ocean.
* March 29, 2026. In Iran, the cause of Trump's War (from the U.S. side) has been summed up in one word: "Epstein." Click Here
* April 6, 2026. It is widely agreed [as noted above] that Trump started his war because of one word: "Epstein" (click here). He may be going on to meeting other ego needs of his, but the achievement of the type of "regime change" in Iran that Trump is demanding has been achieved historically only by way of a full military occupation of a nation (see, e.g., World War II). And, oh yes, the only way that the US can guarantee the "opening of the Strait" is by having US military forces occupy both sides of it, indefinitely. Small boats, armed with small mines, can keep it functionally blocked, indefinitely.
* April 7, 2026. Regardless of what Donald "out-to-protect-my-own-skin-at-all-costs" Trump does, history will remember that his pack of enablers were his Cabinet, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff and his staff, and the Congressional Republican Party (to say nothing of the P2025Billionaires Club).
* April 7, 2026. I noted that I do not often disagree with Steve, but on his projection that Trump has lost [at least as of what had and had not happened in Iran and the Persian Gulf as of that date), I did, for the following reasons. Trump had already won on his first objective, which was to get the attention, at home and aboard, off the Epstein Files. Second, the Republican Congress had done absolutely nothing to rein him in, even though he had already committed war crimes, as in the destruction of that key bridge outside of Teheran. Third, at least in terms of foreign policy, he has established himself as Military Dictator of the United States. Fourth, he has managed to completely alienate most of the major foreign powers, something that has been on his to-do list for quite some time. Fifth, he is totally enabling Israel in its policy of Expulsionism, which may well end up him getting his dreamed-of resort-on-the-Med. (and we do know how important such properties are to him).
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And finally, two additional comments:
1. J.D. Vance was precisely the right person to send to those delicate negotiations on April 11-12, 2026, at Islamabad, Pakistan. That is IF you wanted to make absolutely sure that nothing would come of them.
2. In my view, Trump is not insane. He is not fundamentally different from the man he has always been. A little more detached from reality, but he is (dating to his childhood), a personally insecure man who, among other things, has had numerous business failures. He is a Racist, Sexist, Xenophobe, who, running on those three ideologies, came to be President (a job for which, historically, he is uniquely unqualified). Currently, he is A) working very hard to put into place the Next American Revolution which is at the heart of the Doctrines of P2025, centrally, replacing the centerpiece of U.S. Democracy, the Doctrine of the Separation of Powers, with a unitary dictatorship (a central feature, historically, of fascism), and B) working very hard to use his time-honored "look, over there" trick (this time involving the killing of thousands of people in Iran and Lebanon who are not party to the conflict, and the destruction of major parts of the infrastructure of both Iran and Lebanon) to avoid having come out the information in "The Epstein Files" that would finish him off, both personally and politically. (And, oh yes. His and Vance's attacks on Pope Leo are another example of "look, over there," this time as part of an attempt to get eyes off of Trump's Iran-Israel-Persian-Gulf disaster.)