What Has Trump Done?

When I was a kid, my sister and I had to spend occasional weekends with my maternal grandmother, because my mother had to work overtime on Saturdays.  It was not fun, because my maternal grandmother lived in an inner-city neighborhood in which there was no sign of grass.  Even her entire backyard was paved.  Anyway, one weekend there, I did something incredibly and spectacularly wrong.  I won't say what it is, but when my grandmother called my mother and told her what happened, my mother demanded to speak to me.  When I took the receiver and said hello, the first thing my mother said was, "What have you done?"

If the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) had the same directness and indignation as my mother had in that moment she spoke to me, they would be asking Donald Trump the same question about the war he started against Iran.  But WHCA's president, apparently, is a wuss, and so are the other correspondents, so no one is asking that.

But I'll answer that unasked question.  What Trump has done is spark a regional war that includes attacks on Iran from Israel, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war criminal who is continuing his crackdown on Gaza.  Iran has retaliated not just by attacking American military installations but attacking civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and several other Middle Eastern countries with drones.  Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth are responsible for having destroyed a girls' school in Iran in which nearly 170 students were killed.  Oil prices are going through the roof.  (That's the one good thing that has come out of this war; maybe Detroit will revert to making small cars - Ford has said it has the ability to do so in short order - and Americans will dump their sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, and maybe Volkswagen will finally sell the Polo in America and maybe Honda will bring back the Fit.)  An explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Norway - whose capital, Oslo, is the site of the accords that tried to establish peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians - may have been  an Iranian terrorist attack and could be a portent of things to come . . . not just in Europe but here in the U.S.  

And as if that weren't enough, Christian nationalist commanders in the military, no doubt with Hegseth's tacit approval, have declared that this war is the prelude to the End Times, when Christ returns to judge the living, the dead, and likely the undead - including MAGA zombies.

Well, that's going to ruin my summer vacation plans!

And as if that weren't enough, Russian leader Vladimir Putin - supposedly Trump's best bud - is giving intelligence on American military positions to the Iranians! 

You know, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the war that began was, at first, a minor conflict over the status of Poland., with the Third Reich claiming it as living space and the British and the French fighting to help Poland preserve its independence.  Unable to send troops to Poland, Great Britain and France occupied land along the German border with France, and both sides exchanged harmless volleys,  leading to the war's original name, the "phony war."  (The Winter War, which began with the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939, was a separate conflict.)   In April 1940 the phony war became real as Adolf Hitler attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway, followed by a major blitzkrieg that result in the Nazi occupation of the Low Countries and the fall of France, prompting Italy to enter the war and prompting Japan, already at war with China, to join what then became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.   By 1941, even before the Japanese attack on Peral Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt began referring to the conflict as "World War II."

My point - and I do have one - is that we are likely at the beginning of World War III, but it may take a year or two before that becomes apparent.  Such a war will likely redraw national borders at least, ,and end millions of lives at worst, and possibly wipe currently existing countries off the map.

Like the United States.

Oh yeah, that horrible thing I did at my grandmother's house?  It turned out to be no big deal in the end.  My mother would later laugh about it, though, I remembering the terror I felt at the time, did not.  And no one will look back in 2026 years from now and laugh.  They won't even have the urge to chuckle. 

CBSNN

We'd better get used to that acronym.

Netflix and Paramount-Skydance, as you might recall, had been in competition for taking over Warner Brothers-Discovery, the parent company of CNN, whose ratings have slipped dramatically since Trump returned to power in early 2025 - most likely because of Scott Jennings and Jake Tapper.  Both companies expressed a desire to take over Warner Brothers-Discovery and CNN and seek to improve its stand in the increasingly irrelevant cable-news sweepstakes.  Then Netflix capitulated and withdrew its bid for Warner Brothers-Discovery.

So?  So, David Ellison and his father David - the benefactors of both Donald Trump - own Paramount-Skydance.  Paramount-Skydance owns CBS, which is run by Ellison beneficiary Bari Weiss.  

This news came out a day before Trump decided to blow up Iran.  So of course not too many people noticed.  But I did, and I credit former New York TV newswoman Sheila Stainback for bringing the news to my attention.  Note the word "former."  Sheila Stainback, who used to be an anchorwoman on the ten o'clock newscast on WPIX-TV in New York, quit the news business and turned to acting.  I learned about this news from her because I follow her on both Instagram and Threads.

These days, of course, a former TV journalist has more credibility than current TV journalists, and even non-journalists like actress Andrea Thompson, who was a CNN Headline News "anchor" for nine months, have more credibility than noted non-journalist Bari Weiss, who will likely become the editor-in-chief for the entire CBS-CNN news enterprise.  Given her inability to know the difference between reporting and editorializing (why else would CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil verbally salute Marco Rubio on the air?), the potential for misinformation across two massive platforms (CBS News also includes the CBS News 24/7 streaming channel) should be spectacularly gargantuan.

The combined news outlets will control, I have been led to understand, roughly two-thirds of  news reporting on legacy media.  And with a war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran well underway - which has led to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - you can expect the Ellisons, one of the country's most wealthy Jewish families, and that yenteh Weiss to slant the news in favor of Trump and Netanyahu, two septuagenarians who cling to power to avoid going to prison, and frame the narrative to present the two globally isolated leaders as being quite noble.  I don't mean to be anti-Semitic in my characterizations of Weiss and the Ellisons, because, quite frankly, painting Trump and Netanyahu as the good guys in a war against a Muslim theocracy that is as wretched and as murderous as people say is not only a good way to rouse MAGA and Christian nationalists anticipating the Second Coming; it's also good for business.  They would have covered the Troubles in Ulster with a bias toward the British if they'd thought they could make a profit from it.

Also, you can expect more favorable coverage of Trump's tariff policy and immigration policy, less coverage at all of the Epstein files, and plenty of shady deals in the Middle East. Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that the Ellisons are being supported by significant investment from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including the Qatar Investment Authority?  Everyone involved in this merger, like every defense contractor involved in this new war, is poised to make lots of money while the American people are poised to eat lots of crap.  After all, the only people that get hurt in situations like these are the innocent.

I haven't been able to write or report for the hyperlocal news site I worked for until this past June, which suits me just fine, and I don't care if I never work as a straight reporter ever again.  I'm comfortable mouthing off right here.  And I am pleased to join my fellow Fourth Estate alum Sheila Stainback into early retirement. 

War Without End

My friend Nancy was on TV yesterday, but not to appear on a talent show. She was on News 12 New Jersey as one of several protesters demonstrating against the Iraq War, which began eight years ago yesterday. (The demonstration was held in Montclair, N.J., where I spend a lot of time.) Although that war is technically over - all of the American combat troops left in August 2010 - American service personnel are still there to help provide "security" until the end of this year. And to keep you from looking on a bright side that doesn't exist, Americans are still getting killed in Iraq despite their reduced role in the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has opened a third front in the Muslim world (after Iraq and Afghanistan), with a series of strikes against Libya. The United States is one of five nations taking part in what is apparently a series of air attacks designed to back up the rebels in Libya and help them get Qaddafi out of power. The main objective is to provide safe passage for civilians and rebels without directly intervening in the conflict. The U.S. is trying to limit its role in this operation as well as its scope, for obvious reasons, and it must be something of a relief for the American commanders that the French and the British are taking the lead this time, but once again, the West is pursuing a war to resolve unresolvable geopolitical headaches in the Middle East, and it doesn't look like there'll be an end to it any time soon.

Speaking of headaches, all this war news is giving me one.