A general rule of thumb in journalism when researching a story, especially a controversial one, is always to get a second source. These days that needs to apply to the general public too, given all the AI-fabricated content in circulation.
Under normal circumstances, if a U.S. president invited a foreign power to take out two of his own country’s cities, that would be cause for an immediate double fact check, if not total disbelief.
But we are not in normal times. Nor do we have a normal U.S. president. So when Donald Trump said of Iran: “Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,” no-one had to check at all. While being both reprehensible and psychopathically insane, it is also entirely plausible.
There is, of course, also the question of whether Iran is militarily capable of “taking out” a U.S. city and if they would even want to? “No” and “no” appear to be the answers. Tehran is approximately 7,500 miles away from Los Angeles and Iran does not have missiles capable of reaching that far, experts say.
Nor has Iran ever threatened to attack U.S. cities and is far more likely to launch strikes against U.S. targets in the Middle East region. Such an attempt took place on March 20, when Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the joint U.S.-British military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Neither missile hit the base.
But the bigger issue is the response Trump got when he made that invitation to Iran to annihilate Americans on their own soil. He was speaking before an audience in Grand Island, Nebraska, and they cheered. These are the depths of depravity to which Trump has dragged a depressingly large swath of the US population.
The MAGA crowd of blind Trump acolytes has no concept of “We the people,” just as Trump is routinely trashing the U.S. constitution for which those are the opening words. Instead, where once Americans were obsessed with the price of eggs, today it is the price of petrol for their gas-guzzlingly inefficient trucks and SUVs that dominate U.S. highways, almost always occupied solely by the driver.
There is, of course, genuine hardship sweeping the U.S., and, with the midterm election just weeks away, Trump is anxious to blame shift by suggesting that the price of petrol will plummet just as soon as he pummels Iran into submission. Never mind that the petrol price shock is entirely due to his decision to unnecessarily attack Iran in the first place.
In encouraging the annihilation of San Diego as a “small price” to pay for stabilizing petrol prices, Trump seems to have forgotten that San Diego is an enormous and critically important military hub, with close to 130,000 active-duty service members in the U.S. navy and marines stationed there.
Washington, D.C., is a closer target for Tehran than San Diego, if Iran really did have the capability for such an attack. But Trump’s singling out of two California cities is part of his own manic plan to eliminate inconvenient “Left Coast” electorates.
Subsequent attempts by the White House to walk back Trump’s remarks were met with derision and growing alarm. White House communications director Stephen Cheung suggested that Trump “was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.” But anyone listening to the speech knew perfectly well what Trump “clearly” stated.
Trump’s derangement
This left Americans concluding that if Trump is making such barbaric and inflammatory statements without knowing what his words mean, then we have a clinically deranged person in the White House who should be removed from office post haste.
There is a mechanism in place to do this under that same U.S. constitution Trump and his cabal violate daily, the 25th amendment, which allows for the removal of the president if he becomes mentally or physically incapable of carrying out the duties of his office. If the U.S. president doesn’t himself (or perhaps one day herself) invoke it, then the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet can. If the president contests their decision, it goes to Congress.
Given the current coterie of obsequious lackeys surrounding President Trump, this is an unlikely outcome. Impeachment is the other option. So far, efforts by a handful of Democrats to impeach Trump on a number of different grounds have not found favor, even with members of their own party, which, being in the minority, would not be able to pass articles of impeachment anyway without some defectors from the Republican side of the aisle.
But after the November 3 elections, all that may change. Trump’s weasel Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already predicted that outcome.
“It’s guaranteed, probably on the first day — first or second day,” Johnson said in a recent interview when asked if a Democratic majority would pursue impeachment. “Remember, they’ve already filed articles of impeachment in this Congress. And they’re raring to go.”
Democratic leadership, however, have been less than “raring to go” on impeachment thus far. On the contrary, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has made repeated excuses for rejecting that path, repeatedly declaring it not a priority throughout Trump’s current term and more recently in response to questions about whether the Democrats would move on impeachment if they regain full political control in November.
But there are plenty of grounds already, even without Trump’s latest inflammatory statement. “The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day,” wrote lawyer and consumer and democracy advocate Ralph Nader of Trump back in September.
Nader is one of the most outspoken voices calling for Trump’s impeachment and has held two impeachment symposiums on Capitol Hill already. On both occasions, panels of mostly legal scholars and former members of the government delivered a long list of constitutional grounds under which Trump could and should be impeached.
“The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week,” Nader said.
During a January 2016 campaign rally in Iowa before being elected to the presidency the first time, Trump most notoriously bragged that “They say I have the most loyal people — did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Like this week’s audience in Nebraska, the people there reacted positively.
While Trump is yet to pull the trigger himself, his ICE immigration enforcement agents have been shooting people across the country, so far with impunity. Trump’s base continues to cheer him on. Likewise, they are content to let a foreign power do Trump’s shooting for him.
How much weirder must things get before Republicans in Congress start to realize Trump is doing them no political favors? Perhaps a crushing Republican defeat in November will finally wake them up to the monster under their bed.
No paywalls at People’s World
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
