Iran Gets New Ally: Trump’s Boredom
Report: Trump eager to seek new strategically vital sources of critical dopamine
March 26: Commander-in-chief would like to talk about something else now except inflation or Jeffrey Epstein … The U.S. has won regime change in Iran: Congratulations, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps! … Hegseth confirms, it’s Jesus’s war, we’re just dying in it … Facebook, YouTube ordered to pay for hooking kids by injecting addictive poison into their brains …
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Pres. Donald Trump’s boredom and inability to focus appear to have aligned themselves with Iran, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the Journal, “Trump told an associate that the war was distracting from his other priorities,” apparently blaming U.S. troops in harm’s way for all that noise they’re making.
Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reports that Trump is telling top aides he’s pretty much ready to move on to something shinier and more fun. Trump is apparently trying to avoid the military catastrophe of waging war on two fronts at once: Fighting Iran and fighting sleep whenever Secretary of State Marco Rubio starts talking with that creepy ASMR thing.
As of next week, the U.S. will have been fighting the war on Iran for one (1) whole month. Do you know how long that is in Trump years?!?
His mid-May Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, for instance, was scheduled with the expectation that Trump would be done with Iran by then, the way military leaders often add wars to Google Calendar.
Trump has told his top aides he wants the war done on his original guesstimate of four-to-six weeks.
Discussing the mini-war with political allies who then ratted him out to the Journal, Trump has changed the subject to less boring stuff, like the midterm elections, airport delays, and limiting the right to vote that the troops aren’t fighting for.
He has called the Iran nano-war an “excursion” and said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine were “quite disappointed” by Trump’s interest in leaving Iran alone soon to pick on someone else, maybe Cuba.
Thirteen U.S. troops have died so far, with almost 300 more wounded. Iran’s death toll is now 1,500 and hundreds of people have died in regional fighting, including more than a thousand in Lebanon, which Israel is demolishing to get at Hezbollah, displacing a million people in the “process.”
On Friday, Trump told a dinner of Republican donors he was playing hooky from playing war. “I am supposed to be prosecuting the war, but the war’s going very well,” he said, referring to him and his family not having to fight it.
A strategic alliance between Trump’s boredom and his inability to focus could benefit Iran by drawing Trump’s attention to other matters, like pretending he won something in Iran that’s worth all the damage he’s done and people he’s killed.
Trump’s timeline appears untethered to achieving any particular goals other than juicing his dopamine temporarily and jacking up oil prices for the foreseeable future.
The White House said Wednesday that the U.S. will hit Iran harder than ever if it doesn’t agree to stop hitting back. But Trump appears to have advanced his goals away from regime change or nuclear whatever.
The Journal reports, “One idea that Trump has floated to advisers: securing U.S. access to some of Iran’s oil as part of any deal to end the war.”
In other words, the U.S. would ensure more revenue for Iran by expanding the market for its oil to include the U.S.
Reportedly, however, Trump may have achieved one thing, regime change, but in a bad way…
JUNTA SEASON The Economist reports that new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamanei is neither supreme, nor the leader. (h/t)
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is now running things: Both the military and the government. Chocolate and peanut butter!
The U.S. has now succeeded in transitioning an entire country. First the U.S. forcibly transitioned Iran away from its preferred identity as socialist in the ‘50s to autocracy under the shah, then clerics forcibly transitioned Iran into a theocracy.
And now, by wiping out Iran’s theocratic rulers, Trump has transitioned Iran into a military junta. The IRGC, according to The Economist, pressured clerics to install Khamanei as a puppet, a sort of Persian Vice President JD Vance.
This could put some IRGC moderates in a position to negotiate with Trump. And it could mean that IRGC hardliners won’t go along with any deal. As in, civil-war-wouldn’t-go-along-with.
“We used to talk about the end of the regime when the war stopped,” an Iranian teacher told The Economist. “Now we fear what to do with a regime that is stronger and more powerful than ever.”
Tell me about it!
IRAN LANDS A BLOW While Trump’s social media has been all about America’s awesome military might squashing its enemies, Iranian social media is all about the same thing.
Iranian state-controlled media released an AI video of America’s military history and Jeffrey Epstein history that looks like it was directed by Howard Zinn. It’s about the same thing Trump’s posts are about: American power. Just, y’know, not upbeat about beating up others.
Hilariously, compared to Trump, Iran’s simulation of an attack on the Statue of Liberty is relatively demure, with a petite explosion at the base. What really hurts is all the blows the video lands before that:
Ha! You didn’t even mention Minneapolis, Iran! LOSERS!
Hegseth Confirms: It’s God Almighty’s Holy War, Alrighty
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth led his monthly unconstitutional Pentagon prayer service on Wednesday framing the Iran War in explicitly religious terms and declaring that God has definitely enlisted on America’s side.
Hegseth both called for God’s aid and declared that Iran is God’s enemy, according to an account by Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister and journalist who monitors the services:
“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle … behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.”
It wasn’t immediately clear why Hegseth would need to ask for God’s aid if God is already on America’s side. It also wasn’t immediately clear how an all-knowing and all-powerful God allows the existence of Hegsethery in the world.
Undersecretary of the Navy Hung Cao confirmed that not only is God on America’s side, He’s on Hegseth’s side, calling Hegseth “one of God’s mightiest men.” Cao did not specify how mighty Hegseth is or whether it’s all.
And Hegseth offered a new New Testament, rewriting Jesus in accordance with Pres. Donald Trump’s executive order against diversity, equity, and inclusion to replace Jesus’s mercy for all with Hegseth’s violence against people he doesn’t like. Specifically, Hegseth asked God, the highest power who answers to Trump, to help the troops be violent, even though Trump says they don’t need any help:
“Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Hegseth’s telling of The Parable of Overwhelming Violence of Action against Those Who Deserve No Mercy came during the first monthly service since America started its illegal, unprovoked warlet on Iran.
His remarks appear to confirm the Pentagon’s comfort with commanders telling their troops they’ve been drafted to serve the New Testament Protestant Angry God-in-Chief of Jonathan Edwards.
As I reported on March 2, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) was inundated with calls reporting commanders calming anxious troops by telling them that the Iran War was cool because it was part of Jesus’s plan for Armageddon, because what could be more reassuring. Of course, the joke’s on them, because Republicans Wednesday confirmed there is no plan…
GOP Declares War on War Department’s War Plans
The Republicans who lead the congressional armed services committees are mobilizing to stop the U.S. from sending American troops into Iran.
Pentagon officials briefed committee members Wednesday on the Iran war plans, which no one knows because it’s not as if Pres. Donald Trump does plans.
House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) said afterward, “we’re just not getting enough answers.” He was referring to unanswered questions such as, in his words, “what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered.” Special emphasis on “what’s going on.”
Specifically, Republicans are asking whether there are any plans for ground invasions and, if so, what goals they would have the way the war doesn’t.
“We just wanted them to tell us what’s the plan,” Rogers said, “and we didn’t get any answers.” He did not address the possibility that Trump also doesn’t know what’s going on, did not plan, and has no answers.
Russia Arming Iran To Kill Americans
Western intelligence agencies believe Russia in the next week will complete a delivery to Iran of drones superior to the ones Iran already has, the Financial Times reports. The drones presumably would be deployed against U.S. military installations and other targets in the region.
An Iranian drone killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait in the war’s first few days.
Russia has already been aiding Iran’s military effort by sharing satellite imagery, targeting data, and other intelligence. The Kremlin did not deny sharing intelligence or the drone shipment.
The new drones could make Iran’s drone strikes more effective, one source told the FT. Russia had already agreed to a weapons deal back in December. One thing Iran wants but Russia won’t supply is its top air-defense systems, apparently for fear of them being used to shoot down U.S. jets and revive Pres. Donald Trump’s interest in the war.
DHS Threat Levels Lowered
The risk of an imminent funding of the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS) appears to be receding.
After days in which it appeared that congressional Democrats might give in and approve 2026 DHS funding, the distance between their front lines and Republicans’ grew on Wednesday.
Republicans shot down a Democratic plan to approve funding in exchange for some meager restrictions for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ignore. Nothing in the plan appeared even to attempt to rein in Customs and Border Protection (CBP), whose agents killed Alex Pretti and then got informal employee of the month honors.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said a resolution appears impossible, because “I don’t know how they [Senate Democrats] will ever satisfy their crazy, online political base—because that’s what this is about.”
I love you, too, Thuney-bunny!
It’s also not clear how congressional Republicans will ever satisfy their crazy, online political base — Pres. Donald Trump — because that’s what this is about.
The DHS has been without new 2026 funding for six weeks. Republicans have refused to (a) use any of the leftover billions from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers and to (b) fund TSA separately from ICE and CBP ASAP.
And now Congress is set to go home on Friday for a two-week recess. Most of them on planes!
In Your Facebook!
The drug pushers at Facebook and YouTube were found negligent Wednesday in a landmark case where they were accused of adding ingredients to their poison that would make it addictive to kids. Y’know, how they got rich.
The lawyer for the plaintiff — a 20-year-old who claimed she was harmed as a kid by Facebook and YouTube, just like most other kids (except what kids are on Facebook?!?) — argued that Facebook and YouTube knew about the dangers to kids of the features they baked into their deadly products. Autoplay and infinite scroll and malicious algorithms pushing toxic videos were all engineered knowingly to hook kids into compulsive use.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was ordered to pay $4.2 million, roughly the equivalent of what owner Mark Zuckerberg pays for a pedicure with a happy ending. YouTube’s absentee parent, Google, was ordered to pay $1.8 million, less than Google makes by destroying just one local newspaper.
The precedent, however, opens the floodgates for greedy personal attorneys — society’s mightiest defenders — to go after these pushers the way too many politicians refuse to.
And don’t feel bad for the Big Tech lawyers who lost. There’s always work at the Justice Department!
PAYBACK Serendipitously, Facebook street soldiers got their reward for pushing to kids on the same day a jury found for one of their victims: They were kicked to the street.
The company laid off about 700 people. The New York Times reports that the layoffs came one day after Facebook announced a new compensation plan that could mean as much as $921 million more for top executives over the next five years. Each. Eafuckingch.
The new plan comes with options like fleeing to New Zealand when the revolution comes and disguising themselves as billionaire sheep.
MORE PAYBACK Public officials who approve new data centers for companies so they can lay off 700 employees and give top executives $921 million eafuckingch are getting their comethefuckonuppance.
The Associated Press reports that more everyday folks are suing to block those centers and launching recall efforts against the elected officials who approve them. Thanks, Big Tech, for getting so many new folks involved in politics!
Warner Defends AI, Which Immediately Stabs Him in the Back
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Wednesday proposed a federal moratorium on new data centers until regulations are in place to protect people from the predatory software of tech edgelords.
Regulating dangerous shit before it’s unleashed on humanity would represent a reversal from past policy on everything from cigarettes to fossil fuels to plastic to rich people.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) responded to the moratorium legislation Wednesday, saying, “That would be idiocy.”
Your Amish TFN doesn’t normally resort to fake artificial intelligence, but I did ask Google whether Warner was right that forcing regulations on “AI” would be idiocy.
AI did not agree.
Instead, it cited the argument that “a moratorium is essential to take time to ‘understand the risks’ and implement safeguards.” Not to mention to protect the people AI stole that answer from.
Three Quickies
Under the cover of war, The Boat-iac Killer™ struck again on Wednesday. The U.S. military illegally killed four people in a boat in the Caribbean. The military claimed it was a drug-trafficking boat, so it could have been an Iranian girls school. The Boat-iac Killer™ has now boat-iac killed 167 people in 47 separate attacks, none of which have led Democrats to promise prosecutions.
Sludge reports — before you hit their paywall — that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which raises money for House candidates that don’t threaten to shake things up too much, has set a new record. For the first time, in just one month, the DCCC has raised $4.1 million … just from lobbyists! Lobbyists for C-suite rich people are a growing proportion of DCCC donors, compared to donations from everyday people who wouldn’t get past the lobby. Remember: Support causes and candidates, not committees that put out the red carpet for lobbies.
Pres. Donald Trump escalated his offensive against the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. Trump said two of his own appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — are bad for the country because they helped reverse his tariffs, forcing the U.S. to pay back its ill-gotten booty. The one justice Trump thinks he got right, of course, was fellow accused sex predator Brett Kavanaugh.
Taking Action
The next No Kings rally is Saturday, March 28. You can find one near you here.
You can also read an argument against these rallies here. I agree with most of it, although I’m not convinced that participating in No Kings rallies is actually detrimental to the cause, whatever yours might be.
The only thing I’d like to see on Saturday is less messaging about getting rid of the bad things and more about what we want instead. Free Health Care For All. Fight Climate Change. Universal Basic Income.
That kinda thing.
TCB
NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD Veteran TV news guy and TV non-news guy Paul Beban joins me today at noon, eastern. You can join us here.
And on April 2 at noon eastern, please join me for “How To Save TV News: Lizz Winstead.” Lizz is a friend, and a friend of abortion rights, and the co-creator of The Daily Show.
Former Good Morning America anchor Kevin Newman joins me on April 9. Bookmark “How To Save TV News: Kevin Newman” right here!
And Chris Cillizza, formerly of CNN, has agreed to join the fun, at a date TBD. Stay tuned!
SUPPORTING TFN Every day, TFN is here for you thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.
Go get ‘em, kids! Trump’s gonna be the first president to sleepwalk America out of a war!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
As an organizer helping to build the No Kings protests in Portland (OR), I think we can do both. We can demand more from the national movement AND attend the protests to create community and lend ourselves to visible dissent. We can perform in the streets AND perform our civic duty. We can show up for a day, and not let it end there.
People are waking up, and these marches are often just the gateway drug to more potent action.
My reply to the urgent text messages from the DCCC: I will donate to the DCCC when the senate Dems put sand in the gears of EVERYTHING and stop voting with the Republicans on anything. So probably never.