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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Trump is desperate to cover up the fact that he has surrendered to Iran. He and the world’s worst Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have no idea how to compensate for their unforgivable catastrophic incompetence. Trump, however, has a standard ploy for when his negotiations fall flat on their face, i.e., he denies he lost.
Trump has the capacity to delude himself into thinking that a loss is a win, which is why he still insists that the won the 2020 Presidential election. He has similarly deluded himself with Iran, but will MAGA fall into lock step behind Trump? The myopic stock market has been proven unable to predict the future. Just prior to the Crash of 1929 and the Crash of 2008, Wall Street’s belief in the illusion of prosperity was completely authentic and nearly universal – but 1,000% wrong. Likewise, it is folly to think that because the stock market rallies, whenever Trump announces another faux deal, that we are not entering into disaster.
Although Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was criminally pro-Iran, Trump may have actually one upped Obama and made things even worse. Trump’s error was not in withdrawing from the JCPOA. Since Obama never had the US Senate confirm the JCPOA, it was a mere executive order which Trump could rescind. After Trump’s first term, Biden issued sanctions waivers that allowed Iran to access up to $16 billion of its own frozen assets held in foreign banks. Furthermore, Biden relaxed enforcement of oil sanctions which allowed Iran to generate tens of billions more in illicit oil revenue. These billions of dollars were used (1) to advance Iran’s nuclear program, (2) to build up its military, (3) to deter any other nation from interfering in its making nuclear weapons, and (4) fund its terrorist proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, The Houthis and various militias.
During the 2024 election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly and explicitly promised that he would never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons. In Trump’s mind, Iran had been making war on the United State for 47 years and combating Iran was not starting a new war. It is doubtful the general public understood this nuance. On the other hand, in a polarized nation each extreme only hears what it wants to hear. However, the public’s misconception was not Trump’s fatal error.
The Fatal Error Which Doomed Trump
Before we continue the analysis, we must admit that Trump suffers from some serious psychological handicaps. Trump has a Histrionic Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and paranoia, all three are present in varying decrees depending upon the situation. In addition to the DSM criteria to spot Histrionics, there are some practical pointers .
Similarly, one should know the DSM features for Narcissistic Disorder and some practical pointers . Because paranoia appears in many places in the DSM-5, colloquial definition is best, i.e. the person suffers from systematic delusions of persecution and/or persecution. Ironically, paranoid people often stimulate others to plot against them.
Ironically, people with these disorders can be highly functional and often cut through red tape and misguided popular opinion. On the downside, they really need to be strongly dissuaded from impulsive myopic of a Histrionic being coupled with the grandiosity of a Narcissists which must always be a winner 100% of the time – no matter how egregious his failures. Trump is worse than a two year old throwing a temper tantrum while sticking his fingers in his ears and stomping his feet. Such behavior is usually called Narcissistic rage. With Trump it can last for decades. Trump still has not recovered from his rage at Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not illegally interfering in the 2016 Presidential election. He has turned the federal government upside down with an insane passion for revenge.
The founding fathers, however, foresaw someone similar to Trump becoming President since in a country where leaders are chosen by democratic elections will sooner or later elect a narcissistic buffoon – although the Federal Papers did not use this term, see Federal Papers 76 and 77.
The Constitution provided a prophylactic remedy by imposing a mandatory duty upon Senators to reject unqualified advisors. (US Const. Art II, sec 2, cl 2). Although the duty’s title is advise and consent, its sole purpose is to reject the President’s unqualified nominees. Senator John Thune’s claim that Trump had the right to have each nominee approved no matter how horrible because Trump won the election should be classified as domestic treason, except we do not have such a law. The exact opposite is the requirement. Senators have a mandatory duty to reject fools like Pete Hegseth, RFK, Jr., Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, etc.
In light of Trump’s mental maladies, Trump needed strong guardrails to prevent his disorders from ruining his Presidency, the nation, and the world. Senator John Thune demanded the opposite – that incompetents, intellectually deprived people, crass sycophants, political opportunists be approved. As a result, there is no mature voice in the White House; there is no one to oppose Trump’s (and Stephen Miller’s racist) plans. If someone had constrained Trump from implementing Miller’s racist, anti-Mexican ideology, immigration would have been win for Trump. Instead, ICE was turned into a gang of murderous thugs. Miller’s racist ICE is the main reason that the election projection for Trump in November 2026 turned sour and then bleak. Hegseth’s murder of the Caribbean boat people further degraded Trump.
To date, Pete Hegseth, who is still too dumb to know that there is no such thing as the “Department of War” along with his juvenile passion for lethality, has made a shambles of the Pentagon. Likewise, other miscreants in the Trump administration have urged firing crucial national intelligence employees and abolishing entire departments which were necessary for national defense. Hegseth has abused Trumps’ anti-Woke DEI campaign to get rid of highly competent on the basis of race, gender, and sexual orientation.
It’s evident from the tea leaves that someone within the Pentagon, that has been trashing Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular in order to have Trump disregard Israel’s expertise on the Middle East. A wedge has been driven between Trump and Netanyahu by false claims that Netanyahu told Trump to attack Iran, knowing that any suggestion that Trump was not always top dog, numero uno, and the shot caller would drive Trump crazy. In order to prove that only Trump was in charge was to have Trump ignore Israel at crucial junctures. In 2025, Trump insisted on stopping the attack on Iran by naming it the 12 day war. That allowed Iran to retain vast amounts of its military intact and gave Iran months to redeploy, hide, and strengthen its offensive miliary capacity In January after Trump learned that the Israelis had made some progress in aiding the anti-Ayatollah opposition activists, Trump issued his won fatwa to the mullahs that Trump would protect the activists. Iran responded by murdering somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 activists which wiped any domestic up-rising. When Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, he relied on Hegseth’s absurd premise that the regime would crumble within a few days and there was no need to secure the Strain of Hormuz. Now Hegseth and Trump are doing Iran’s bidding by trying to restrain Israel from answering Hezbollah’s attacks on Northern Israel.
Trump thinks that disguising his surrender as some masterful win deceives only those yearning to be fooled.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a former Los Angeles-based attorney, an author, and political commentator. A long-time contributor to CityWatchLA, he is known for his incisive critiques of City Hall and judicial corruption, as well as his analysis of political and constitutional issues. Abrams blends legal insight with historical and philosophical depth to challenge conventional narratives. A passionate defender of civic integrity and transparency, he aims to expose misuse of power and advocate for systemic reform in local government. You may email him at RickLeeAbrams@Gmail.com)
