One crazed man holds the fate of the world in his hands and his name is Donald Trump. Can his administration, the Deep State, the War Powers Act, Russia or anybody else stop him? asks Joe Lauria.
Attack on IRIB’s Live News Broadcasting Studio in Tehran by U.S.-Israeli forces, June 2025. (Avash Media/Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Donald Trump “indefinitely” extended the ceasefire with Iran on April 21 and over the last 12 days the certifiable man in the White House has vacillated between words of peace and threats of all out war as he stands alone on the brink of a decision that could end the world as we know it for the foreseeable future.
Under unrelenting pressure from Israel to restart the war with with Tehran, Trump holds almost unprecedented individual power to unleash a series of events that could bring the world economic system to a crashing halt.
To those armchair warriors who think they are smarter than everyone else and ridicule anyone who thinks the American president sometimes actually runs the show and isn’t always subject to the wiles of the Deep State, consider what economist Jeffrey Sachs has to say about it.
Former British MP and TV host George Galloway asked him on Sunday: “If there is a war, it seems to rest on the tortured, fevered speculation and social media ramblings and so on of one individual. How can that be?”
Sachs responded:
“Do individuals make a difference? Well, when there are systems, the answer is no, not so much. But we have completely broken all rational systems in the United States. And by that I mean the actual processes of decision are quite exposed right now and they rest with Trump. It’s weird. But it’s not an exaggeration.”
“Trump was fool enough to to buy it or to go along with it given his range of pressure points and interests and delusions,” said Sachs. “Everyone else in this small room basically thought it was nuts except for [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth who’s an absolute blooming idiot right alongside Trump.”
The New York Times reported that none of Trump’s aides in the room spoke up at the time, but afterward told the newspaper they thought the Israelis were selling the delusion that the Iranian government would collapse in days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quoted as saying the Israeli pitch was “bullshit.”
“We’re not talking about an interagency process,” said Sachs. “We’re not talking about intelligence estimates. We’re not talking about a plan. We’re not talking about the president of the United States consulting with congressional leaders. We’re not talking about American public opinion, which runs overwhelmingly against everything that is happening.”
He said:
“We’re talking about a few people led by a delusional old man who never was very good at anything but is very bad at this. … So there’s no process. This is a case where an individual can make decisions. Netanyahu is his own case. He’s a very, very dark pathological figure. … This is what we have. We do not have either rational leadership or a rational process in I think either country, the U.S. or Israel. …Actually both countries add a strain of religious zealotry which is also pretty strange.”
Deep State Efforts
Left to right: Pompeo, Trump and Bolton. (Wikimedia Commons)
After the Deep State tried to destroy Trump’s first presidency by interfering illegally in domestic U.S. politics in the scandal known as Russiagate, Trump put together for the second term an administration of sycophants who won’t oppose him like John Bolton, Jim Mattis and Gen. Mark Miley, did in the first. (Bolton would certainly be on board for regime change in Iran.)
So this most consequential decision is up to one, very unstable man. Relaunching the war would invite vowed Iranian retaliation against energy installations throughout the Gulf, plunging the world into an economic dark age.
In trying to decide what to do, Trump may very well be calculating whether he will personally make a profit as he acts the part of the quintessential American businessman: profits über alles … (as I discussed today in my interview with Regis Tremblay.)
Trump is under considerable Israeli pressure to resume the bombing and risk catastrophe.
Miriam Adelson, Trump’s billionaire Israeli donor, was rumored to have been back at the White House to push war on Trump. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz last week said in a chilling video that Israel is “waiting for a green light from the U.S.” because “Israel is ready to renew the war against Iran … to return Iran to the dark and stone age by blowing up the central electric power facilities and crushing the national infrastructure.”
Katz complained: “We did not ask for a ceasefire, we were never looking for a ceasefire. … I want to emphasize that we will not abandon this field until the aggressor is seriously punished and until he finally repents.” Extraordinary that he called Iran the aggressor and in religious terms.
Afterward, Trump posted a picture of himself holding a machine gun in front of an exploding battlefield with the words, “No more mr nice guy….”
Can He Be Stopped?
A couple of weeks ago Galloway said that if a British prime minister had posted images of himself as Jesus Christ and in the next moment threatened a genocidal destruction of Iran’s civilization, men in white coats would be at No. 10 the next morning to remove him. Why is this not happening in America?
In a parliamentary system a British prime minister’s own party would in this case agree with a vote of no-confidence, the government would collapse, a new party leader and prime minister would be chosen and that would be the end of it.
In the American system, removing the leader, who is both head of government and head of state, is exceedingly difficult. The only options are impeachment and conviction, or an invocation of the 25th Amendment. Perhaps that’s what motivated Cole Allen, given the stakes and the unusual power in the hands of an unstable president.
The War Powers Act
U.S. Capitol building, February 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard/Ashley Goodwin/Public domain)
The 1973 War Powers Act, which gives a U.S. president 60 days to start a war before Congress can end it, can’t seem to stop Trump either. Hegseth and Trump tried to deceive Congress into believing Trump “terminated” the war and that he’s waging only an economic blockade in order to beat the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Act.
Trump told Congress in a letter on the deadline day last Friday that “there has been no exchange in fire between United States forces and Iran” since April 7, meaning that the hostilities he began on Feb. 28 “have terminated.”
Regarding the need for Congress to either authorize the war, or he must end it, Trump said: “I don’t think that it’s constitutional, what they are asking for.” He said the U.S. is on its way to “a big victory” in Iran. “These are not patriotic people that are asking.”
If he restarts hostilities he may argue he’s started a new war with a fresh 60 days. Does Congress have the guts to call him out?
A Grand Bargain?
Russia is making its bid to prevent Trump from restarting the war. In a 90-minute call to Trump last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that resumed military action by the U.S. and Israel would have “inevitable and extremely damaging consequences.”
Trump told reporters that Putin “likes to be involved” and that he offered to take Iran’s 60 percent enriched uranium. Trump said he told Putin to focus on ending the war in Ukraine first. Trump said the two wars in Ukraine and Iran could potentially end on a “similar timetable.”
On Consortium News’s Saturday evening program The World This Week, analyst Scott Ritter suggested that Putin may be offering Trump a grand bargain to solve both wars. Russia would save Trump from the Iran trap by taking the uranium and in exchange Trump would accede to Russian terms to end the war in Ukraine.
Presuming such an offer was made, it would not resolve the issue of the hold Netanyahu has over Trump, very possibly because Israel in all likelihood owns a copy of the unredacted Epstein files and videos, which could well incriminate Trump.
There would also be the matter of getting the fiercely Russophobic Europeans, chief among them Britain, to go along with a deal in Ukraine that would favor Russia. While Trump ridicules Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he reveres the king. He looks into the king’s eyes and appears to see another one.
Charles Butts In
Charles III address Congress last week. (AP Scereensot)
On the same day Trump spoke to Putin, King Charles III was at the U.S. Capitol addressing a joint session of Congress. At one point the king essentially spoke about preparing for war against Russia.
He said Britain was “committed to the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the Cold War.” He spoke of the U.S. and Britain standing “shoulder to shoulder, through two World Wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security. … that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people.”
He praised NATO for keeping North Americans and Europeans safe from “our common adversaries.” And then he praised the two most important of the Five Eyes. “Our defense, intelligence and security ties are hard-wired together through relationships measured not in years, but in decades,” he said.
Despite being mesmerized by the crown, Trump apparently didn’t get the message about keeping the pressure on Russia. Two days later he pulled 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany in a fit of pique after German Chancellor Frederic Merz accurately said Iran had “humiliated” the United States.
It is that humiliation of having lost the first phase of this war that could indeed be a chief factor in Trump being reckless enough to restart it.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
The Trump phenomenon cannot be fully understood without the US’s history since the toppling of the Soviet Union.
Seeds of the Trump administration were planted long before the Trump phenomenon emerged — back when the Soviet Union was brought down. The victorious West, led by the US, declaring “the end of history,” forcefully telling the world how to run its affairs, despite the objections of a diminished Russia and some smaller states.
Ignoring Russian protests, the US expanded NATO membership from 16 in the 1990s to 30 by 2020. The overwhelming majority of the new members were either allies of the former Soviet Union or its republics — this despite the US Secretary of State’s assurance that NATO jurisdiction would not move east, “not one inch.” Meanwhile, the NATO-led US war machine invaded the socialist state of Yugoslavia and divided it into several smaller and weaker states. It then turned to the Middle East, using September 11 as a pretext to start long-running and costly regime changes in that region.
As the US was engaged in expansionism, militarism, economic warfare, and debt accumulation, China, Russia, and Iran quietly but steadily built their capacity. By the early 2010s, China had emerged as a main US competitor.
The Russian war on Ukraine, the October 7 Palestinian uprising, and the US-Israeli war on Iran represent the slow but sure transformation from US unilateralism to a multipolar world.
The Trump administration is the product of the US’s forceful unilateralism — endless wars, economic sanctions, and an economy based on the Ponzi scheme that rules US financial markets.
Trump represents a United States that is rapidly entering a multipolar world but is trying to keep the old order. Trump is supposedly an out-of-the-box thinker, a magician who is here to save America. The so called mad, crazed man can be better understood in this context.
In 1997 PNAC publicly called for global American dominance. Wesley Clark talking about the regime change memo (for 7 countries) in 2001 demonstrates that this had been officially adopted as policy.
In point of fact the principles of PNAC had already been in operation for decades as demonstrated by Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War(s), Bosnia, etc. This is systemic and a large portion of the establishment supports these actions – MIC, energy sector, banking, etc.
Oil companies are recording record profits depite the US being self-sufficient in energy as prices are controlled by speculators (commodities traders) and metered supply. The “defense” industry is having money shoveled at them and the proposed “defense” budget is $1.5 trillion, up from $838 billion, nearly double in just one year. Banks too are recording record profits, many through risky unregulated derivatives on global turmoil that has proven too profitable to regulate, especially when backstopped by taxpayers.
It’s a system, and it really doesn’t matter who is in the Oval Office. The president is just the point man for the system, a sacrificial lamb and scapegoat when things go sideways.
Rest assured, the system will endure.
The Nature of foundation of the Earth
If a flaw in Nature or rouge appears it,is dealt,with
We as humans were all born onto and part of this Earth and need to do as Nature
If Trump attacks Iran they will fulfil their promise and wipe out the Gulf States. A major portion of the world’s oil, gas and fertilizer supplies will cease to exist. Financial markets will collapse. Airlines will cease to fly and truckers will cease to deliver food and goods because fuel is so expensive. Everything will shut down — globally. And all of the Trump administration lies about US military might and the military subjugation of Iran will be shown to be the baseless propaganda garbage it always has been. For which we will all be paying for decades. Neither China or Russia want this outcome and Putin has warned Trump not to use nuclear weapons in Iran. But a mentally ill man with fantasies of unlimited power is in the driver’s seat. Elements within the US political leadership must take charge. And the world has to explicitly insist that US military aggression against Iran has to end.
Why cannot the Third Branch step in? It can. On Feb 20, 2026, a week before the US’s first strike in this war (killing school girls, hello?), I filed a pro se lawsuit at federal district court in New Hampshire. The defendant is “President Trump in both his official capacity and his personal capacity.”
It was dismissed on standing. I am now appealing and, due to time constraints, would appreciate any help. The court story has been laid out by me in several articles at Maxwell.substack.com For example, my Feb 20 article quotes my pleadings in full, and my May article on Roe v Wade is actually about the Iran war. Please see:
hxxps://maxwellm.substack.com/archive?sort=new.
The case is on Pacer at # 126 cv-0161. in New Hampshire.
Screw the global financial markets. It’s all rigged against the common man. Trump is dismantling it. Y’all are fear mongering. You have no idea what’s really happening. Only what the TDS crowd tells you. Everything you read on both sides is propaganda. Until you realize that, you’re doomed to remain the peasants they want you to be. They don’t give a rip about you or me. Just power. Trump is the only one with oranges large enough to try to change it.
Eine Macht die einen Krieg beginnen und natürlich siegen will, braucht mindestens 3x mehr militärisches Potential (Technik+ Soldaten+ Geld) als der Gegner. Punkt1.Das hat Russland gegenüber der NATO nicht. Punkt2. Was ist in Europa zu holen? nichts. Punkt3. Wie sollte Russland dieses Europa beherrschen und kontrollieren? Für Russland ergibt ein Krieg gegen Europa keinen Sinn.
Der Krieg Europas gegen Russland und Europas Sieg, wäre der Hauptgewinn: Fläche und Ressourcen ohne Ende. Die größte Angst die der Westen seit mehr als 100 Jahren hat, wäre eine Einheit zwischen Deutschland und Russland. Die deutsche Wirtschaftsmacht und die Russischen Reserven an Bodenschätzen, Öl und Gas. Deshalb der 3. Versuch Russland zu besiegen. Europa wird wieder Dresche kriegen und sollte hinterher (wenn noch was übrig bleibt) nicht jammern.
Impeachment? Ha, ha! Twenty-fifth Amendment? Only George Carlin was funnier!
How does this particular journalistic headline differ from institutional political analyst and strategist, Daniel Ellsberg’s casting of his 1959 “Madman Theory”, and later associating it with Nixon’s efforts to end the Vietnam War by signaling… that he might take drastic measures.
Anyone old enough, conscious enough, caring enough to recall, how was Nixon stopped dead in his tracks?
[The impeachment process against Richard Nixon, initiated by the House Judiciary Committee in 1973–1974 following the Watergate scandal, involved a bipartisan investigation into abuses of power. The committee adopted three articles of impeachment in July 1974 for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress before Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, before a full House vote.] (hxxps://libguides.library.albany.edu/impeach/nixon)
That was more than half a century ago, when the country was more than the pretend democracy that it has become today, and Nixon having some traits of being human, still had a conscience, unlike the malignant narcissist specimen of a purportedly civilized nation, at the head of the autocratic dictatorship that has come to power today, through the backdoor – his applying the mastery of his unique skills of con artistry.
Knocked over with a feather; how did this happen in the world’s most exceptional nation?
Today, in a retrospective reprise, the international community may be asking: exceptional for what specifically? Progressive leadership, for humanity?
King Charles’ speech would have been written by the government. Starmer is a massive warmonger who sees the sees the war in the Ukraine as a means to enrich arms companies.
He has always sought to prolong or escalate the conflict.
It is terrible that we have made such a mad, vain man President of the United States. But what is worse is that the supposedly sane rest of us can’t find the will to remove him from power.
The bottom-line is that Trump and Netanyahu are more than willing to turn innocent civilians into pulp simply because they feel like it.
I realise that both men consider that climate change is rubbish – but what they’re doing is only accelerating and already dangerous situation.
The Ruling Class. “Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king; &, thinks he is one,” i.e., “While Trump ridicules Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he reveres the king. “He looks into the king’s eyes and appears to see another one.” Joe Lauria. (LOL)
The Quintessence of Evil. Part 1: “Consider what” [DJT’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles] said about *“The Performing President” on 12.16.25 “Trump has an ‘alcoholic’s personality’. He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” @ hxxps://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-susie-wiles-interview-exclusive-part-1
…“After the article was published, “the wiles of a skilled” [Chief of Staff], “branded it as a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president, White House staff, and cabinet in history.”
“They” POTUS’ top advisers, men Susie Wiles calls her “core team”: VP Vance, Sec of State, Rubio, Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller. Only, Vance, Rubio & Hegseth have the power of invoking the 25th Amendment, serving it up, removing DJ “Head of the $nake” Trump. Itsa two steps forward to advance, a step backwards to check!
Imo, the other option, impeachment & conviction, is “off the table.” Two options, both, “exceedingly difficult b/c “the oligarchic and military elites have a handmaiden in the Oval Office, and he won’t be ousted as long as he serves their interests.” 1.28.18, Chris Hedges/Mr. Fish @ hxxps://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-useful-idiocy-of-donald-trump/
* quote, “The Performing President” Patrick Lawrence.
The Quintessence of Evil. Part 2: “Profits Über Alles” Joe Lauria! i.e.,*$TRUMP & $MELANIA meme coins, controversial crypto ventures.
…..“According to Forbes’ latest World’s Billionaires list, Trump is now worth an estimated $6.5 billion. That’s up by $1.4 billion from last year and about $2.2 billion from early 2024. Trump has amassed his new wealth largely through cryptocurrency ventures.
The president has vowed to make America the “crypto capital of the world,” and his family-led World Liberty Financial platform has netted an estimated $550 million over the past year through selling cryptocurrency tokens known as stablecoins. The Trump family receives 75% of the net proceeds when World Liberty sells those tokens, according to the Wall Street Journal. Among Trump’s assets, none has appreciated more dramatically than Mar-a-Lago. Forbes now values the Palm Beach club at roughly $560 million, more than triple its 2018 value.” HENCE, “a former foreign diplomat told Forbes, “[Gulf leaders] know how to deal with this American president. They learned it the first time around, but he was himself constrained in how blatantly he could solicit money. He’s unconstrained now.” Nick Moyle, 3.12.26, @
hxxps://www.nj.com/politics/2026/03/trump-has-grown-14-billion-richer-in-his-second-term-heres-how.html ….
p.s. One of many Columns re DJT’s “Golden Parachute” initiatives to *“Make that money pile up! Make it, pile up, Higher!” The Devil “we” know is f/$candalous!
TY, Joe Lauria. “Keep It Lit!”
* *X Ambassadors’ “The Devil We Know” @ hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pnF5Ih1fTg8&list=RDpnF5Ih1fTg8&start_radio=1&pp=ygUhWCBhbWJhc3NhZG9ycyB0aGUgZGV2aWlsIHlvdSBrbm93oAcB
Trump has just now said that he would wipe Iran off the map if it attacked US navy vessels. So here we are again. He lost the war and can’t face it. So he needs an excuse to murder on an epic scale. Never mind the Iranians striking back, destroying the Gulf States and Israel. Never mind the collapse of the global financial markets and a global depression. Never mind the 3o million or more dead from famine. His only goal is him.
What’s it going to take the American people to wake up to the fact that this guy is homicidal nut job who should be impeached immediately. Seriously, this guy is a dangerous nut job.
Most Americans already know that Trump is a fool and a madman. The problem is that the base of the Republican Party has not yet come to this understanding and maybe never will. In turn, Republican members of Congress fear for their own political lives, if they turn against the mad fool, and hence they lack the will to remove him from office. It’s hard to envision a way out of this predicament, which seems bound to cause untold harm and misery to tens of millions of people. Well, there’s always the possibility of a miracle—right?
The UK military is almost as big a joke as the UK monarchy.
The British army will have no money for new arms until 2030, there are more admirals than ships and the navy now has only five (5) frigates.
Russia could walk into the UK virtually unopposed and the USA would not help.
NATO is another sad joke as Russia has shown in Ukraine.
Trump’s best option is to pull back to America and sort out the myriad of problems in the USA and let Israel see how it can survive without democracy and American dollars.
“Russia could walk into the UK virtually unopposed”
Can you tell me Steve why Russia would want to do that?
Russia isn’t interested in war with the UK or Europe IMO – but that is indeed the story that Starmer and the EU are spouting everyday, we know it’s total BS but there are people who believe it. My point is that if Russia was so inclined then neither the UK, Europe or NATO could stop him. Russiagate Mk II.
Wow – like they have in Ukraine. Putin has a severe staffing problem, particularly ground troops. His paratroopers were wiped out when they first dropped in and Ukraine won’t give up.
NATO is more united than before – Sweden recently abseiled down and took a Russian illegal grain shipment from Ukraine. If Russia can’t take Ukraine it certainly can’t touch NATO (especially if Trump is out of frame).