SURROUNDINGS: On Friday night, Joe Biden spoke!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2026

A few hours later, it started: As the midnight hour approached last night, there he went again. 

As of last Friday, he had made the final decision—the war in Iran would proceed. Last evening, as midnight drew near, he was now "truthing" this: 

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better - As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought “forever,” and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!). At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be. Much additional high grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries. Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time, and our Country’s money, GIVING everything to P.T. Barnum (Zelenskyy!) of Ukraine - Hundreds of Billions of Dollars worth - And, while he gave so much of the super high end away (FREE!), he didn’t bother to replace it. Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP 

The angry name-calling never ends in the course of the president's "truthing." 

To us, the name-calling seems astoundingly childish; some others find it "refreshing." It is, of course, their perfect right to assess this matter that

Yesterday, we floated several questions about the person at issue. For starters:

Is this the person you would have chosen to be the ultimate decision-maker with respect to a matter like this? 

That was one of the questions we floated. We also floated questions and concerns about the array of medical syndromes which are still often described as "mental illness"—about the array of medical conditions which may affect a person's intellectual and emotional capacities in ways which may be harmful. 

Do people choose to be so challenged? (Do people who are "mentally ill" choose to be "mentally ill?") We're going to guess that they don't. But "mental illness" is a condition we moderns have little ability to discuss. 

This leads us back to events and conditions surrounding this president as the decision in question was made. 

Last Thursday evening, the onset of the current war was a bit more than one day away. As happenstance had it, a pair of events took place on Thursday and Friday nights. They were part of this war's surroundings. 

We've been discussing the first event since last Saturday's report For better or worse, correctly or otherwise, the president's clinical therapist niece went on CNN last Thursday and offered the kind of assessment which has long been disappeared. 

By the rules of the Blue American game, you haven't been allowed to voice such thoughts, even as a worrying possibility. Those rules had held for the past nine years, but there Mary Trump went again:

ERIN BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a [cognitive] decline?

MARY L. TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines. 

The fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true. On the other hand, the fact that such ruminations have been forbidden doesn't mean that the musings are wrong. 

As happenstance had it, Mary Trump went on CNN and said that last Thursday night. (CNN offered no subsequent disclaimers for allowing this to be said.) As happenstance had it, that rumination was part of the surroundings as the war with Iran approached. 

One night later, a very important public figure made a set of statements in South Carolina—statements which, like Mary Trump's rumination on CNN, were almost completely ignored all through the rest of the discourse.

That major figure was President Bidem, President Trump's immediate predecessor. Tommy Christopher cited his comments in a report at Mediaite. 

Except for Christopher's report, we don't think we would have known about this event at all:

Biden Taunts Trump In New Speech: ‘I Handed Trump The Strongest Economy In The World!’

Former President Joe Biden taunted President Donald Trump over jobs and the economy, comparing their jobs records and declaring “I handed Trump the strongest economy in the world!”

At 2:30 AM Saturday, Trump posted an announcement that the United States was in the process of attacking Iran in a video message from Mar-a-lago, attacks that would dominate the news Saturday.

Hours before the attacks, Biden gave a speech to the South Carolina Democratic Party to commemorate the anniversary of his win in the state’s pivotal primary in 2020.

The war was hours away as President Biden spoke. As Christopher's report continued, he transcribed some of what the former president had said, with videotape included:

BIDEN (2/27/26): When I was president, we created over 16 million jobs in America. We had the lowest average unemployment rate in 50 years.

In fact, in just my last year as president of the United States in 2024, we created, just the last year, 2.2 million additional jobs.

You know how many jobs Trump’s created in his first year as president? 185,000 jobs! Total! That's it! 

Of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Trump’s the only president, other than Herbert Hoover, who had fewer jobs when he left office than when he came into office. That’s a fact!

[...]

The day I left office, border crossings in the United States were lower than the day that I entered that office, inherited from Trump. He is—I won’t say it. 

(LAUGHTER).

That’s just a fact.

The day I left office, I handed Trump the strongest economy in the world! In the world! That’s not hyperbole, that is a fact! 

So said the former president. For better or worse (opinions differ), the start of the war was mere hours away.

President Biden's accurate statements about the economy were part of the surroundings in the wake of last week's State of the Union address—but only if you read the New York Times, or if you receive your information from other parts of Blue American media. 

If you watch the Fox News Channel, you almost surely never heard the long list of accurate fact-checks about President Trump's inaccurate claims about the nation's economy. 

Red Americans weren't asked to hear about the sitting president's latest howlers. These are the wages of separation—of "segregation by viewpoint." 

With respect to that nation's economy, Blue Americans were allowed to hear the facts. Red Americans were not.

Having said that, we must also say this—what President Biden said about the border was, in fact, factually accurate but grossly misleading. There the former president went again, refusing to explain:

The day I left office, border crossings in the United States were lower than the day that I entered that office, inherited from Trump. He is—I won’t say it.

(LAUGHTER).

That’s just a fact.

"That's just a fact," he said, after the audience laughed. As far as we know, it's a technically accurate statement of fact—but that accurate statement continues a politically counterproductive evasion, one which is grossly misleading.

Palmetto State Democrats, please! The question about President Biden's performance at the southern border concerns the first three-plus years of his term in office. It doesn't concern what happened in the second half of his final year, when some policy changes were made.

Over at the Fox News Channel, deep in the heart of Red America, viewers never heard about all the absurd misstatements the sitting president made in his State of the Union address. They do hear all sorts of statements, many of which may even be accurate, about the policy the previous president maintained at the southern border.

Over here in Blue America, the situation is different. We get to hear about the sitting president's wide assortment of misstatements about the economy. Like the denizens of Red America, we still haven't heard an explanation of President Biden's unusual border policy—and what he said, to that laughing crowd, was the latest evasion.

Messengers at the Fox News Channel still live off President Biden's unexplained border policy. They refer to that matter all day long. Their statements are often basically accurate, even if the large numbers they cite may tend to be made up.

Red Americans hear about that; Blue American media tends to avert its gaze. In such ways, two large groups of American voters come to understand the world in vastly different ways.

Mary Trump spoke on Thursday night. One night later, so did President Biden. Their statements were part of the cultural surroundings as the war with Iran drew near.

As of last night, the decision-maker compared Zelensky to P. T. Barnum. People, we're just saying!

Tomorrow: In our view, astounding misconduct

TUESDAY: A banner headline in the Post...

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2026

...brought a question to mind: Just this once, we're going to let you ask us about "mental illness."

Rather, about what used to be called "mental illness." According to the leading authority on the topic, the use of that term is falling into something which sounds like disfavor, with the term "mental disorder" now being used instead. 

Quoting from the leading authority: 

Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder," while "illness" is also common. It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body. 

Just this once, we're going to let you ask us. Rather, we find ourselves with a question for you. 

Our question was triggered, mere moments ago, by this banner headline atop the front page of the Washington Post's website:

U.S. closes three gulf embassies as Iran widens strikes

That's the banner at the Post, even as we type. Before we get to the question we're going to ask, we're going to make these admissions:

The decision to attack Iran was made by the sitting president. For the record, we have no way of knowing how this military action will, in the end, turn out.

We don't know where this war will take us. We don't know how it will come to be viewed in the future. 

Having made those admissions, we ask you this:

Was it wise to let the person in question be the decision-maker? Was it wise to do so without ever rescinding the ban on discussing the possibility that he has been, and still is, afflicted with some significant set of medical challenges / disorders?

Was it wise to maintain the code of silence around that possibility? In our view, there's no obvious answer to that question, given the difficulty we modern Americans would have had in discussing that particular topic.

At any rate, there sits the banner headline. Was it wise when our own Blue American orgs kept telling us this:

Nothing to look at or talk about! Just keep moving along!

SURROUNDINGS: Hegseth spilled with tribal anger!

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2026

The segregation we've chosen: Yesterday morning, at 8 o'clock Eastern, Secretary Hegseth briefed the nation along with General Caine. As usual, he was annoyed by the sheer stupidity of the Lilliputians by whom he was surrounded. 

Six minutes into the Q-and-A session, General Caine answered a perfectly sensible question. It concerned a report that additional troops were being sent into the theater. 

That Q-and-A was perfectly sensible on both ends. Now, the secretary's rabbit ears had him responding to a different question.

How long was this military action likely to be? The question had been shouted out without being formally recognized, but Secretary Hegseth had heard it:

HEGSETH (3/2/26): I heard the question about "four weeks." It's the typical NBC sort of gotcha type question. 

President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks—it could move up, it could move back. We're going to execute, at his command, the objectives we've set out to achieve. And what he has shown ability to do, that other presidents can't quite seem to have the aperture to do—well, I mean, Joe Biden didn't even know what he was doing—is to look for opportunities and off ramps and escalations for the United States that creates new opportunities to execute what we need on our own timeline.

So you can play games about "four weeks, five weeks." He has all the latitude. And I'm glad he does, because there's no better communicator than our president expressing those things.

I've been in meetings with the president for the last two and a half days. We know exactly where his head space is, and he will communicate, as he should, exactly what he would like, and we will follow those orders. And I think everything he said on that is right down the middle. 

Whatever his possible merits might be, Hegseth is a bit of a hothead. In the current instance, his rabbit ears had heard a reporter "playing games" by trying to ask a "typical NBC gotcha type question." 

Also, under current rules of the tribal game, there could be no presser without a statement about what a dumbass former president Joe Biden had been. 

Hegseth is routinely peeved with the sheer stupidity of the others. Two minutes later, there he went again:

REPORTER: Secretary Hegseth, and one for Chairman Caine as well. I understand to your point here, that you don't want to broadcast everything for our adversaries to hear, but the American people also want to know what they're sending their men and women to war for. Is there a concern of this spiraling into a longer war? And then one for the chairman when you're done.

HEGSETH: Did you not hear my remarks? I mean, we're ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed, as the president has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies of the past that recklessly pulled us in, the things that were not tethered to actual clear objectives. 

So we know we have plans, we have generals, we have chairmans, we have commanders, CENTCOM commanders, Admiral Cooper, who's executing very deliberately to ensure outcomes that I laid out are accomplished. But we would never, in front of a press pool, lay out how long that may take. The mission for our war fighters, which is what matters to us, is very, very clear and they're executing it right now, violently. 

Why can't these idiots listen? Once again, the fellow was peeved.

In fairness, Hegseth's answer makes basic sense. What's striking is the hostility with which he delivered his answer—and the constant denigration of the "foolish policies of the past" advanced by those dumb other presidents.

Unlike the calm and professional General Caine, Secretary Hegseth is a bit of a hothead. He has the revolutionary fervor which can arise in the surroundings from which he emerged at the Fox News Channel.

Hegseth was working as co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend when President-elect Trump selected him to serve as Secretary of Defense. As such, Hegseth was deeply entrenched within the modern array of American "news orgs" built upon the principle of "segregation by viewpoint."

We now have Cable News Red and Cable News Blue, with CNN still trying to find some way to maintain some sort of tribal balance. Under current arrangements, the war fighters of our major "cable news" channels are kept separate, Red from Blue.

Rarely the twain shall meet. Unfortunately, the angry certainty voiced by Hegseth is part of the siloed segregation we've unwisely chosen

As is routine on the Fox News Channel, so too in Hegseth's remarks! To this day, it's rare to see participants expound on Fox News Channel programs without someone making mocking remarks about the dumbness of President Biden. Beyond that, the presumed bad faith and stupidity of Blue America is a constant part of the diet the Red American viewer is served. 

As usual, Hegseth was peeved with the NBC style gotcha questions at yesterday's press event. As usual, he broke from entrenched tradition, taking unsolicited shots at the foolish policies of the dumbbell presidents of the past.

This steady drumbeat of tribal attack is now a basic part of American journalistic culture. Luckily, Hegseth does know where the current president's "head space" is. He's also quite sure that "there's no better communicator than our president," and that everything that president has said "is right down the middle." 

In fairness, journalists sometimes do ask redundant questions. Also, the policies of past presidents have almost surely fallen short of some Platonic ideal. 

That said, an unsettling question about the sitting president arose on CNN just last Thursday night.  

Does Mary L. Trump have any idea what the heck she's talking about? For ourselves, we'd guess that she almost certainly does—but whether she does or whether she doesn't, this is again what she said:

ERIN BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a [cognitive] decline?

MARY L. TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines. 

Say what? The doctorate-wielding clinical therapist said she sees a cognitive decline in her uncle, the sitting president. But she also said what she initially said in her best-selling 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough:

She said her uncle "is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen." Last week, that very same sitting president launched a war against Iran. 

President Trump has launched a war against Iran. Opinions on the undertaking differ.

Yesterday, on the Fox News Channel's Will Cain Show, (retired) General Jack Keane offered a fascinating account of the past forty-plus years, expressing the view that the president's decision is long overdue. 

"Stop patronizing me," he gruffly told his host at one point, as Cain attempted to offer the standard thanks for the general's service.

General Keane apologized to Cain when the segment ended, but Cain's search for greater clarity about the actual goals of this mission had triggered a fascinating cable news segment. We'll recommend that you watch the full videotape, as offered by Mediaite. 

Even inside Silo Red, denunciations of the president's decision are now being heard. (Questions are even being asked, as Cain did this day.)

The current structure of American discourse has rarely produced disagreements within a tribe. Hegseth's views were never challenged by the other friends on Fox & Friends Weekend. Within this culture of viewpoint segregation, Hegseth's brand of angry certainty is likely to arise and take hold.

As we speak, the president has propelled us into a war which has perhaps been somewhat poorly explained. All week, we'll try to describe the surroundings of that fateful decision, including the anger and the tribal certainty exhibited by players like Hegseth.

For today, we'll offer one clear thought about the cultural practices surrounding the president's decision. That on clear thought would be this:

Twenty-four hour "cable news" has turned out be to be an extremely bad idea.

We'll also float this additional thought: 

We Blue Americans aren't as flawless as we occasionally may believe. 

Mary Trump has emerged again with what should be a troubling thought about the man she's known her whole life. From 2017 right through to today, Blue America's journalists and academics have agreed that a medical possibility of this type must not be discussed. 

We're left today with the possibility that the fateful decision to launch this war was made by a man afflicted with the unfortunate but dangerous medical conditions Mary Trump has described. When Dr. Bandy X. Lee offered similar thoughts in 2017, her own best-selling book got disappeared by the Blue American press, and she ended up losing her position at Yale.

We apologize for today's jumble—for the lack of one simple pure thought. We apologize for this grab bag of surroundings, but for those who are willing to stare into the sun, there are quite a few more surroundings to come.

Tomorrow: Joe Biden's recent speech?

MONDAY: Music critic in Amsterdam!

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2026

Young music lover revealed: There was once a person who read a three-volume biographer of a famous composer and ended up writing this:

Everyone in the Annex except Mr. van Daan and Peter has read the Hungarian Rhapsody trilogy, a biography of the composer, piano virtuoso and child prodigy Franz Liszt. It's very interesting, though in my opinion there's a bit too much emphasis on women; Liszt was not only the greatest and most famous pianist of his time, he was also the biggest womanizer, even at the age of seventy. He had an affair with Countess Marie d' Agoult, Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, the dancer Lola Montez, the pianist Agnes Kingworth, the pianist Sophie Menter, the Circassian princess Olga Janina, Baroness Olga Meyen- dorff, actress Lilla what's-her-name, etc., etc., and there's no end to it. Those parts of the book dealing with music and the other arts are much more interesting... 

Yes, it's true! The writer was Anne Frank, then age 14, not long thereafter lost to the world thanks to the madness of that world, not long before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. 

Anthony Tommasini, the former chief classical music critic of The New York Times, remembered this matter in a labor of love in yesterday's print editions of the Times. Dual headline included:

In the Secret Annex, Anne Frank’s Radio and a Love for Classical Music
Her diary overflows with her devotion to books and movies. But after rereading the entries, a critic was struck by how often she writes about music.

[...]

In June 1944, three days before she turned 15, and two months before the annex was raided and everyone arrested—of the group, Otto Frank, Anne’s father, would be the only survivor of the camps—Anne wrote enthusiastically about “Hungarian Rhapsody,” a three-volume biography of Franz Liszt that she had just finished reading. “Its very interesting, though in my opinion there’s a bit too much emphasis on women,” she says about Liszt’s prodigious womanizing. But she was captivated by the parts “dealing with music and the other arts,” stories of Schumann, Clara Wieck, Berlioz, Chopin, Victor Hugo, Anton Rubinstein, Rossini and Mendelssohn.

It's true! There was once a reader of that three-volume biography who preferred the parts about the music! Continuing directly, Tommasini offers this:

There is a poignant entry from April 1944 when Anne bonds over Mozart with Peter, the van Pels’s teenage son. Peter, almost three years older than Anne, did not make a good first impression on her. She found him “a shy, awkward boy whose company won’t amount to much.” Those feelings took root. Peter was lazy, obnoxious, “a dope” and “no one takes Peter seriously,” she wrote. Eighteen months of annex confinement changed her feelings; Peter’s too. They became smitten and, with grudging parental indulgence, spent private time together in the attic of the annex. Peter gave Anne her first kiss.

One day, they were in the attic listening to a Mozart concert on the “baby radio,” as Anne called a portable set. She was especially struck by the serenade for strings “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” “I can hardly bear to listen in the kitchen,” she wrote, “since beautiful music stirs me to the very depths of my soul.”

Lost the world at age 15, thanks to the surrounding madness, with Peter van Pels lost too. Tommasini's rumination about his recent trip to Amsterdam continues:

The adolescent Anne’s growing immersion in classical music amid unimaginable hardships and daily fears preoccupied me during this trip to Amsterdam. Besides fulfilling a lifelong wish to visit the Anne Frank House, I went to concerts by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic, both at the acoustically marvelous Concertgebouw hall, built in the late 19th century. Anne, I thought, would have loved these performances.

It’s unlikely, though, that she ever made it to an orchestra program at the Concertgebouw. By 1941, when she was 11, Jews were barred from theaters of all kinds, along with libraries, museums, parks and more. By 13, she was in hiding. 

If you missed Tommasini rumination, you might want to consult it today. Amazingly, there were people who risked their lives, not just to provide their neighbors with food, but also to bring them books:

"Our meals consist almost entirely of potatoes and imitation gravy,” Anne wrote in her diary one day in 1944. But even during periods when food has hard to procure, the people risking their lives to provide for and shelter these hidden Jews—all employees of Otto’s pectin, spice and jam business—were able to bring them books: used books, library books, their own books, which were eagerly passed around.

Tommasini had "reread Anne Frank’s extraordinary diary before" his trip to Amsterdam. He "had somehow forgotten how regularly she brings up classical music."

We ourselves remain indebted to Francine Prose for her 2009 book, Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, which vastly deepened our understanding of this remarkable episode in our human history.

As happenstance had it, Anne Frank happened to be a precocious child; Prose felt she had never received her due as a brilliant developing writer. Prose also tells the antique myth adjacent story of how Anne Frank's diary, and her other writings, escaped the fate of being lost at the time of her family's arrest. 

It's a story right out of antiquity, as Prose correctly notes.

SURROUNDINGS: The president made the fateful decision!

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2026

But what were the surroundings? Last Friday night, we happened to sit up, awake, at roughly 1:30 a.m. On all three major "cable news" channels, the attack was already underway.

In Blue America, the decision to attack Iran has largely been challenged. In Red America, the assessments have generally been quite different. Indeed, consider this:

Twenty-four hours into this war, at 1:15 on Sunday morning, we saw a remarkably upbeat claim asserted once again.

Even at that late hour, the Fox News Channel was broadcasting live, with Jon Scott in the anchor chair. He spoke with Matt Terrill, introduced as former chief of staff to Marco Rubio's presidential campaign.

For the record, Secretary Rubio's presidential campaign ended in 2016. By way of contrast, Terrill's upbeat assessment of President Trump's decision was thoroughly up-to-date:

Here's what Terrill said:

SCOTT (3/1/26): [Secretary Rubio] was supposed to go to the Middle East this Tuesday. Do you think that that was a kind of a ruse? That the Iranians figured that they wouldn't have—that they wouldn't be seeing this kind of attack until at least after the secretary of state departed the region?

TERRILL: Well, Jon, is it possible that that was a head fake? Potentially! I'll let the administration speak to that. But this is a president, and Secretary Rubio, and an administration in general, that's playing four-dimensional chess...

The president's playing four-dimensional chess? So said the upbeat Terrill, on Red America's official news channel.

As you may recall, Joey Jones had offered a similar assessment, on the Fox News Channel's Big Weekend Show, just one week before:

JONES (2/21/26): You know, [the Democrats] play this game that's— They're not very good at it, I don't think.

President Trump is smarter than they are. He's playing checkers, they're playing— or, He's playing chess, they're playing checkers.

Jones had said that one week earlier. Now, the sitting president was said to be playing chess again—and there's no way to prove that that's wrong.

Has President Trump been playing chess while others are playing checkers? It hasn't always looked that way to us! For starters, consider the banner headline across the top of the front page of this morning's New York Times:

U.S. TROOPS KILLED AS BLASTS JOLT MIDEAST; FEAR OF WIDER WAR AFTER IRAN’S RESPONSE
Trump Says He’s Willing to Talk to Tehran’s New Leadership

Say what? The president has said that he's willing to talk to Iran's new leaders?

Indeed, the president told The Atlantic, on Sunday night, that he's willing to return to negotiations! He had just killed forty of the Iranian regime's previous leaders—and now he was willing to talk to whoever's left!

Rightly or wrongly, that almost seemed a bit odd to us. It didn't exactly seem to make sense, although we could always be wrong. 

Then too, Jonathan Karl has now tweeted this:

Jonathan Karl
@jonkarl

Pres Trump told me [on Sunday night] the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, but they were killed in the initial attack.

"The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates," Trump told me. "It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead."

Just our luck! The president had replacements in mind for the post of Supreme Leader. But in the course of his first attack, he managed to kill the top three!

In fairness, things like that can happen. But even before the attack commenced, the president had oddly described the magic or secret words he was longing to hear.

Once again, we offer Jonathan Karl, reporting what the president said to a group of network news anchors during a preview of last Tuesday's State of the Union address. You can see Karl make his report at this report by The Wrap:

KARL (2/24/26): One notable thing, we did talk about Iran. He said that "Iran wants a deal more than I do," but they just can’t say the magic words, which he said was that they won’t build a bomb.

They just can’t say the magic words! But was that a direct quote?

We aren't completely sure about that. But that evening, in the address itself, the president used a slightly different term of art:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (2/24/26): They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America. After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They’re starting it all over.

We wiped it out, and they want to start over again, and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal but we haven’t heard those secret words: “We will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Again, the president said he'd never heard those magic or secret words. But did that seem to make sense?

Hasn't the regime in Iran always said that it doesn't seek to have nuclear weapons? And since no one believes what the regime's leaders say, what difference would it have made if he had heard those secret or magic words—if the Iranians had made that pledge?

For ourselves, we don't hear four-dimensional chess being played by this president. In fairness, that doesn't prove that he has made the wrong decision with respect to this war. It doesn't tell us what history will say about this war, if history as we've always known it will continue to exist.

For ourselves, we don't have confidence in this president's judgment, which doesn't mean that his judgment was wrong in this case. In part, we lack confidence in his judgment because we find it easy to believe what his niece said, on CNN, just last Thursday night.

In Saturday's report, we showed you what she said. We know of no obvious reason to assume that her assessment is wrong, which doesn't prove that it's right:

ERIN BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a [cognitive] decline?

MARY L. TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines.

The fact that she said it doesn't mean that it's true. But his niece, the doctorate-wielding clinical therapist, said she sees a cognitive decline layered on top of life-long "psychiatric disorders."

Within this political context, we vastly prefer the term "medical." But a sitting president was making a very important decision even as that was being said. 

We don't know how the president's decision will turn out. We do know certain things about the decision's surroundings.

What do we mean when we refer to the decision's "surroundings?" We're speaking about the rapidly crashing national culture within which that perilous decision was finally made:

We're thinking of his niece's statement last Thursday night. We're thinking of a speech President Biden made, in South Carolina, on that very same evening.

We're thinking of the moral and intellectual squalor which suffused the Fox News Channel in the weeks leading to that decision. We're thinking of the refusal of Blue America's major news organs to report and discus that astonishing level of journalistic disorder.

We're thinking of the ludicrous state into which the State of the Union had fallen as of last Tuesday night. We're thinking of the need to builds a culture war out of a (very good) hockey game.

We're thinking of this opinion piece by Alex Griffing of Mediate—an opinion piece in which Griffing examines the type of serious policy issue we Americans no longer discuss. We're thinking of the way CNN and the Fox News Channel spent the weeks leading up to this war talking about almost nothing except a (tragic) missing person case concerning which nothing was known.

We're thinking of the crazy claims this president won't stop making. We're thinking of the crazy things he routinely posts on his Truth Social site, very late at night.

We're thinking of his birther years. We're thinking of the southern border during the Biden years, and of what was said about it—including by President Biden himself, just this past Thursday night.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our rapidly failing American culture is an embarrassment and a danger. The decision emerged from these gruesome surroundings. We Blues are a part of that too!

Tomorrow: We'll probably have to start right there