The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

At 7:50 this evening, Eastern Time, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Then he reposted a message referring to the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, assumed to be at the center of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, saying: “Fordow is gone.”

Then he posted a statement saying: “I will be giving an Address to the Nation at 10:00 P.M., at the White House, regarding our very successful military operation in Iran. This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!”

Then he posted an American flag.

Just after 10:00 tonight, flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump spoke briefly to the nation. He said:

“The U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.

“For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs,with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate. In particular, so many were killed by their general, Qasem Soleimani [whom Trump ordered assassinated in 2020]. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue.

“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team, like perhaps no team has ever worked before. And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they've done.

“And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades. Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan “Razin” Caine, spectacular general, and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack

“With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.

“There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There's never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, will have a press conference at 8:00 a.m. at the Pentagon.

“And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

In The Atlantic, foreign affairs scholar Tom Nichols noted: “President Donald Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East.”

And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God...

Maybe the mad king, the other one, wasn’t so mad after all.

“George III is Abraham Lincoln compared to Trump,” said Rick Atkinson, who is vivifying the Revolutionary War in his mesmerizing histories “The British Are Coming” and “The Fate of the Day.” The latter, the second book in a planned trilogy, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for six weeks and is being devoured by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

As the “No Kings” resistance among Democrats bristles and as President Trump continues to defy limits on executive power, it is instructive to examine comparisons of President Trump to George III.

“George isn’t the ‘royal brute’ that Thomas Paine calls him in ‘Common Sense,’” Atkinson told me. “He’s not the ‘tyrant’ that Jefferson calls him in the Declaration of Independence, and he’s not the sinister idiot who runs across the stage in ‘Hamilton’ every night singing ‘You’ll Be Back.’”

(“And when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!”)

Yes, George III had manic episodes that scared people — depicted in Alan Bennett’s “The Madness of George III,” a play made into a movie with Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren. Palace aides are unnerved when the king’s urine turns blue.

“He was in a straitjacket for a while — that’s how deranged he was,” Atkinson said. “His last 10 years were spent at Windsor, basically in a cell. He went blind and deaf. He had long white hair, white beard.”

King George was relentless about his runaway child, America.

“He’s ruthless,” Atkinson explained, “because he believes that if the American colonies are permitted to slip away, it will encourage insurrections in Ireland, in Canada, the British Sugar Islands, the West Indies, in India, and it’ll be the beginning of the end of the first British Empire, which has just been created. And it’s not going to happen on his watch.”

Unlike Trump, who loves to wallow in gilt and repost king memes and rhapsodize about God’s divine plan for him, George III did not flout the rule of law.

“The stereotype of him as an ogre is not historically true,” Atkinson said. “He’s called Farmer George because he’s interested in agronomy and writes essays on manure.”

The historian added: “You can dislike him, but he’s not a reactionary autocrat. He is very attentive to the requirements imposed on him as a consequence of the reforms in the 17th century, where he must be attentive to both houses of Parliament. He’s a child of the Enlightenment. He is a major supporter of both the arts and the sciences.” He plays the harpsichord and the organ, and he’s a great patron of the theater.” (And doesn’t try to co-opt it or force people to watch “Cats.”)

Unlike Trump, Atkinson said, George III is not a narcissist: “He’s very committed to the realm, to his family. He marries this obscure, drab German princess, Charlotte, as in Charlottesville, Va., and Charlotte, N.C. They marry six hours after they meet. She learns to play ‘God Save the King’ on the harpsichord on the voyage from Germany to England. He has the marriage bedroom decorated with 700 yards of blue damask and large basins of goldfish. Because, as you know, nothing says ‘I love you’ like a bowl of goldfish. He’s devoted to her through 15 kids.”

Atkinson said that the only similarity between the pious monarch and the impious monarch manqué is “the use of the military against their own people to enforce the king’s will. There are incidents, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party.”

He added: “This proclivity for using armed forces for domestic suppression of dissent. That’s a slippery slope in this country. It led to an eight-year war when George did it, and Lord knows where it’s going to lead this time.”

This is a poisonous moment for our country, with Trump unleashing our military on American citizens and letting ICE officers rough up Democratic lawmakers. He’s still posting, madly, about the 2020 election being “a total FRAUD,” and now he’s calling for a special prosecutor to look into it. With the juvenile delinquent Pete Hegseth leading our military, Trump is recklessly jousting with Iran and threatening to assassinate the Iranian leader. The former opponent of forever wars in the Middle East is debating dropping bombs in the Middle East without military provocation against the United States — which did not work out well for us in the past — and dragging us into another unpredictable, interminable war.

We find this truth to be self-evident: This is the moment when we find out just how mad a king Donald Trump is.

Atkinson concedes he is as mystified as the rest of us by Trump’s affinity for “those who aren’t bound by the rules by which we insist our leaders be bound.”

He continued: “The fact that we’re looking for a monarch to draw parallels to him is telling in and of itself, because that’s not what we do. That’s what the whole shooting match was about in the 1770s.”