The 47th President and the Post-Biden World 2.0

Today is the deadline for President Donald J. Trump to ask Congress for approval for his war on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, a president has the authority to respond to an “imminent threat” without congressional approval, so long as he notifies Congress in writing within 48 hours. Then the president has 60 days either to withdraw U.S. forces from their engagement or to get Congress to authorize the military action.

Trump launched U.S. attacks on Iran alongside Israeli attacks on February 28. He notified Congress on March 2. Sixty days from March 2 is today.

And today, Trump sent letters to House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate president pro tempore (officially the leader of the Senate if the vice president is not present) Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to inform them that so far as the White House is concerned, “the hostilities that began on February 28…terminated” on April 7, when Trump ordered a two-week ceasefire. Ignoring the fact the U.S. fired on an Iranian tanker on April 19, the letter says “there has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026.”

The next paragraph notes that the administration is nonetheless continuing to build up its military presence in the region “to address Iranian and Iranian proxy forces’ threats and to protect the United States and its allies and partners.”

In other words, the administration is trying to get around the War Powers Act with the dodge Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tried in front of the Senate yesterday: a ceasefire stops the War Powers clock. This is not what the law says.

Trump’s letter also ignores the fact the U.S. continues to blockade Iranian ports. A blockade is an act of war.

It’s worth reiterating that Trump’s war of aggression violated the Constitution from the start. He sidestepped Congress—which has the sole authority to declare war—by insisting the threat from Iran was “imminent” even though his own advisors testified that Iran did not, in fact, have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon in less than ten years. As Tess Bridgeman and Oona A. Hathaway of Just Security note, that attack also violated the United Nations charter, which prohibits the use of force except as defense against an attack or a legitimate threat of an imminent one.

Now the administration has just told Congress it intends to retain the power to do whatever Trump wants with the United States military.

This is another example of the administration trying to find a fuzzy way to get around acting within the boundaries of the law. It is clearly just a posture to permit Trump to act as he pleases. This afternoon, Trump told an audience: “You know we’re in a war, because I think you would agree we cannot let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.”

This afternoon, Trump told reporters that there was no need for him to ask Congress for authorization to extend the war because “it’s never been sought before.” “[N]obody’s ever sought it before,” he said. “Nobody’s ever asked for it before. It’s never been used before. Why should we be different?”

In fact, presidents before Trump have indeed honored the 60-day requirement for congressional approval of military operations.

Trump told reporters, “Every other president considered it totally unconstitutional, and we agree with that.”

In fact, the Framers of the Constitution placed the power to declare war in the hands of Congress and not in the president because they did not trust that much power in the hands of one man. They also wanted to make sure the American people would have robust debates about the value of the money and lives lost in combat. So determined were they for the American people to have those debates that they put into the Constitution that Congress had the power “[t]o declare War” and “[t]o raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.”

In Federalist No. 26, one of the newspaper essays Alexander Hamilton wrote to encourage the ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton explained that people shouldn’t fear the strength of the new government outlined in the Constitution, because the necessity of debating war, alongside the two-year limit on government funding for the military, would force Congress to debate military actions. He expected members of the opposition to attack those in power over military appropriations, so that if those in power were “disposed to exceed the proper limits, the community will be warned of the danger, and will have an opportunity of taking measures to guard against it.”

Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) said yesterday he would not challenge Trump’s novel interpretation of the War Powers Act, in part, he said, because Senate Republicans have given him no reason to. Republicans have no interest in voting to support Trump’s unpopular war, and yet don’t want to buck Trump. So they are choosing to abdicate their constitutional responsibilities.

In contrast, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) posted: “There’s no pause button in the Constitution, or the War Powers Act. We’re at war. We’ve been at war for 60 days. The blockade alone is a continuing act of war.”

Representative Adam Smith (D-WA), the top-ranked Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Mary Clare Jalonick, Stephen Groves, and Seung Min Kim of the Associated Press: “Is the expectation that the Trump administration is going to follow the law? I do not have that expectation.”

Ironically, today is Law Day, a holiday established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 to remind us to “vigilantly guard the great heritage of liberty, justice, and equality under law.”

As former chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court Lawton Nuss wrote in the Kansas Reflector today, Eisenhower had seen lawlessness and the horrors it produced in World War II. In his first observance of Law Day, he reminded Americans that the U.S. rested not on, as Nuss writes, “the unchecked exercise of raw power,” but on law, individual rights, and the constitutional order.

With the enormously destructive capabilities of modern warfare and the power of leaders to hold loyalists in their sway in the modern era, Eisenhower said, “In a very real sense, the world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.”

Six months ahead of the mid-term elections, President Trump and the Republican Party are facing an extremely unfavourable political climate, according to a new poll.
The survey by the *Washington Post*, ABC News and Ipsos, Trump’s approval ratings have fallen slightly from 39 per cent to 37 per cent compared with a February poll – whilst 62 per cent of respondents expressed disapproval of Trump’s policies. This is not only two per cent higher than in February, but also the highest level of disapproval Trump has ever recorded in the series of polls conducted by these media outlets.

Trump scores particularly poorly in a key area of his policy: 66 per cent of respondents disapprove of his handling of the situation in Iran, whilst only 33 per cent approve. Trump’s economic policy in general also scores poorly, with approval standing at just 34 per cent. He fares even worse on specific issues such as tackling inflation, with 27 per cent approval, or the general cost of living, with just 23 per cent.

Trump’s strongest area, by contrast, is his handling of immigration at the border with Mexico – though even here he still faces 54 per cent disapproval against just 45 per cent approval.

Two-thirds of Americans say country is headed in the wrong direction: ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll

With the war aims unclear....

Late on Friday night, President Donald J. Trump took to social media. At 11:03 he posted an AI-generated image of himself, alongside Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, all shirtless, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini, appearing to be relaxing in a swimming pool. But the “swimming pool” was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Then, at 11:04, Trump posted an image of First Lady Melania Trump grinning at the press conference Trump held after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he said that incident proved he needed his proposed ballroom for his security.

Then, at 11:13, Trump posted an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”

Then, at 11:15, he posted an image of himself smiling and holding six wild cards from the game Uno. The caption read, “I HAVE ALL THE CARDS.”

Then, at 11:22, he posted a profile image of himself in gold.

Then, at 11:26, he posted an image showing him standing near Mt. Rushmore, with the angle arranged to make his head the fifth sculpture on the mountain, so from left to right they were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump.

Then, at 11:32, he posted an image of himself and the first lady.

Then, at 11:37, he posted an image of himself and King Charles III.

Then, at 11:40, he posted an image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept[ember] 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, “TRUMP!”

Then, at 11:41, he posted an AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue, under the caption “American Flag Blue.”

Then, at 11:45, he posted another AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue under the caption “American Flag Blue.”

It was some 43 minutes.

The president appeared to have been triggered by graffiti that appeared in the reflecting pool Friday morning: “86 47” spray-painted across it in a message that was about 15 feet by 30 feet.

The message was double edged. To “86” something in slang means to get rid of it, and Trump is the 47th president. But the phrase has taken on a second meaning since April 28, when the Department of Justice under Trump launched a criminal case against former director of the FBI James Comey for posting a picture of seashells spelling out “86 47” on Instagram a year ago. But “86 47”—and, for that matter, “86 46”—is such a common meme that there are a wide variety of shirts and hats for sale with those letters on Amazon today, prompting the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker, to ask Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche if other people who shared that meme would also face charges. He said no and suggested that there was other evidence in Comey’s case, although he did not explain what that was and the indictment only talks about the seashell post.

As Trump’s popularity has sunk to new lows, he has renewed his efforts to remake Washington, D.C., into a monument to himself, almost as if he is trying to anticipate history by making future Americans think that he must have been great because of all the tributes to him in the capital. Part of that effort has been his decision to paint the reflecting pool bright blue, like a swimming pool, at a cost of about $2 million in taxpayer money.

Yesterday, Rick Maese and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post reported that one of Trump’s top fundraisers is collecting money to turn the heavily used, low-cost East Potomac Golf Links on the Washington, D.C., waterfront, one of three D.C. public golf courses the administration is taking over, into a championship golf course and to establish Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes nearby. That imagined sculpture park will feature about 250 Americans Trump believes are significant to our history.

The plans have not yet been made public, nor have they been approved by Congress or gone through the federal review process. The new golf course would erase the area’s public bike paths and open recreational space. Spokesperson Davis Ingle said: “President Trump continues to beautify and honor our Nation’s Capital during America’s historic semiquincentennial celebration.”

The Trump administration planned to take control of the East Potomac Golf Links today, shutting it down for the renovation. Today, Democracy Forward, a watchdog group, asked a judge to stop the administration from going ahead with plans that would shut down the course.

Trump’s alterations to the capital seem to be a welcome distraction for the real estate developer from the crises around him. His claim that he has “all the cards” appears to be a boast about his dealings with Iran, but that is a wildly optimistic version of events.

On Thursday, Iranian officials sent a 14-point offer for a resolution to the war to mediators from Pakistan. An Iranian official said that Iran hopes to end the war and resolve questions around the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports now and deal with Iran’s nuclear program later.

On Friday, Trump said he was “not satisfied” with Iran’s offer but did not say why he disapproved. Then, at 6:47 yesterday evening, he posted: “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years.”

And yet, Iran said today it had received a response to its offer from the U.S. and is reviewing it.

The Trump administration continues to look for a way to open the Strait of Hormuz. Today Trump announced that on Monday the U.S. will launch “Project Freedom,” an effort to escort stranded merchant ships through the strait. U.S. Central Command said tonight that Project Freedom will include “guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members.” Iran has said the use of U.S. Navy ships for the escort would be a violation of the ceasefire; it is not clear if Navy ships will participate.

As Barak Ravid of Axios notes, Trump says the attempt is “humanitarian”—ships stuck from the strait’s closure are running low on supplies and are facing sanitation problems—but it’s clear the administration is trying to challenge Iran’s control of the strait. It is also worth noting that Trump often makes announcements that appear designed to move the market, and the price of oil dropped after the announcement of Project Freedom.

As Chandelis Duster of NPR reported today, gas prices jumped more than thirty cents a gallon last week. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), regular gas averages $4.446 a gallon. Two days before the Iran war began, the average price per gallon was $2.98.

Last week, German chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “[t]he Americans obviously have no strategy” and suggested that Iranian officials were outwitting the Trump administration, saying the U.S. was “being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.” Trump didn’t take that comment well, posting screeds attacking Merz repeatedly and claiming, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

On Wednesday, Trump talked to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin for an hour and a half—the twelfth phone call between the two leaders since Trump took office a second time—and just hours later posted about removing U.S. troops from Germany. Putin has wanted to weaken the U.S. commitment to Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for a long time. As Jack Detsch, Paul McLeary, and Stefanie Bolzen of Politico note, European officials worry that Putin is making plans to attack a NATO country.

On Thursday, Trump suggested to reporters that he might also pull troops out of Spain and Italy, “Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “Italy has not been of any help to us. And Spain has been horrible. Absolutely horrible.”

On Friday the Defense Department said it was pulling 5,000 troops from Germany and was cancelling a plan formulated under the Biden administration to put an artillery unit equipped with missiles in Europe. The U.S. had increased its European presence after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. These moves will take U.S. forces back to where they were before the invasion. As scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder wrote: “You can apply lots of normalizing frameworks or you can just make a timeline of his calls with Putin. We don’t have a sovereign foreign policy. We have superpower suicide.”

Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, and Megan Mineiro of the New York Times reported that senior defense officials wanted the force reduction to be understood as a punishment for Germany after Merz’s comment. In fact, U.S. bases in Germany are staging areas for U.S. operations in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.

The Politico journalists report that defense officials were “stunned” by the announcement, and on Saturday the chairs of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), declared they were “very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany.” They noted that “any significant change to the U.S. force posture in Europe warrants a deliberate review process and close coordination with Congress and our allies. We expect the Department to engage with its oversight committees in the days and weeks ahead on this decision and its implications for U.S. deterrence and transatlantic security.”

And yet Trump is clearly worried about the upcoming midterm election, especially after Democratic-backed Quentin Wiltz yesterday flipped a seat in the Houston suburb of Pearland, Texas, that had been a reliable Republican stronghold.

After his Friday post calling Jeffries a “thug,” Trump posted yesterday that Democrats had “RIGGED the 2020 Presidential Election. GET TOUGH REPUBLICANS—THEY’RE COMING, AND THEY’RE COMING FAST! They’re no good for our Country, they almost destroyed it, and we don’t want to let that happen again!” He demanded Republicans “approve all of the necessary Safeguards we need for Elections to protect the American Public during the upcoming Midterms.”

Tonight, again, he posted that Jeffries was “a Low IQ individual” and called for his impeachment, although neither senators nor representatives can be impeached. His post went on to say more about his own fears than about Jeffries.

“I got impeached for A PERFECT PHONE CALL,” Trump wrote. “Where are you Republicans? Why not get it started? They’ll be doing this to me!”

According to a new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans believe President Donald J. Trump does not have the mental sharpness necessary to lead the country. Fifty-five percent think he does not have the physical health to serve as president. Fifty-four percent say they don’t think Trump is a strong leader. Sixty-seven percent think Trump doesn’t carefully consider important decisions.

Today, Susannah George and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported that as the U.S. ramps up its attempts to open the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is responding with military attacks. This morning, Iran fired drones and missiles at two U.S. destroyers and two merchant vessels moving through the strait. According to Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, none of the ships were hit.

But Iran also launched six fast boats at the commercial ships. Cooper said the U.S. destroyed those vessels.

Ahmad Vahidi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, posted on social media: “The Strait of Hormuz will not be opened by the tweet of the President of the United States; the management and control of this waterway is in the hands of Iran. Nothing will have the right to enter without permission, and in the event of a violation of this matter, it will be considered a legitimate target.”

Iran also hit the United Arab Emirates today with fifteen missiles and four drones. One of the armaments started a fire in the oil hub of Fujairah.

Trump told Trey Yingst of the Fox News Channel today that his military blockade of Iranian ports is the “greatest military maneuver in history.” He also said that if the Iranians target U.S. ships, they will be “blown off the face of the earth.” And yet, as Iran demonstrated by hitting the United Arab Emirates today, resuming the war could devastate the Middle East, plunging the globe into even more economic chaos. So, for now, Trump appears to be hanging onto the ceasefire.

Alexander Ward of the Wall Street Journal noted that today, at the White House, Trump told a group of small-business owners that he “call[s] it a mini war.”

Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) called out the fact that the Trump administration argued on Friday that it did not have to get congressional approval for the war on Iran at the 60-day mark required by the 1973 War Powers Resolution because, it said, the war had “terminated” on April 7. It made the claim despite the fact that a blockade is an act of war and the U.S. continues to blockade Iranian ports. Asked on Saturday how he could say the war had terminated when the U.S. military was enforcing the blockade, Trump told reporters: “Well, it’s a very friendly blockade. Nobody’s even challenging it.”

Duckworth, who lost both legs when serving as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in the Iraq War, posted: “U.S. and Iranian ships are exchanging missile fire today in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s claims that hostilities have ceased were bullsh*t. He is lying to the American people and prolonging his disastrous war of choice—And he’s doing it illegally.”

This afternoon, Trump posted an AI image of President Joe Biden on one knee with the caption: COWARDS KNEEL,” an AI image of President Barack Obama with the caption “TRAITORS BOW,” and an AI image of himself with his fist raised and the caption “LEADERS LEAD.”

Journalist Aaron Rupar noted: “Trump is crazyposting at 3pm.”

Trump has said over and over and over that this second attack was to prevent Iran from rebuilding its nuclear weapons program after he destroyed it last year.

Journalists know to be careful with superlatives. If you write that someone or something is the first or the last, the largest or the smallest, the best or worst, an inconvenient fact will come along to contradict you, sometimes emailed by an irate reader. But at least three academic surveys have found that Donald Trump is the worst president the US has ever had. And it’s true, he is: I defy you to name a worse president.

The most recent of these reports was the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. It’s more relevant than ever as Trump’s opponents, and some of his former friends, question his sanity as well as his probity. Historians and political scientists were asked to rate each president on a scale of zero to 100. Trump scored 10.92, coming last out of 45, with the lowest score any president has ever had in this survey.

Trump’s supporters will say this is liberal academic bias, but he was ranked at or near the bottom by experts from across the political spectrum. And this was judged on his performance during his first term, 2017-21. It was before Iran, the war without a strategy, with Trump oscillating between “a whole civilisation will die tonight” and “we have a very good relationship with Iran”.

There’s no growing into the office of president. There’s no time for that as the occupant of the White House lurches from crisis to crisis. The Oval Office reveals character; it does not build it. A friend spoke to a member of Trump’s administration and asked him what it was like serving in the White House. “It’s a 24/7 food fight,” the official said; it never stops.

To be fair to Trump, this is the same as any White House. But that’s why a president should be a level head, a calming figure. Trump is both hyperactive and impulsive, decisions made and unmade as quickly as he can post on Truth Social. Politicians often wear a mask, but with Trump, what you see is what you get. That is a kind of virtue, but Trump has no filter. This made him a great reality TV star, and a terrible leader of the world’s most powerful nation.

Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th US president, knew the power of understatement. “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” he said, and America’s enemies trembled. Trump said: “Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!!” And then he caved. America’s enemies, especially Russia and China, can see the pattern. Hashtag Taco – Trump always chickens out.

A report in The Wall Street Journal said that when two American airmen were lost in Iran, Trump screamed at his aides “for hours” – they had to keep him out of the Situation Room. He is an emotional and instinctive politician. “He didn’t read,” wrote Michael Wolff in Fire and Fury. “He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.” Trump has what the editor of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, called a “comprehensive ignorance of history”. Briefing papers have to be single-page, ideally with pictures.

In intellect, Trump has been compared to Ronald Reagan, who was an “amiable dunce” in the words of a political opponent, and to that famous mangler of words, George W Bush. But these two Republican presidents had people skills; in Reagan’s case, you would call it charm. And the folksy, regular guy personas were – partly – an act. Bush joked that “[William F Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one”. There is so much evidence that Trump is just as stupid as he looks. He does not charm.

The other Republican president who invites comparison to Trump is Richard Nixon. Nixon was ruthless, as Trump would like to be, but he was quietly, cleverly devious, drawing up his enemies’ list and plotting his revenge in secret. Trump is unable to keep a secret, and his revenge is often crude, noisy, and public. Nixon was a master strategist; Trump is… not. And Nixon was never actually impeached – he resigned first – while Donald Trump has been impeached twice.

The US president who tops all the surveys is, of course, Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery and saved the Union. He is the anti-Trump. The Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading claims made by Trump during his first term. Lincoln was “Honest Abe”, incorruptible in his public life and in private. As his law partner recounted, Lincoln was naked in bed with a Springfield prostitute when he found he was $2 short of her fee. He got dressed and left, saying, “I cannot afford to cheat you”. Trump tried to get out of paying $130,000 he had promised to the porn star Stormy Daniels after having sex with her at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Lincoln was even more careful with other people’s money. He returned $199.25 of his $200 campaign budget “having bought only one barrel of cider”, according to the historian Paul Johnson. Trump is effectively charging people to meet him; the mechanism is to buy a “special edition” of his $TRUMP memecoin. Last year’s top bidder, a Chinese-born crypto billionaire, reportedly bought up to $23m of it; in total, the dinner brought in $148m to two Trump-controlled companies.

Trump has turned the presidency into a money-printer. A New Yorker investigation found that he and his family had made $4bn from it by this January. Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders calls it an “unprecedented kleptocracy”.

Trump’s favourite president is Andrew Jackson, another populist who liked confrontation. He has Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office. Trump has often said his father, Fred, brought him up to be a “killer” in business. Jackson was a real killer. In 1806, he fought a duel with Charles Dickinson, leaving him to bleed to death. There were other duels and knock-down, drag-out brawls in the street, fought with fists and swords, men rolling bloodied in the muck.

Jackson, at least, was a genuine war hero who understood the risks of combat. Trump is “an eight-year-old playing with toy soldiers,” in the words of the Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shapiro. He bone-spurred his way out of Vietnam, dodging the draft with a medical exemption for allegedly malformed feet. The condition was never mentioned again. But as even Trump’s harshest critics recognise, he did have his moment of courage and grace under fire. After an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear, he raised a defiant fist – and won an election.

Jackson defied the courts; Nixon defied the courts and Congress. Yet they both believed in the rule of law itself. Every other president – however corrupt, venal or incompetent – respected the constitution as defining the rules of the game. No other president told a crowd to “fight like hell” and then watched on television as they stormed Congress. No other president spoke publicly of refusing to accept the results of an election. No one else mused openly about how they could just keep going, becoming president for life.

Donald J Trump always wanted to be exceptional, unique, one of a kind. He got his wish. He is unique. He is one of a kind. He is the worst.