Susan Glasser

If this is “total and complete victory,” imagine what failure looks like.

The President poses an existential question: Can everything be going according to the plan with Iran if there is no plan?

It would certainly be bizarre if Donald Trump’s breakup with Europe “finally happened over a war of choice in the Middle East, launched by a President who came into office vowing not to start new wars in the Middle East,” Susan B. Glasser writes.

“We won,” the President who’s treating the conflict with Iran like a video game says, but “we’re not finished yet.”

So far, explanations are few and the goals—from regime change to ending a nuclear program the President already claimed to have “obliterated”—are many.

But at least the President thinks everything is going great.

It is Donald Trump’s systematic campaign to stamp out dissent and punish those who disagree with him that will be remembered as among the most singularly un-American aspects of his disruptive tenure.

A case for preparation over fear.

The question is not if he will undermine confidence in the midterms but how.

After a wave of public revulsion over the President’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, he offers a familiar playbook: distraction, disinformation, denial, delay.