Trump reveals Schrödinger's stance on war with Iran

Crash Course subscribers can now join the conversation — click the speech bubble icon to leave a comment or click the heart to like this post.

The news, in brief …

• NYC mayoral candidate arrested by ICE agents

  New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was taken into custody by ICE agents outside of an immigration hearing on Tuesday. Lander repeatedly asked agents for a warrant as they tried to take another man into custody and pointed out that ICE can not arrest U.S. citizens, as he was being led away in handcuffs. Read more.

• Trump mocks Walz over Minnesota shooting

  The president scoffed at the idea of talking to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after a series of politically motivated shootings in his state. Trump called the former vice presidential candidate “a mess” and added that speaking to him was a waste of time. Walz called on Trump to “be a president for all Americans” in a statement. Read more.

• Sen. Mike Lee confronted over Minnesota assassination posts

  Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah was criticized for his posts making light of the attacks, with many of his fellow lawmakers urging him to “take responsibility.” Lee did not apologize, but has deleted the posts. Read more.

Will Republicans continue to skate past recriminations from lawmakers and the public? If ICE agents can arrest a senior New York City official, who can’t they arrest? More importantly, what should we be doing about it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Make me smarter …

"No Kings" should be just the beginning

The response to Trumpism should be powerful, loud and independent of party politics. Read more.

Neither at war, nor at peace, but some secret third thing

Donald Trump and his running dogs have cracked the code for carrying out his agenda, and it’s as effective as it is annoying.

Whenever Trump is confronted with the problem of pushing through something that is widely unpopular, he calls upon the absurdist legacy of Erwin Schrödinger. Like the physicist’s eternally unlucky alive/dead cat, Trump dances around his least appealing policies by saying he’s neither carrying them out nor shelving them (with the added caveat that it would be awesome if he were).

Take, for example, Trump’s stance on the intensifying conflict between Israel and Iran. He knows he ran on keeping America out of foreign entanglements. He can hear the braying of MAGA acolytes who want him to stay true to his America First pledge. He also knows that he wants to appear big and strong to authoritarian leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s why he signed a statement calling for restraint between the two nations and then sent barely veiled threats to Iranian leaders.

Trump’s claim that American intelligence knew where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was was a classic of the genre, veering wildly between threats of violence and promises of safety in the same sentence.

“He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” he wrote on social media Tuesday.

Trump’s belief in agenda superposition would be fine if, like Schrödinger, it were merely a thought experiment. But Trump’s waffling is more akin to throwing a stone and hiding his hand, an “Ain’t I a stinker?” pose on everything from conflict in the Middle East to unlawful deportations. For proof, look back a few weeks to when Trump admin officials blew past a court’s order to halt deportations, mocked the court as they did it and claimed to that same court that they were following the law.

Trump’s quantum stick-in-the-eye is also the M.O. of his ICE agents, who are operating within their purview to arrest undocumented immigrants (as long as you don’t count all the Americans they keep arresting). They put NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander in handcuffs on Tuesday for asking to see a warrant.

The graphic-tee Gestapo will get by on a technicality, saying that Lander was impeding federal officers in their duties, but their intent is clear. They want American citizens who oppose their state-sanctioned disappearances to know that they will arrest them without cause, even though they aren’t doing it (but it would be awesome if they were).

What do you think? Will Trump ever be called to account for having it both ways? Is he destined to live out his days as a White nationalist Anansi, wriggling out of all repercussions? Will Trump’s opposition ever stop being fooled and float real consequences for the president and his accomplices? Sound off in the comments.

Support our bold journalism: Become a Salon member today.

Before you go …

What Mavis Staples can teach us about resisting Trumpism

The Staples Singers' music helped people keep marching when it was hard. Those songs taught lessons about how to resist the terror of Jim and Jane Crow and its many forms of evil; they were a literal cadence for people to march toward justice, and they reflect the centrality of music to Black Americans as a source of cultural resistance, struggle, triumph and joy in the face of oppression. Read more.