The News You Need on Tuesday, March 31st, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser.
Could Iran Finally be Trump’s Waterloo?
The Guardian
Charles: David Smith, the brilliant White House Correspondent for The Guardian, believes the answer could be yes:
The war is turning into the ultimate test of an operating principle that has guided Trump for decades: construct a narrative, declare it to be true and relentlessly force the world to submit to it.. . .But in Iran, Trump’s unique brand of “truthful hyperbole” has collided with the truthful truth. His reality distortion field has run into a brick wall.
“This is war and you can’t just will a win into existence in war,” said Tara Setmayer, cofounder of the Seneca Project. . . “The American people are not on board with what’s going on because he cannot articulate an argument for why we’re there or what victory actually looks like..”
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Iran is Trump’s Waterloo. This is the demolition of the Donald Trump myth. His supporters rave about his instincts and his improvisational style but the other interpretation is that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he hasn’t taken care to investigate the devastating consequences of his actions and so he’s digging himself deeper and deeper into a quagmire. . . …Donald Trump has met the moment of truth…It’s going to cost the lives of so many people. It’s going to devastate the US economy and the regional economy. It’s going to set back America and its standing in the world. It’s a horrific moment.”
Of course we’ve thought this a thousand times since the original “Grab ‘em by the pussy” moment in 2016. But because of the pure idiocy Bibi has led him into, Teheran could be Trump’s Waterloo.
Another Trump-linked Businessman Doing Odd Deals in Greenland
Berlingske
Scott: Berlingske reports today on Drew Horn, a US businessman with ties to Trump who pursues various dodgy projects in Greenland. Horn was recently fined $59k for “commingling public and private business.” He’s part of a web of supposedly private business interests fronting for Trump in Greenland. Collectively they provide clear evidence that Trump’s interest in seizing Greenland has not faded. Indeed, the stories, and the Danish intelligence report that collects them, have now mounted to the point where even the somnolent New York Times has taken notice:
Three Americans with ties to President Trump, it reported, were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland, the Danish territory that Mr. Trump covets.
Without naming the mysterious men, the report laid out in tantalizing detail how they had shuttled back and forth between the United States and Greenland, compiled lists of pro-American Greenlanders and tried to stoke a Greenlandic secessionist movement. Hours after the report aired, the Danish government summoned the top American diplomat in Copenhagen to protest.
It turns out that the figures at the center of the mystery have not exactly been hiding. Their activities have been less cloak-and-dagger and more the quite open blend of business and foreign policy that defines the Trump administration’s approach to the world.
Sidney Blumenthal Agrees Trump is Doomed; Adds the Vital Vietnam Parallel
In the Guardian’s opinion pages, Sidney Blumenthal agrees:
Donald Trump has lost his Iran war. He is the Iranian hostage… Trump threw himself into Iranian hands. Less than a month into his “short-term excursion”, his stated objectives have been scattered to the winds. There is no regime change, no uprising and no access to oil wealth along the Venezuelan model. The decapitation gambit – assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian leadership – has failed to destroy the regime. Despite the massacre, it is Trump who stands exposed to slings and arrows for the rashest military adventure since Custer at the Little Bighorn.Mission accomplished” would apparently be to return to square one, where things stood before he careened into war. The Iranians, however, deny there are any negotiations and have rejected his latest offer “until complete victory…”
Trump is acting out the “madman theory”, but without the theory. The “madman theory” was devised by Richard Nixon one month after he became president, in February 1969. As a carefully premeditated ploy, Nixon suggested that the North Vietnamese be informed he was dangerously out of control. “We can’t restrain him when he is angry – and he has his hand on the nuclear button,” Nixon said in giving instruction, “and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.” But Nixon’s threats of “knockout blows” did not deter the North Vietnamese leadership, much less intimidate them, and they launched a new offensive. Bombing campaign after campaign never won the war for Nixon. He left office in the disgrace of Watergate about a year before the last helicopter took off from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon.”
Trump Officials Suggest Stephen Miller Wanted Blood on the Streets of Minneapolis
Daily Mail
Scott: The right-wing London based Daily Mail has now been on a multi-week run of scoops from inside the White House and DHS heralding internecine warfare, seemingly between JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller. In the latest iteration, it suggests heavily that Miller pushed ICE for violence against protesters in Minneapolis, triggering the outlandish homicides of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The most damaging episodes were the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, which Miller was at the center of. During his 10 am calls with immigration leaders, Miller was demanding agents to be sent to areas of Minneapolis where DHS knew there was a heavy presence of protesters, to ‘force confrontations,’ two senior DHS sources told the Daily Mail.
One official noted that Miller repeatedly urged agents to engage protesters so the Administration could win the ‘PR battle.’
A French Senator Gives a Better Speech than any Democrat Has Delivered
Peter Birkenhead on Facebook
Charles: For the second year in a row, French Senator Claude Malhuret has done a better job of summarizing Donald Trump’s crimes against humanity than any American politician.
In less than five minutes he summarized them all.
At the end of 1940, it was almost impossible for any decent person living in Europe to feel any optimism about the future. Their only hope lay in the power and the decency of a great power across the sea, the only country strong enough to rescue them if it decided to enter into an alliance with the Soviet Union. Today, everyone’s roles are reversed—including the Russians’.
We must find hope in the clarity of brilliant Frenchmen like Claude Malhuret:
A year ago, I compared Trump’s presidency to De Niro’s court. I was wrong. It’s a court of miracles. An antivaxer, former heroin addict, Secretary of Health, a climate skeptic Secretary of Ecology, an alcoholic TV host, Secretary of the Armed Forces, a former Qatari agent, Secretary of Justice, a Putin groupie, Secretary of Homeland Security.
A Turkish proverb says, when a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become king. It’s the palace that becomes a circus. This fine team has decided to create a rival to the UN. Since his peace council was established, Trump has launched more military strikes than Biden did during his entire term. Every time the Epstein affair resurfaces, bombs explode somewhere in the world to create a diversion, bombs more to make more money. There isn’t a single country where Trump hasn’t taken advantage of the situation to enrich himself, never forgetting his family, a private Boeing jet gifted by Qatar, investments in every project in the Gulf or elsewhere, manipulation of stock prices benefiting a select few insiders. Any single one of these conflicts of interest would have triggered immediate impeachment proceedings here, but we are not here. We are in MAGA America, where public affairs are conducted in the service of private interests. After the Customs finger pointing, Greenland, the abandonment of Ukraine, the humiliation of allies, the ineffective trip to Venezuela and so many others, a new senseless adventure begins. Let me be clear. I am the last person to complain about the overthrow of the Mullas regime and the first to demand freedom for the Iranian people. But what is the strategy to achieve this? And has the collateral damage, including for the Iranians, been assessed? Is there no strategy and the collateral damage has been written off as a loss, just as when in January, Trump called on Iranians to take to the streets only to let them be massacred by the Basij. After the pretext of an imminent Iranian atomic bomb, contradicted by the Director of U.S. Intelligence herself, and then the argument for regime change, it was Marco Rubio, who finally spilled the beans. We went there because we followed Netanyahu. In other words, we have no objective of our own. Trump ignored the warnings of the few who had the courage to tell him what was obviously going to happen. The blockade and the Strait of Hormuz, and the spread of war throughout the Middle East. Then in a final disinformation campaign whose sole purpose is to calm oil prices and the falling stock markets, he announces the negotiations are underway. The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament denies this within hours. This is the first international negotiation where one of the parties discovers their negotiating by watching the evening news. Oil tankers are blacked in the Gulf, the Emirates are closing their airspace, influencers on the beach in Dubai are begging to be brought home refineries and oil fields are on fire. After assembling the world’s most powerful army, failing to win a war against a middle power nation, sending oil and gas prices skyrocketing and delivering rambling speeches, the Mara-a-Lago Golfer shamelessly admits being stunned by Iran’s response which was completely predictable, and calls for help from the very people he rejected, and they reply, you didn’t consult anyone, you have no plan, we have no reason to blindly follow you into the fog.
A blueprint for Chinese global leadership
Financial Times
Scott: For years, Columbia economic historian Adam Tooze has meticulously chronicled the strategies developed by CCP leadership in Beijing for engagement with the world, and particularly, with the United States. Trump has now twice launched a trade war with China, neither of which has turned out well for the United States. China, on the other hand, has mastered the art of predicting what Trump will do and when and has repeatedly seized the strategic and economic opportunities that Trump has left open for it. China’s huge advantage lies in the simple fact that its two rivals for global hegemony—Russia and the United States—run by leaders of a remarkably similar stamp, are now each engaged in historically unprecedented acts of self-destruction.
Beijing has adopted a defensive stance, prioritising its own supplies. In a world as messy as ours, playing the role of adult is hard. It is far easier for Beijing to bide its time and to wait out the crisis, allowing the US to destroy its own credibility and Russia to become more and more dependent. Meanwhile, at events like the CDF, the participants, including representatives of the US, pontificate about “global geopolitical risks” as though they were natural disasters rather than the result of decisions made by the US and Israel.
‘Wir schaffen das,’ Part 2: Germany moves for the repatriation of Syrian Exiles
Der Spiegel
Scott: More than 900,000 Syrians immigrated to Germany during the Syrian civl war. This was in large part due to a welcoming posture taken by Chancellor Angela Merkel. With peace now restored in Syria, the Merz administration has settled on a policy of facilitating the return of roughly 80% of the immigrants, starting with those who have not secured a legal right of residence. This issue featured prominently at a Berlin summit between Friedrich Merz and Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Merz did not give a specific figure for the return of Syrian migrants as the federal government’s position. However, he referred to Sharaa’s “wish” that “in the longer term over the next three years (...) around 80 percent of the Syrians staying in Germany should return to their home country.”
First of all, according to Merz’s wishes, Syrians who have committed criminal offenses without a valid residence permit should be repatriated. “We have a small group here, but a group that is causing us problems,” said the Chancellor.
Who Gives Better Investment Advice, Iran or Apollo Global Management?
The Kobeissi Letter
Scott: Yesterday the Kobeissi Letter flagged advice given by the Iranian government about how Trump plays the commodity markets. Today, Kobeissi checks their advice against market performance. No doubt about it, the Iranians are spot on.
Today’s Galactic Image
What’s happened to the center of this galaxy? Dramatic dust lanes run across the center of unusual elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. These dust lanes are so thick they almost completely obscure the galaxy’s center in visible light. This is particularly unusual as Cen A‘s older stars and oval shape are characteristic of a giant elliptical galaxy, a galaxy type typically low in dark dust. Pictured in this deep image is a complex network of foreground gas and dust, as well as shells of dim stars and a jet projecting to the upper right. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is surely the result of a galactic collision where many young dust-creating stars were formed. However, details of the creation of Cen A’s unusually active center and iconic central dust lanes are still being researched. Cen A lies only 13 million light years away, making it the closest active galaxy.
Your Online Moment of Zen
Charles: This is my favorite piece by my favorite French composer:
Camille Saint-Saëns’s 4th Piano Concerto.
I fell in love with it when I was 13 and living in Dakar.
This performance is by pianist Lorraine Min with the Victoria Symphony conducted by Tania Miller.
Edited by Imogen Sayers.