On the eve of the midterms, strange and dark events have been taking place in Trump’s America.
Yesterday, a Learjet smashed like a scud missile into a road in Palm Beach, Florida, about eight miles from Trump’s mansion at Mar-a-Lago. The President had flown out of Palm Beach – from the now-renamed President Donald J. Trump International Airport – about an hour earlier.
Around the same time, reports confirmed that Chris Murphy, the Democratic Senator for Connecticut, had suffered a stroke. On Wednesday and Thursday last week, following a classified Senate briefing, Murphy had warned the world about the Trump administration’s “insane” plan to escalate the war in Iran in the wake of the midterms.
“It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law,” said Murphy, who is not up for re-election.
“The plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongation and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.”
With the midterms just hours away, Trump is under immense strain
Then, late last night, Tucker Carlson issued an even more alarming signal on social media. “The Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran,” he said. The target, he explained, would be Pickaxe Mountain in central Iran, where the Iranian regime has reportedly restarted its uranium enrichment program. According to Carlson, Trump is under strong pressure from Bibi Netanyahu, who is struggling to keep hold of power following last week’s Israeli election, to deploy a “battlefield nuke.” Such a move could, Carlson then argues, trigger a terrifying global escalation, as Russia would then use such an attack to justify a nuclear strike of its own on Ukraine. Carlson claims that Trump is “to his credit” hesitant to make such an escalatory move, but is torn between the more hawkish and dovish factions within his administration.
Of course, Carlson is widely derided these days as an anti-Israel crank, a pro-Russian stooge, or worse. Legions of commentators on X are now calling him a malevolent troll prone to hyperbole and apocalyptic thinking. But he remains impeccably well-sourced within the Trump administration. He’s still friends with Vice President J.D. Vance and well-plugged into what is going on inside the Pentagon. It’s perhaps no coincidence that his statement on X comes hours after a reportedly “candid call” between Trump and Netanyahu yesterday. According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, who speaks often to high-level Israeli officials, Trump is keen to “let negotiations play out – a strategy Netanyahu is concerned about.” Trump appears to be letting a “dual track” strategy play out, allowing Vice President JD Vance to continue his push for peace, while putting CENTCOM – the US combat command center for the Middle East – on standby for a major assault on Iranian infrastructure, including Pickaxe Mountain.
What is certain is that, with the midterms just hours away, Trump is under immense strain. The latest polls this week suggest a growing likelihood of a “blue tsunami” against him and his party. According to the latest New York Times/Siena survey, the Democratic party looks poised to retake the House and the Senate, which will put Trump on the back foot domestically. If that happens, the Iran war, and its negative impact on the US economy, will clearly be held responsible for the Republican party’s poor results. Will Trump blame Netanyahu for dragging him into a conflict against his better instincts? Or will the embattled American and Israeli leaders, both sensing the end of their political careers and the imminent possibility of legal prosecutions, double down against Tehran? Will the two men, whose curious love-hate relationship has so shaped geopolitics in recent years, decide together to escalate the war to violent levels Trump never would have considered before he started the war back in February?
Paranoiac conspiracy theorists are now busy drawing crazy lines between the bizarre news dots over the weekend. There’s a completely unsubstantiated rumor spreading that the crashed Learjet in Florida was on a flight path over Mar-a-Lago. Bonkers, no doubt. But the craziness of the discourse speaks to this febrile moment in American politics. It’s only rational to expect far more madness in the coming days.
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