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Time to retire TACO — Operation Epic Fury’s crystal clear message to Putin, Xi

Among the many, many reverberations of Operation Epic Fury, it’s clearly time to retire TACO — the snarky claim that “Trump always chickens out.”

In particular, President Donald Trump’s decisive move to destroy Iran’s war machinery and take out the regime’s leadership — coming fast on the heels of his ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro — sends a crystal-clear message to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Events are not only proving Trump to be a man of action, and one whose tough talk is much more than talk, but also a deft builder of coalitions for the defense of freedom.

Yes, only Israel is joining in military action against Tehran, but the Arab states that once would’ve condemned the joint Washington-Jerusalem strikes aren’t calling for a cease-fire but instead condemning Iran — plainly supporting the drive to pull the Islamic Republic’s fangs.

And while Britain’s hapless Labour leader, Keir Starmer, dithered about supposed “international law,” the left-wing governments of Canada and Australia pointedly endorsed the US-Israeli operation — clear signs that the wider West is abandoning the suicidal nonsense that civilized nations must simply manage their own decline.

At a bare minimum, Epic Fury will render Tehran useless as an ally for Moscow and Beijing, and may move it firmly back into the Western camp, where it was before the 1979 revolution.

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Caracas, is now doing what Washington says — and Havana may be next.

Note, too, that Mexican President Claudia Shieinbaum just took out a major cartel kingpin in a complete about-face from her predecessor’s contempt for US wishes.

And for all Putin’s hopes that Trump would hand him victory in Ukraine, our president has instead maneuvered the rest of Europe into pulling more of the weight of supporting Kyiv.

He is, in short, objectively strengthening America’s alliances even as he unwinds the larger alliance against us.

While also proving how decisive and devastating US power can be — and what remarkable knowledge our intelligence can glean.

After all, we now know that it was US intel, not Israeli, that tracked the late ayatollah’s movements to allow the opening takeout of the Islamic Republic’s key leadership.

All of this should have Xi reconsidering the wisdom of invading Taiwan, and Putin worrying about the risks of continuing to flip off US efforts to end his Ukraine war.

As we noted yesterday, Epic Fury is really the United States finally fighting back seriously in Iran’s decades-long war on “the Great Satan.”

That puts every other anti-American power on notice, too — no matter how much public regard Trump may show for leaders that he knows perfectly well despise our nation.

Here at home, Trump’s most self-regarding critics — Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Chris Murphy, ex-Veep Kamala Harris — are cluelessly condemning the president’s actions: Not a one of them has any vision that rises above puerile partisan domestic politics.

America’s enemies aren’t so foolish: They know now (if they didn’t before) that this president is a cool and canny calculator, and a fearless defender, of our nation’s interests.

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