The Civilization Trump Destroys May Be Our Own

Produced by Annie Galvin

The Civilization Trump Destroys May Be Our Own

This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.

A few weeks back, we did a show on whether the Iran war would break Trumpism. What we’ve seen over the past week is more specific: The Iran war is breaking Trump.

At 8:03 a.m. on Easter Sunday, Trump posted this to Truth Social:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

That is even crazier when you read it aloud. But Trump followed up with another post on Tuesday that began:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

It didn’t happen. Trump backed down, agreeing to a two-week cease-fire with Iran. Then on Wednesday he wrote:

The United States will work closely with Iran, which we have determined has gone through what will be a very productive Regime Change!

The United States will work closely with Iran, which we have determined has gone through what will be a very productive Regime Change!

In the course of days, even hours, Trump has oscillated from threatening an apparent genocide to then excitedly musing about partnering with Iran to charge tolls to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and giving them relief from sanctions and tariffs.

This is not the art of the deal. This is behavior that should trigger a wellness check.

And look, maybe you’d expect a liberal like me to say that. But listen to some of the traditional Trumper voices on the right. Here’s Tucker Carlson:

Archival clip of Tucker Carlson: On every level — it is vile on every level. It begins with a promise to use the U.S. military — our military — to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country. Which is to say, to commit a war crime. It is a moral crime against the people of a country whose welfare was supposedly one of the reasons we went into this war in the first place: They’re being killed by their government; we have to rescue them. And now here’s our president, not even a month and a half into a conflict we are not winning, saying we’re going to use our military to kill the civilians of this country, who didn’t choose the war. They’ve got nothing to do with it.

Archival clip of Tucker Carlson: On every level — it is vile on every level. It begins with a promise to use the U.S. military — our military — to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country. Which is to say, to commit a war crime. It is a moral crime against the people of a country whose welfare was supposedly one of the reasons we went into this war in the first place: They’re being killed by their government; we have to rescue them. And now here’s our president, not even a month and a half into a conflict we are not winning, saying we’re going to use our military to kill the civilians of this country, who didn’t choose the war. They’ve got nothing to do with it.

I don’t agree with Carlson on all that much. I do appreciate the register he found there. Because he’s right about what that was: a moral crime.

To even conceive of erasing Iranian civilization — much less threaten it in public — is a horrific act on its own. Just imagine being an Iranian parent that night, unsure whether you could protect your child. Imagine being an Iranian living here, worried about your family back home.

Carlson correctly centered on something Trump forgot — or didn’t care about as soon as it was convenient: Iranians are human beings. To annihilate them to salvage a war you started is a crime against humanity. It’s the act of a war criminal. It’s the act of a monster.

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Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. He is the host of the podcast “The Ezra Klein Show” and the author of “Why We’re Polarized” and, with Derek Thompson, “Abundance.” Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor at large of Vox. Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. He is on Threads. 

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