Everybody complains that The Media talks too much about The Tweets, but then the president announces decisions on war and peace with The Tweets so we've got to talk about The Tweets. And let me tell ya, these tweets are fucking nuts. Someday, assuming we survive this charming epoch, we will look back on these days with vision unencumbered by the informational typhoon of the present and see clearly that it was an extended outbreak of dangerous public insanity. The citizens of the world are in a constant state of peril because we have anointed a Fox News Grandpa as the most powerful man on this planet. For instance, on a Thursday night in June, he veered towards—then veered away from—a war with Iran.

We know this courtesy of a New York Times story, but we also know it because he ... tweeted about it. Like, all of it. The full play-by-play. Here is what he said, removed from the visual context of the Tweet Machine, which over time may have warped our perception of the fact that this is the President of the United States explaining—in a dispatch riddled with factual, grammatical, and spelling errors—how he almost Did a War last night.

President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran - Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus I.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled.....

....Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!....

So, as you may have guessed, this is not what happened with the Iran Deal.

The United States came together with our European allies, Russia, and China to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to force them to the negotiating table. Once there, the world powers got Iranian leadership to agree to stringent limits on their nuclear development—and various mechanisms for those powers to verify Iran was complying with those limits—in exchange for lifting the sanctions. (As of August 2018, Iran was complying with the deal.) That is why, when the deal was agreed, the U.S. released Iranian cash that it had seized. The $1.8 billion Trump attempted to cite is actually $1.7 billion, and has a long and complicated backstory involving a ruling at the Hague.

Mike Pompeo is reportedly one of the Beltway Warriors who fancies armed conflict with Iran. Win McNamee Getty Images

But the idea Trump torpedoed the deal because of that, or because the Iranians chanted "Death to America," is silly. He blew it up because Obama did it.

....On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not....



The Iranians claim the drone was in their airspace, and neither side here is a reliable narrator. But more to the point, the President of the United States is on Twitter saying his military was "cocked and loaded" to strike "3 different sights." And then he just up and said that he didn't ask about casualties until they were 10 minutes out. The president says he did not consider whether we would kill Iranian citizens in response to losing an unmanned aircraft—an escalation not just of degree, but of kind—until he was about to pull the trigger. (Some are already questioning if this is even possible.) He related the story in his rally-style diction, where he half-mimics the other speaker—whether it's a General or the Big Strong Tough Crying Guys that come up to him everywhere he goes—except he's talking about the deliberations over conducting a military strike on a nation of 83 million people.

Luckily, miraculously, he made the correct decision. According to him.

....proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!

Maybe this was all an attempt to send Iran's leadership a message. (They answered by suggesting they could have shot down a U.S. plane carrying 35 people that was in their airspace, but declined.) By most reports, Trump is not particularly interested in a war—that's more the purview of the Beltway Warriors in his cabinet like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. It would also fit Trump's M.O. of bluffing extremely loudly in every situation, like when he throws a tantrum and storms out of meetings with Nancy Pelosi.

The U.S. blamed Iran for a series of attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf recently. Neither that, nor even the loss of an American drone, seems like a moral casus belli. - Getty Images

But it's a dangerous game to play for someone so cripplingly ignorant about world affairs, particularly because, as Chris Hayes noted on Twitter, he talks about making war with "delusional, performative glibness." As a reminder, Iran is the second largest nation in the Middle East by population. It has a standing army of half a million. This is not Afghanistan, or even Iraq. The cost in American blood and treasure would likely dwarf those conflicts, which we've been stuck in for close to two decades now. A lot of innocent Iranian civilians would likely die, just like they did in Iraq. It would be an unmitigated humanitarian disaster, which is why the world powers worked so hard to make a deal.

Say, the New York Times reports officials expected a strike up until 7 p.m. What was the president up to on the Tweet Machine around then?

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S&P closes at Record High! https://t.co/C5nOXIQ7EJ — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2019

He was, without exaggeration, debating a military strike on Iran when he sent this. Marinate on that for a minute, then marinate on the question of just how long we can continue in this state of affairs before the stream of miraculous escapes runs dry.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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