Now that Donald Trump’s government shutdown gambit has failed to distract Americans from his treason scandal, he’s trying a new tactic. He and his regime have leaked documents suggesting that they’re planning to invade Iran. I’m here to tell you, it’s not going to happen. In fact this is precisely the kind of empty, impossible bluff that we need to learn how to filter out, so we can focus on the things Trump is actually getting away with.

With his approval rating in the gutter, his criminal scandals worsening, and a growing number of Republicans in Congress trying to distance themselves from his shutdown debacle, Donald Trump now has zero political leverage of his own. He could never pull off invading Iran. Maybe a year ago. Sure as heck not now. He knows it, too, just as he knows he can’t pull off declaring a national emergency over his border wall fantasy.

The trouble is, Trump does gain a bit of leverage by scaring us into believing he might actually do these horrible things. In reality we’ve gifting him that leverage by cowering to him on imaginary things. Unfortunately this has been going on for quite some time. This week it’s an imaginary war with Iran. Last week it was an imaginary national emergency declaration and an imaginary Rod Rosenstein resignation. Before that it was the imaginary firing of Robert Mueller, imaginary pardons, and so on.

Trump leaks these imaginary, impossible threats to the media with the knowledge that the media will play them up for ratings, because fear keeps people tuned in. It’s up to us to decide to tune this kind of crap out, because as long as we’re focused on Trump’s imaginary threats, it makes it easier for him to get away with the horrible things he is doing.

Keep in mind that when Donald Trump began kidnapping immigrant children and locking them in cages, he was initially doing it in secret – while we we’re busy fretting over false narratives like Mueller getting fired and everyone being magically pardoned. We can’t afford to keep falling for Trump’s imaginary threats. He’s not going to invade Iran any more than he’s going to hire unicorns to build his border wall.

And no, Donald Trump didn’t hire John Bolton to invade Iran. Trump hired Bolton immediately after Bolton’s company Cambridge Analytica got busted. It was Trump’s way of preventing Bolton from cutting a plea deal against him. The timing has made it blatantly obvious all along. Trump isn’t going to magically invade a country and save himself; even he understands nothing works that way. He’s just counting on us not understanding it.