Many Americans are coming around to the view, based on what comes out of President Donald Trump’s mouth and what he writes down on his Truth Social site, that the US Head of State is insane. Larry Johnson is reporting “shocking details of what is going on behind the scene at the White House [where] Donald Trump began exhibiting signs of early dementia in September 2025… He frequently confabulates, he routinely loses his temper and unleashes screaming rants, and he is incapable of doing critical thinking. [As a result] Trump’s senior White House staff are behaving like children with an abusive, drug-addled father… i.e., they walk on egg shells fearful of saying anything that might ignite Trump’s rage.”
And the American public is beginning to pick up on the dysfunction. A broad understanding is developing among voters that the war against Iran undeniably has nothing to do with actual American national or security interests and has been covered by a tissue of scarcely credible lies and dissimulations to conceal the truth. This wide divide between truth and fiction has become clear to nearly everyone. And the actual source of the war, which is enabling and “helping” Israel to destroy Iran, has become increasingly evident to the public as well, as has the reality that the brutal war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controls both Trump and most of the US Congress.
Beyond his mental breakdown, Trump’s foreign and domestic policies are characterized by their belligerency, full of threats directed against imaginary enemies, friends and allies unwilling to go to war for nothing, and anyone in the media or among the public who dares to criticize what comes out of the White House. That means that Trump is not only crazy he is a dangerous psychopath in his preferred interaction with political and social developments that he is supposed to be examining rationally to benefit the United States and the American people.
So what we Americans get is wars plus killing of fishermen in international waters as well as abductions and assassination of foreign politicians and even bombing school girls for no reasons at all. When he is on a roll, Trump is full of threats to “obliterate” foreign countries, and includes unconscionable diatribes against folks like the Roman Catholic Pope Leo for daring to ask for an end to wars and to seek peaceful coexistence among nations. After Trump posted an Artificial Intelligence picture of himself as Jesus, the Pope argued “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” Trump responded by taking aim at the Pope on Truth Social with “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela… and I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do… If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me…Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
The attack on the Pope was followed by a summoning of the Vatican’s Washington based diplomatic top representative in the US Cardinal Christophe Pierre to the Pentagon where he received a “bitter lecture” and warning that lest the Pope behaves there will be retaliation employing the superior military might of the United States. In January Pierre had been warned that the United States has the military power to do “whatever it wants” and that Pope Leo, the first American-born pontiff, “better take its side” over US interference in Latin America. Interestingly, on the night following Pierre’s Pentagon visit there was a bomb threat directed against the Pope’s brother in Illinois, perhaps intended to send a message! The good side of that Trumpean rant and the hateful behavior of his supporters, which has produced outrage not only among Catholics, might well be that Trump will lose his majority in Congress and could even be impeached, hopefully successfully this time around.
Trump is also outraging America’s former loyal allies in NATO. One might argue reasonably that NATO has outlived its relevance but that is not the argument Trump is making. He wants NATO to fully support his illegal war of aggression in Iran and also ignore Israel’s war crime of genocide in Gaza. Spain was the first country to deny use of its NATO airbases and its airspace to US warplanes transiting to attack Iran. England, the most loyal lapdog of all, has also turned non-cooperative with Prime Minister Keir Starmer denying use of British airbases in both the UK and Cyprus and declaring that he has had enough of Trump.
But perhaps the cruelest cut of all came from Italy, which was outraged by Trump’s attack on the Pope. Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, hitherto a strong Trump European supporter, struck back against the US President, first deciding that Italy would no longer supply arms to Israel before declaring that Rome would stand by the Pope in his condemnation of war while also finding Trump’s denunciation of the Pontiff “unacceptable.” She elaborated that “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal that he calls for peace and condemns every form of war.” Trump, who has given Israel $880 million in new bombs just this week to continue its depredations while also surging thousands more troops to the Middle East, of course went on the offensive. In a subsequent interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Trump responded that Meloni is “unacceptable,” and Iran “would blow up Italy in two minutes if they had the chance.”
But unfortunately there is much more than the trading of insults at stake in the Donald Trump debacle. We now know the extent to which Netanyahu and Israel control Trump and a large part of our government, so much so that Netanyahu boasts of having Vice President Vance and the White House staff “report to him daily.” That means that the likelihood that the Israelis will have US backing to use their “secret” nuclear weapons to strike and destroy Iran if the war is resumed and is going against them, which is quite possible, maybe even likely. They might also have the leverage to get an ignorant and aggressive Trump to use America’s nukes on Iran, the first employment of such weapons since their use on World War 2 Japan in 1945. As Netanyahu and his intelligence chiefs appear to have regular access to the White House including being able to convince a gullible Trump falsely that the war against Iran would be a cakewalk, they might be able to talk him into using America’s nukes to finish the Persian job, possibly coupled with some lies to the tune that Iran was about to use its hidden nukes to strike the United States. The president’s spokesperson and leading sycophant Karoline Leavitt has assured us that the president is looking at “all options” regarding Iran and just what do you think that means? This would accomplish the same goal of destroying Iran without the onus of Israel being the source of yet another appalling war crime since it already has plenty of such crimes to its credit in Gaza and Lebanon.
I have previously suggested that Israel could energize US military activity against Iran in particular by staging some kind of false flag attack on American forces in the Persian Gulf region while making it appear to have been done by the Iranians. With the possibility that Trump might go nuclear rolling around in my head I decided to do some research into how easy it would be for him to start a nuclear war without any real provocation on the part of anyone to justify it. To my astonishment, it would be very easy, in fact, certainly within the capabilities of a mentally addled insane man. Indeed, there is pretty much nothing in the process to go nuclear that would stop Trump and prevent him from acting out his “feelings,” as he is wont to put it.
So for the benefit of all those, like myself, who want to learn what happens when the United States President pushes the so-called button or pulls the trigger, whichever metaphor one prefers, to start a nuclear war, I will outline what I have discovered. The biggest surprise to me was that there are not really any checks and balances on what takes place to make sure that no president is making a mistake or exceeding authority to go nuclear. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” and both courts and legal scholars have long interpreted this clause as giving the President direct command over military operations, including decisions about when and how to use specific weapons. Indeed, no statute or constitutional provision requires the President to get approval from anyone else before ordering a nuclear strike.
The President’s status as Commander-in-Chief of all US military forces includes those delivery systems for nuclear weapons, and he has absolute authority to launch when, in his or her judgement, there is a proportionate imminent threat coming from a hostile state. Which de facto authority is not to say that there has not been a legal debate over the context of using a nuclear weapon. When incoming warheads are minutes away, there is virtually no legal debate: the President has full authority to respond with nuclear force without seeking prior authorization from Congress. The War Powers Resolution itself recognizes that the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers as the sole nuclear launch authority may be exercised in response to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
But a nuclear first strike is a different story, raising the issue of possible use against Iran. If a President contemplates using nuclear weapons preemptively, before any attack has begun or become imminent, there is a strong legal argument that congressional authorization is required. The Constitution gives only to Congress the power to declare war, and initiating nuclear hostilities without an imminent threat looks far more like starting a war than responding to one. Many legal scholars would agree that a President must seek congressional authorization before ordering a first use of nuclear weapons in any non-emergency scenario.
Nevertheless, in practice, every President retains the physical ability to order a first strike without asking Congress first as the launch system does not distinguish between retaliatory and first-use orders. The button to push is located on an electronic “nuclear football” that is carried around in close proximity to wherever the president is at by a military aide.
The control football includes a number of features that require confirmation of the action ordered and the targets as well as the identity of the originator who must be the president, or, in his absence, the vice president. That done, the electronics essentially enable a launch order programmed to carry out whatever aggressive action the president or vice president has chosen to engage in. If the US is actually under attack, the entire process from first detection of “incomings” to US missiles leaving their silos can take roughly 25 minutes. The President’s role is limited to approximately 10 minutes during which he or she has to inter alia make a judgement call regarding the legitimacy of what he has been informed of to justify beginning a nuclear war.
There are various other issues involved in staging a nuclear strike, but the fact is that Donald Trump even in his mentally addled state could no doubt both legally and practically initiate a nuclear weapons attack on Iran or any other country based on his “feelings” about what is going on with that country’s foreign policy. In shaping any such a judgement he will no doubt have plenty of false information fed to him by his good friend Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, of course, has his own nuclear arsenal but most likely has a mindset that impels him to let the Americans do the work and pay whatever price becomes relevant to the horror that would no doubt be the worldwide response. Trump, to be sure, is the second president in a row who has not been of sound mind and the danger that he might stumble into doing something awful is all too real. It would be reasonable to suggest that it is past time for Congress to act to disable the “nuclear football” in any situation where the United States is not itself actually and demonstrably under attack. The thought that Donald Trump might be considering pulling the nuclear trigger to make Israel happy is just too frightening to bear but Americans must be aware of that possibility!
Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.
