Mugged By Reality: Why Donald J. Trump Flip-Flopped on Iran and Immigration

Someone's becoming a neo-con whether he likes it or not!

I would like to extend a warm welcome to the newest member of the neoconservative community.

President Donald J. Trump, thank you very much for coming and joining us, now having conceded that the ideological positions you argued to absurd excess for the last 10 years were always just bullshit aimed at emotionally manipulating stupid people into supporting you.

Let's begin with Donald J. Trump’s first ideological heresy to his own so-called “America First” MAGA movement agenda: his explicit renunciation of a mass deportation to remove all illegal immigrants from this country. On June 12, he wrote the following on his Orwellian “Truth Social” website:

Sally Shideler

and I were stunned by this when we saw him saying this stuff on TV. I laughed uproariously as Donald J. Trump admitted that removing all illegal immigrants would devastate both the hospitality industry and agriculture. All of a sudden deporting these people will not mean they get replaced the next day by God-fearing, good ol’ boys out of a job, because they can't compete with brown folks willing to work harder than them for less money.

Donald J. Trump now realizes the unintended consequences of implementing Stephen Miller's white supremacist plan of removing as many brown people as possible from the United States of America. The level of disruption to businesses—and in particular, to our food supply—would become outright dangerous. The impact on the economy by this disrupted labor and production would seriously harm all sorts of businesses and really, the country as a whole. Removing millions of workers and their tax dollars will make everyone poorer.

This has always been an obvious reality. Both moderate liberals and moderate conservatives have understood this for a long time, as does the “average American,” however one wants to interpret that amorphous abstraction.

Most “illegal immigrants”—I still prefer that term to the left-wing euphemism “undocumented migrant"—are not a threat to anyone. They're not criminals out to rob, murder, rape, or steal. And the small minority that are? There's unity across mainstream ideological factions that removing them from the country is not controversial at all.

Newsflash: the government does not have infinite resources. Choosing to prioritize deportations of farm workers means that fewer resources can go toward focusing on the dangerous criminals.

So many of the president's MAGA fans just didn't want to grapple with the reality of his character. He is not an ideologue. He believes in nothing beyond how good it feels to have a beautiful woman fellate him or for his crowds to do the equivalent as he bloviates all over them with embarrassing, dementia-riddled non-sequiturs at his rallies.

Donald J. Trump needed his populist-nationalist and isolationist followers to win elections, but he doesn't anymore. They’ve served their purpose and now can be discarded: just like everyone else in his life who has used up their usefulness. He doesn't need to follow their absurd agendas and he's realizing that.

(And by the way, the fact that the administration has for a moment reversed this June 12 position and will now again supposedly target illegal immigrants everywhere just further affirms that the president has no idea what he is doing and now has to flail to maintain his coalition of wealthy corporatists obsessed with money alongside the poor populists obsessed with sex, race, and their bullshit theology.)

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Let’s take Iran now.

All of a sudden, Donald J. Trump has transformed from years of railing against former President George W. Bush’s defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq to now seriously considering comparable efforts against Iran.

This man who has brought Patrick J. Buchanan’s beliefs to the masses has now potentially become more hawkish on Iran than I am. It's fucking weird as hell to contemplate.

(I don’t think we need to attack Iran—by my analysis, the Israelis are capable of doing this themselves if they so choose, and America should limit involvement to backing them with weapons and intelligence, rather than direct engagement ourselves.)

Donald J. Trump spent ten years insisting he would not pull America into another Middle East war. And now he's moving aircraft carriers into position and considering dropping a 30,000-pound bomb into Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. He's even apparently looked at plans to assassinate Iran's "Supreme Leader," who has ruled the theocratic authoritarian regime since 1989, when I was fucking five years old. That's how long Israel and America have tolerated this bastard, who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, including every single person murdered on Oct. 7. And let's not forget the previous worst act of Post-Holocaust antisemitic mass slaughters—the July 18, 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish synagogue in Argentina, which killed 85 and wounded 300. Iran’s mullahs aren’t just out to destroy Israel: Their theology demands they kill Jews all over the planet.

So why has Donald J. Trump now shifted so wildly?

There are apparently two reasons, the latter more important, but we'll begin with the first, as it, too reveals the elementary-school nature of our Commander-in-Chief.

Donald J. Trump apparently was not involved in Israel's initial attacks on Iran. Having seen how well they succeeded, and observing Fox News’ praise, he reportedly realized it would make him look good to play with his own toys in that sandbox, too. So he did what he usually does: take credit for other people’s victories.

Think about the level of shallowness here.

Donald J. Trump wants to join a war in the Middle East which would result in the targeting of our 40,000 troops stationed there.

Why?

For his ego and image.

To look badass.

This is how he thinks about seemingly everything—not doing good, but looking good. And he knows it works, because more than a third of the country is authoritarian Christian fundamentalist, with 37% of American adults thinking the earth was created in seven days, within the last 10,000 years. People who buy that can be duped into believing any stupid shit, like that this is a trustworthy man.

The second reason is much more consequential and almost literally represents Irving Kristol's classic definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been "mugged by reality."

Apparently, the “Supreme Leader” has ordered the assassination of Donald J. Trump.

That certainly would make the reality of the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism much more real, now, wouldn't it? When Iran is just spending billions to fund genocidal terror against Jews, that's apparently something that Donald J. Trump can tolerate. Only when a target appears on the back of his own goofy haircut does he all of a sudden realize that supporting regime change is an entirely sensible position to bring about Middle East peace.

These positions on immigration and Iran are fucking obvious. They're basically "common sense (a cliche I usually hate, but in this case, it rings true.)" These are concepts that bright teenagers can get. Immigrants bring more benefits than harm to our country and deportation focuses should aim for the gang members and violent criminals—not grandmas and busboys. Iran fuels global terrorism more than any other state and a change in regime would bring about greater peace in the region.

It's really easy to advocate for so-called “America First” policies when they're just a theoretical fantasy. It’s especially easy because there is a large audience eager to lap up this ignorance.

But policy is much harder than giving campaign speeches. Once it comes time to implement the fantasy, reality rudely shows up, including the courts reversing so many of the administration’s illegal power grabs.

Just as the president has come to realize the folly of his immigration and Iran rhetoric, there's a real possibility he may realize this more broadly across the board. The time may very well come, sooner than expected (seemingly everything is happening sooner than expected this term), in which Trump realizes that all these unpopular policies just aren't worth the blowback he's getting from them. He already figured that out with Elon Musk and the DOGE debacle.

In his quest for simple popularity, Trump may discover sooner, rather than later, that there is a much broader group of “normal” people out there he could win over with “normal” policy.

Here's a poll that may seem shocking:

Chris CillizzaJun 18

Having lived through the early 2000s, it is stunning to me that George W. Bush is the 2nd most popular living president

19

20

4

Of all the living presidents, Bush is #2 after Barack Obama. And it seems like a huge part of that is probably that more people have come to realize the reality that the man really wasn't this crazed warmonger fascist that many liberals and leftists characterized him as during his presidency. He's actually pretty moderate, something made more than clear with his refusal to in any way back Donald J. Trump.

And moderate policies are largely what the largest chunk of the American public wants. The hard right and hard left agendas in each party are just too extreme for those of us who embraced the politics of 15, 30, even 40 or 50 years ago.

Trump may very well figure out this particular hard reality soon enough. And it will be easier and faster if he shit-cans Stephen Miller as soon as possible.

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