{"id":3503,"date":"2026-07-17T20:37:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T20:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3503"},"modified":"2026-07-17T20:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T20:37:47","slug":"with-amateurs-in-charge-and-experts-purged-trump-has-no-way-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3503","title":{"rendered":"With amateurs in charge and experts purged, Trump has no way out"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>New York Magazine writer Jonah Shepp says President Donald Trump considers himself very intelligent \u2014 but that intelligence apparently didn\u2019t extend to the definition of \u201cquagmire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3502\">Road map: Inside one state\u2019s quiet rebellion against the Supreme Court<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The U.S. and Iran are back at war again, less than a month after agreeing to a cease-fire deal and Trump\u2019s frustration is visible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a very unpopular war that Trump reportedly thought would be over in days, then claimed would be over in four to six weeks, then insisted was actually over and fully won when anyone could tell that it wasn\u2019t,\u201d said Shepp. \u201cFive months later, amid an alarming escalation, there\u2019s still no end in sight. From everything Trump has said over the past few weeks, he\u2019s apparently still under the impression that the war is under his control, the U.S. is winning and Iran is overwhelmed and desperate to negotiate, and the costs are not only bearable for Americans, but negligible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Worse, Trump\u2019s original war goals, from the threat of a nuclear Iran to the Israeli regime-change scheme he bought into have come and gone, replaced by \u2026 nobody\u2019s really sure. These days it\u2019s about the state of the Strait of Hormuz\u2014which Trump himself caused by unilaterally committing war on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWelcome to a forever war, in other words,\u201d said Shepp.<\/p>\n<p>Trump dragged Iran and his own voters into war with \u201cunclear, unrealistic objectives, lacking both an articulate theory of victory and an exit strategy,\u201d said Shepp. <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3501\">Trump\u2019s \u2018Constitutional dumpster dive\u2019 torn apart by comedian<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Projecting strength and avoiding the humiliation of defeat is tantamount to a guy like Trump, but the war\u2019s unpopularity at home and abroad is putting the heat on Trump to cut and run\u2014as if that would be possible without admitting defeat. Still, escalation doesn\u2019t appear to be getting anywhere except in voters\u2019 wallets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPassing over whether Trump is or is not the world-historic genius he perceives himself to be, he has yet to demonstrate a brilliant new strategy to prevent the Iran war from turning into an extended debacle,\u201d said Shepp. \u201cOn the contrary, he disdains expertise and has put negotiations with Iran in the hands of two complete amateurs whom their Iranian counterparts don\u2019t trust and whose only accomplishment so far has been a crappy deal for the U.S. that fell apart in weeks. Meanwhile, our armed forces are currently under the direction of a right-wing television personality and televangelist whose latest manosphere-inspired innovation is a policy to test U.S. soldiers for low testosterone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Worse, Shepp said that the U.S. diplomatic corps \u201chas been hollowed out and politicized, Iran experts have been lost to budget cuts and ideological purges, and at this rate, Marco Rubio may soon be the only person left working at the State Department.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs Trump is now discovering, the U.S. didn\u2019t get bogged down in past wars because his predecessors were \u2018dumb,\u2019 but rather because they suffered from historical, political, and ideological blind spots,\u201d said Shepp.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3499\">Trump just gave a huge gift to Russia that will upend global power<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York Magazine writer Jonah Shepp says President Donald Trump considers himself very intelligent \u2014 but that intelligence apparently didn\u2019t extend to the definition of \u201cquagmire.\u201dThe U.S. and Iran are back at war again, less than a month after agreeing to a cease-fire deal and Trump\u2019s frustration &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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