"I run the country and the world"

In April of 2025, President Trump gave an interview to two reporters at The Atlantic, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer.

During the interview, he said something astounding.

Or, simply, megalomaniacal.  Take your pick.

Ms. Parker and Mr. Scherer wrote:

We asked the president if his second term felt different from his first.  He said it did. "The first time, I had two things to do--run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys," he said. "And the second time, I run the country and the world."

Who says something--let alone believes something--like this?

Trump is certainly trying to run the world. He wants to have his hand in everything, everywhere.

There have been his designs on Canada, and Greenland.  After the capture of Nicolas Maduro, Trump declared that the U.S. would "run" Venezuela, until "a proper transition can take place."  There are his threats to take over Cuba; he said on March 9th that "it may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover."

On March 16th, in the Oval Office, he said that he believed he would be "having the honor of taking Cuba...That's a big honor."  He said:  "I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They're a very weakened nation..."

On March 9th, in an interview with CBS News, Trump spoke about the Strait of Hormuz--that he was "thinking about taking it over."

Yet his power, which is considerable, may not be as limitless as he seems to believe.

He demanded that he have a say in the choosing of Iran's new leader. Iran ignored the demand; the son of the recently killed (and the decidedly brutal, ruthless) Ayatollah Khamenei was selected.  

Trump has demanded Iran's "unconditional surrender." (Does anyone in the military think this was the right thing to say?)  Iran has continued to attack multiple countries in the region, and doesn't seem interested in surrendering.  

Trump said, on March 9th:  "I think the war is very complete, pretty much."  "Very complete" and "pretty much" are at odds with one another. 

On March 11th, speaking to an audience in Kentucky, he said this, as one news outlet reported:

"We've won. Let me tell you, we've won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won," Trump said. "In the first hour it was over. But we won."

Yet the news report then pointed to this caveat, in Trump's Kentucky speech:

After the president declared victory, he noted that the U.S. has to finish the job, saying that America cannot "leave early."

"We gotta finish the job, right?" Trump said. 

There is also this:  a report in The New York Times on March 13th noted that when Trump

announced the opening strikes on Feb. 28, he called on the Iranian people to rise up.

“When we are finished, take over your government,” Mr. Trump said. “It will be yours to take.”

The Times report continued:

But on [March 13th], Mr. Trump appeared to acknowledge [in an interview with Fox's Brian Kilmeade, on Kilmeade's podcast] that his command was easier said than done.

...Mr. Trump said the Basij, a plainclothes militia that is affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, would probably kill protesters if they took to the streets.

“You just mentioned to me a group of people that go around with machine guns and shoot them down, and they say, ‘Anybody protests, we’re going to kill you in the streets.’ So I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons,” Mr. Trump said.

“I think it’s a very big hurdle,” he continued. “So that’ll happen, but it probably will be, maybe not immediately. Who’s going to do that? They literally have people in the streets with machine guns, machine gunning people down if they want to protest. OK?”

Such are Trump's routine contradictions, his shifts, his reliance upon moment-to-moment improvisations.

He was asked, in the March 13th interview with Brian Kilmeade, about the conclusion of the war.

"When are you going to know when it's over?" asked Kilmeade.

"When I feel it," Trump replied. "When I feel it in my bones."

The primacy of his feelings.  Not facts, not the advice of the generals, the military experts ("I know more about ISIS than the generals do," he said in 2015, while running for president). 

One thinks, too, of remarks he made in 2016, during his campaign, as reported at the time by Politico:

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain..."

He said:

"I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are," Trump said. “But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff."

Asked whether he thought the Iran war could "wrap up soon," the president told CBS News on March 9th: "Wrapping up is all in my mind, nobody else's." 

Arguments can certainly be made that Iran's decades of terror, both abroad and at home, had to be ended.  One can argue that--at least at some point--Iran needed to be prevented from reconstituting its nuclear weapons program (a program which Trump, of course, had claimed was "obliterated" last year). One can argue that the threat of Iran's growing arsenal of ballistic missiles had to be confronted, and, crucially, that it was necessary to stop the country from continuing the killings of thousands of its own citizens--in particular after Trump wrote this in January, on social media: "Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING...HELP IS ON ITS WAY."

Yet the key question about the joint U.S. and Israel war, it seems to me, is how much thinking Trump did, prior to attacking Iran.

In April of last year, Trump posted this all-caps declaration on his social media platform:  "THE BEST DEFINITION OF INTELLIGENCE IS THE ABILITY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE!!!"  That was the entire post.

So much for his predictive powers.

"I have a plan for everything, OK?" he told the New York Post on March 9th, when asked about the rising oil prices. "I have a plan for everything. You'll be very happy."

On March 14th he told NBC News that the United States might attack Iran's Kharg Island "a few more times just for fun."

                                                ----------------

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised--repeatedly--that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine in twenty-four hours.  The promise sounded ridiculous--yet Trump clearly believed he had the power to end the Russia/Ukraine war within a day.  

He didn't have the power to do so. Vladimir Putin wouldn't give in; Putin continued to attack Ukraine, horrifically, while proclaiming he wanted peace, which of course he does not want. It has not helped matters that Trump has often criticized Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that Trump has, on many occasions, spoken of President Zelenskyy harshly, condescendingly.

On March 14th he said the following about President Zelenskyy, in his interview with NBC:

"I'm surprised that Zelenskyy doesn't want to make a deal.  Tell Zelenskyy to make a deal  because Putin's willing to make a deal."

He said: "Zelenskyy is far more difficult to make a deal with."

NBC's online report continued:

Zelenskyy earlier this month offered to help U.S. forces and their allies in the Middle East with intercepting drones, using the military's experience with shooting down Russian drones.

But on Saturday, Trump said that "we don't need help," adding that the "last person we need help from is Zelenskyy."

Trump, certainly, has for years been fixated upon Putin. He clearly admires Putin, and wants Putin to admire him. 

That Trump has been unable to control what Putin does, or does not do, means this: Trump doesn't run the world as much as he believes he does.

In 2019, Nancy Pelosi famously told Trump at a White House meeting: “With you, all roads lead to Putin.”

It seems to me not implausible that Trump's various foreign interventions, or threats of intervention--including the war with Iran--have, in some deep sense (at least in part, though maybe more than in part) been driven by frustration: by his inability to control (and to meaningfully stand up to) Putin.  With each intervention, one wonders, is Trump in essence saying to Putin: see how much power I have?

Yet with Putin, he reveals, again and again, his basic weakness.  

There have been deeply troubling reports that Russia has, during the war, been providing Iran with intelligence--about drones, and about America's military forces, and assets.

Despite such reports, the United States has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil, to help stabilize worldwide oil prices.  It is, at least for the moment, another win for Putin, courtesy of Trump.

Pete Hegseth

A piece today in The Atlantic, online, by the fine writer and military analyst Tom Nichols, concerned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and atrocious remarks he made during a Thursday briefing.  

Mr. Hegseth spoke, at one point, about the American press, and its reporting about the killings on Sunday, via an Iranian drone, of six American service members at a base in Kuwait. Mr. Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine both spoke at the briefing.

Here is part of what Mr. Nichols wrote:

This morning, the defense secretary gave a briefing on the war that quickly degenerated into Trumplike bombast. (Wisely, the Pentagon scheduled this at 8 a.m. eastern time, when most of the country is either sleeping or busy starting their day.) Hegseth apparently prefers to sound more like a Call of Duty player leading a raid than a sober and judicious secretary of defense: “Death and destruction from the sky all day,” he said, along with other empty phrases such as “We’re playing for keeps.” (As opposed to what, exactly?)

Most reporters are now accustomed to Hegseth’s drama-laden antics. But even by the low standards he has set, he managed to shock many of them when he cynically used the deaths of U.S. military personnel to air his own grievances with the press.

On Sunday morning (local time), an Iranian drone hit a makeshift operations center in Kuwait. The Pentagon says that six Americans are dead. Not only is this event a tragedy, but it also requires an explanation: The drone reportedly snuck through U.S. defenses without setting off any alerts, and struck a target that now seems to have been unduly vulnerable to aerial attack.

Wrote Mr. Nichols:

The defense secretary, the man who is supposed to carry this news [of the deaths of the troops] to the American public and mourn with them, instead whined about the unfairness of it all. “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it,” Hegseth told the reporters, military personnel, and civilians gathered this morning in the Pentagon. “The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step. As I said Monday, the mission is laser-focused.” (Bold type added.)

“Tragic things happen”? Hegseth said this as though it is unreasonable to look any closer at such events. He seems unable to grasp that the deaths of Americans are not merely a public-relations problem: When a drone slips through U.S. defenses and kills six members of America’s armed forces, the deaths of those servicepeople are the story. The people of the United States deserve to know what happened and why. Hegseth complaining that he’s not getting credit for all of the drones that didn’t get through is like an airline executive responding to an air disaster by growling about all of the planes his company made that didn’t crash.

My colleague Nancy Youssef was at the Pentagon this morning, sitting just three rows from the podium. I asked her what the atmosphere was like after Hegseth’s heartless remark. She told me that his comments “sent a stunned silence through the briefing room.” Even members of Hegseth’s staff, she said, seemed to flinch at what he was saying. “Some put their heads down,” she said, while others just looked around. Someone in the room then said: “That was one of the most insulting things I have ever heard,” quietly but audibly and, as far as Nancy could tell, to no one in particular.

Unlike Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine opened his remarks by grieving the deaths of the fallen soldiers, saying that “it’s with profound sadness and gratitude that I share the names of four of our six fallen heroes.” He didn’t have the names of the other two, because while Hegseth was griping about media coverage, the U.S. military was completing the next-of-kin notification....“Our nation stands with you,” Caine told Gold Star parents, wounded warriors, and their families, “and we are eternally grateful for your courage, your resiliency, your devotion to this mission and to our nation.”

Here is the link to the Atlantic piece:  

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/03/pete-hegseth-american-soldiers-iran-media/686240/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm-qeVFxOcZqFe-F147_fDUg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share 0/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm-qeVFxOcZqFe-F147_fDUg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharehttps://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/03/pete-hegseth-american-soldiers-iran-media/686240/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm-qeVFxOcZqFe-F147_fDUg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

"Treason"

Words, and their meaning, matter little to President Trump.

For example, he likes to throw around words like "treason," and "sedition."

In November, he attacked six Democratic lawmakers for a video they posted, in which they reminded members of the military that illegal orders should not be followed.  

Trump wrote, on social media, that the comments by the six lawmakers constituted "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!"

Over time, he has claimed that many others have committed treason--including Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Mark Milley, and the members of the January 6th congressional committee.

Tonight he will be giving his State of the Union address.

The week after his 2018 State of the Union address, he delivered a speech in Ohio, during which he attacked Democrats for their lack of a response, during the State of the Union speech.

As The Washington Post reported, at the time:

BLUE ASH, Ohio — President Trump on Monday lambasted Democrats who did not applaud as he relayed positive numbers about black and Hispanic unemployment during his State of the Union address, accusing them of being "un-American" and "treasonous."

"Even on positive news like that, really positive news like that, they were like death and un-American," Trump said here as he went off script during a speech on tax cuts. "Somebody said 'treasonous.' I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Shall we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn't seem to love our country very much."

A TV commercial

There is a commercial, currently airing on TV, whose music features a song heard in early television.

The commercial, I will note, is related to a brief part of my book about early TV.

The new commercial, for Chevrolet, had its debut on NBC the night of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, and it has been airing since.

The song in the commercial is "See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet," and is sung by country music performer Brooke Lee.  Ms. Lee, playing a guitar, is seated at the back of a 2026 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck; she and the truck are positioned at the top of the landmark 400-foot-tall Castle Rock formation, in Utah.

I frankly can't imagine what it was like to produce a commercial at such a height, and in such a relatively small space (the formation's summit, I have read, is approximately thirty by forty feet). Ms. Lee, the crew for the commercial, and the Silverado, were airlifted by helicopter to the site.

Chevrolet, incidentally, had used the Castle Rock location previously, for Chevrolet Impala commercials and print advertisements--in the 1960s, and in the 1970s.

Here is the new commercial: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6nRs4BqXQ

In a behind-the scenes video of the making of the commercial (seen here), one can see the crew in front of Ms. Lee; the images of the crew were edited out of the commercial. In addition, other instrumentation, and vocal harmonies, were obviously included after-the-fact.

The commercial's lyrics begin:

See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet,

America is asking you to call.

Drive your Chevrolet through the U.S.A.,

America's the greatest land of all.

Many people familiar with early TV will recall that the commercial jingle was made famous by singer Dinah Shore, whose TV program, The Dinah Shore Show, was seen on NBC from 1951 until 1957; it was a fifteen-minute show, airing on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Ms. Shore became closely associated with the song, which she sang at the end of her telecasts. At the song's conclusion, Ms. Shore--in what became well-known as her visual signature--would blow a kiss to the TV audience. 

In 1957, she also began making monthly appearances on the hour-long The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, also on NBC. In 1957, after her original program ended, her Chevy program became a weekly show, and it aired until 1963.

Here is a video of Ms. Shore singing the Chevrolet theme song, from the 1950s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhR8GZ_WWMM

I've recently seen various references, online, to the Chevrolet jingle, in which Ms. Shore is, quite properly, given credit for making it famous--yet some of the references also indicate that the jingle first appeared on her NBC program. It actually did not.

As noted by Wikipedia, the song, with lyrics and music by Leo Corday and Leon Carr, had been (two years prior to the 1951 debut of Ms. Shore's program) the commercial theme of the CBS-TV music, variety, and comedy revue Inside U.S.A. with Chevrolet; the program aired every other week from September, 1949 until March, 1950. The show starred Peter Lind Hayes; its co-star was Mary Healy. Mr. Hayes and Ms. Healy, husband and wife, would star together on other network programs over time.  The show also featured dancer Sheila Bond, actress Mary Wickes, dancer Danny Daniels, and the Ray Charles Singers, the vocal group which accompanied the program's stars (and guest stars) in production numbers. Mr. Charles's singers were also featured in the show's "See the U.S.A." Chevrolet commercials.

My mother, who earlier in 1949 had appeared on two DuMont Network shows, was one of Inside U.S.A's Ray Charles Singers, from the program's debut in late September until November, when she left the show to become one of the vocalists on bandleader Kay Kyser's new program on NBC. (Later, in 1951 and 1952, when she was a featured singer on NBC's Your Hit Parade, she would work again with Ray Charles. Beginning in 1950, he was the Hit Parade's vocal arranger, writing the arrangements for both the show's starring vocalists, and for its choral group, the Hit Paraders (which was, in essence, a Ray Charles ensemble, under a different name; he hired the singers who made up the Hit Paraders, and arranged and oversaw the group's vocal performances.  He remained with Your Hit Parade for much of the 1950s).

I have a number of pieces of sheet music, from my mother's TV career in New York.  One of them is from Inside U.S.A., and is of the show's Chevrolet jingle.

Though my parents had married in August of 1949 (the month before she joined Inside U.S.A.), she continued to use her maiden name, Sue Benjamin--which is written at the top of the sheet music, below--as her stage name.  She would change her surname to Bennett upon joining the cast of Kay Kyser's program, which had its debut the first week of December, 1949.  Mr. Kyser asked her to come up with a new name; he evidently thought that Benjamin did not have enough of a show business flair to it. She chose the surname Bennett (which was, as it happens, the first name of her father-in-law).

Here is the first page of her "See the U.S.A." sheet music, from Inside U.S.A.:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

("See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet," lyrics and music by Leo Corday and Leon Carr, © General Motors Company)

A gift

Someone sent me a great gift this week, by mail--a DVD of a 1950s television program I love (The Honeymooners).  It came from an amazon fulfillment center--which means, as far as I know, that the seller was a third-party vendor, but that amazon handled the storage, processing and shipment of the order.

There was, however, one problem with the shipment.  There was no indication, inside the package, as to who gave me the gift.

I called amazon, to find out who the person was--but was told that, due to privacy rules, the company couldn't give me that information. They did say that the person who sent it did not include a note; perhaps this person thought that a receipt, with his/her name, would accompany the DVD.

So, if the very kind (but unknown) sender happens to be reading this, thank you!

A video analysis of the death of Alex Pretti

The report, which was broadcast yesterday by CNN, is very saddening and difficult to watch.  Yet its analysis--which makes use of the various videos concerning the killing of Mr. Pretti--is, I think, significant, in the tragic details and sense of clarity it offers. 

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/politics/video/immigration-agents-shooting-alex-pretti-vid-invs

Alex Pretti

The mind reels, about what has taken place in Minneapolis. 

It is sickening, and tragic, the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday--the needless and brutal aggression by the Border Patrol agents, leading, within some thirty seconds, to the first shot being fired at Mr. Pretti.  Nine more shots would follow.

The images of Renee Good, and Mr. Pretti, in their last moments, are deeply painful to see--along with so many other disturbing and hideous images of the tactics of federal agents in Minneapolis (and elsewhere).

And there was, indeed, the shameful rush by Trump officials to place the blame on Mr. Pretti (as took place following Renee Good's January 7th death, in labeling her a "domestic terrorist"): self-serving claims about Mr. Pretti, which were quickly called into question by various videos--claims that Mr. Pretti "attacked" the federal agents, and that he was "brandishing" a gun (Kristi Noem); that he was (without evidence put forth) "An assassin [who] tried to murder federal agents" (Stephen Miller); that "it looks like" he "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement" (Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino).  

On Saturday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said: "The federal government cannot be trusted to handle this investigation.  The state will handle it, period."

Secretary Noem said: "Who would trust Governor Walz at this point? The man has stood up and encouraged resistance.  He has refused to partner with us. He's sacrificed his citizens' safety and their well-being."

I would trust Governor Walz any day, over Ms. Noem, and her fellow officials in the Trump administration.

The Trump administration's legal response to the shooting of Ms. Good was despicable--shutting Minnesota out of any investigation, and declaring there was no need to look further into her killing. 

On January 20th, The Minnesota Star Tribune's Editorial Board wrote, in part, of Renee Good's death:

The U.S. Department of Justice says it has no interest in investigating Renee Good’s death by an ICE agent. Federal officials have already labeled the killing a defensive act and moved on. But if that conclusion is sound, it should withstand scrutiny beyond the walls of Washington.

What is unfolding in Minnesota is not merely a transparency dispute. It’s a breakdown in due process at a moment of intense national scrutiny. When federal authorities barred state investigators from reviewing evidence in a fatal shooting on a south Minneapolis street, they did more than limit access. They denied the public a credible and independent accounting of the federal killing of an American citizen.

The Trump Justice Department should reverse course, and allow Minnesota full access to the evidence concerning Renee Good's death.  They should do the same with evidence regarding the killing of Alex Pretti.