The end of CBS Radio News

It is a singularly unfortunate and sorrowful development--the death of CBS Radio News, which will take place today.  

At its height, CBS Radio newscasts were carried by more than 1000 stations; its newscasts, most recently, have been heard on some 700 stations.

I've spent much of my life as a CBS News watcher (via The CBS Evening News, on television), and a CBS Radio News listener (on various stations in cities where I've lived).  The newscasts on CBS Radio--sturdy, dependable, and appealing--were conveyed in the routinely straightforward, unadorned vocal styles of its anchors and reporters.  

CBS's journalists, during the radio network's history, included, of course, the brilliant and seminal correspondent and commentator Edward R. Murrow.

Mr. Murrow began reporting from Europe in the late 1930s, during the period leading up to the 1939 start of World War Two, and was based in London during the war. CBS did not at the time have its own dedicated London facility; Murrow broadcast from a sub-basement studio within the BBC Broadcasting House. 

In addition to reporting from the studio, Mr. Murrow also reported from London's streets, and from bomb shelters and rooftops, during the aerial Blitz carried out by Germany.

He also reported, notably--and deeply movingly--from Buchenwald, the day after the German concentration camp was liberated in 1945.

His broadcasts from Europe, which I have listened to on record albums, on tapes, and online, were compelling, eloquent, stirring.

Here is one one of his London rooftop reports--probably from the roof of the BBC building--from September of 1940:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za2Lus0CkRc

Here, too, is Mr. Murrow, on his television program See it Now, in 1954 (produced with Fred Friendly), discussing Senator Joseph McCarthy: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwGQGM9X69o

There were a great many other notable radio voices on CBS, through the years--including the eminent broadcaster Robert Trout.  He was one of the most significant CBS News figures during the 1930s, prior to Murrow's ascendance, and remained a prominent voice on the network for decades.  He assisted Murrow, it has been written, regarding Murrow's understanding of, and use of, radio. In the book Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (Little, Brown, 1969), author Alexander Kendrick (who worked for Murrow as a reporter during World War Two) wrote that Trout "persuaded [Murrow] that the microphone...should not be declaimed to...but used casually as an instrument of communication, like a telephone."

Murrow did not, I would suggest (listening to him today), sound particularly casual, though perhaps his style was regarded as casual during its time. Nonetheless, as reported by Alexander Kendrick, Trout's advice to Murrow--invoking the intimacy of a telephone--evidently had its intended effect.  One makes note of Murrow's typically low-key, low-register, restrained--yet distinctly authoritative--vocal manner.  His voice had a gravitational quality to it; its force pulled one in, in a striking and, yes, intimate way.

There were many others, who reported for CBS Radio, working for Murrow--such as William L. Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Larry LeSueur, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Richard C. Hottelet, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, and Winston Burdett.

The network featured other anchors and correspondents, through the decades--including Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Christopher Glenn.

More recently, the network's correspondents or anchors included Peter King, Dan Raviv, Tom Foty, Jim Krasula, Peter Maer, Cami McCormick, Sam Litzinger, Mark Knoller, Bill Whitney, Allison Keyes, and Jim Chenevey.

When the closing of the radio news division was announced, in March, a New York Times story noted that CBS Radio News "had been whittled down to a handful of correspondents in recent years and is unprofitable, a person familiar with the company said."  The story also said this:

In a staff memo on Friday, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, and Tom Cibrowski, the president, observed that the radio network had “served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927.” But because of “a shift in radio station programming strategies” and “challenging economic realities,” the company concluded that it was “impossible to continue the service.”

The same story quoted Dan Rather, the former anchor of television's CBS Evening News, who during his career was also, as referred to above, heard on CBS Radio. The story noted that after the announcement of the radio network's closure, Mr. Rather had written on Facebook that

“the end of CBS News Radio breaks my heart.” He recalled listening to its broadcasts from his childhood home in Texas and feeling inspired to pursue a career in journalism.

Concluding his elegy, Mr. Rather noted his gratitude that many of the original CBS radio broadcasts, the ones that had mesmerized him as a child, were preserved for future generations to hear.

“They are available on YouTube,” he wrote.

Here is a video, from Facebook, of a CBS Radio newscast from 2016, with anchor Jim Chenevey, whose broadcasts I enjoyed. He left the network in 2020.  FYI:  when the video appears, it will likely need to be unmuted.  You may, therefore, miss the distinctive CBS Radio News musical "sounder," at the start of the newscast--and therefore may wish to re-start the video, to be able to hear it.  The notes of the sounder remained the same for decades, but there were different musical arrangements of it, over time.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10153902659215885

Lastly, while CBS Radio News may have become unprofitable, the shutting of the network was, I think, a misguided and regrettable decision. While I am guessing it is unlikely, perhaps CBS's new management might soon reverse course--and recognize that it has lost more than it has gained, by abandoning such a distinguished and reliable source of news.

Truth, and the newly-announced deal

Two days ago, on May 17th, President Trump posted the following image on his social media platform, Truth Social.  The image showed the length of wars through American history--including, as indicated, the "Iran Excursion," one of Trump's preferred phrases for the current war. 

Two days ago marked the 79th day of the war with Iran--which is roughly eleven weeks.  The May 17th image indicated that the war has been in process for six weeks.

Was this a sleight-of-hand effort to misstate the war's length?  Did the president think nobody would notice the discrepancy? 

Or was Trump not even aware of the discrepancy? 

Perhaps he was too busy thinking about the construction of his ballroom--which he discusses incessantly--or the changes at the Reflecting Pool, or the new Washington, DC passports bearing his image, or the currency which will soon bear his signature. Or maybe he was, at the time of the post, wrapped up in his belief, despite all evidence, that he actually won the 2020 election--which he talks about all the time. Or maybe he was busy thinking about the $1.776 billion fund--announced the day after the above post appeared--created for Trump supporters, who will be able to file claims asserting they were wronged by the Department of Justice during previous administrations--which would include the rioters at the Capitol on January 6th.

Trump says this, of the nearly two billion dollar fund: "I know very little about it...I wasn’t involved in the whole creation of it and the negotiation, but this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated." 

The idea of the fund is just sickening.

We also learned today that the plan includes the following addendum, providing potential enormous benefits to Trump, as described in this New York Times report: 

The Justice Department has granted President Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability.

The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion compensation fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.

The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.

Evidently, the prohibitions outlined in the addendum do not include potential investigations of Trump, his family and businesses that might concern future tax returns, but that is small comfort. The deal given to Trump, et al., as part of the $1.776 billion plan (like so much of what Trump says, does, or signs off on), is jarring, and alarming.

Editorial cartoonist and illustrator Barry Blitt

Barry Blitt is known for his routinely superb editorial cartoons and illustrations, and for his great wit.  His work (for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2020) appears regularly in The New Yorker, and, not infrequently, on the magazine's cover. 

Here is a new drawing by him, from the cover of The New Yorker's May 11th & May 18th double issue, which focuses upon America's upcoming 250th anniversary. The drawing is titled "Red, White, and Kinda Blue."

(Image © Barry Blitt, and The New Yorker)

An op-ed essay by New York Times columnist David French

The opinion piece, which appeared in the online edition of the Times on April 26th, is titled "Meet the New Leader of the Free World."  

The leader Mr. French is referring to is Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Mr. French writes, at the end of his essay, that "you cannot threaten the free world and lead it at the same time. No nation can match American might, but for the first time in my adult life, the moral and strategic heart of the defense of liberal democracy doesn’t beat in Washington. It doesn’t beat in London or Paris or Berlin or Ottawa, either. It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/opinion/zelensky-ukraine-trump-nato-leader.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fFA.OhFv.8OW__UMG9Z8J&smid=url-share

April 18, 1966, and Philip Benjamin

I think, not infrequently, about the subject of rooms--the effect certain rooms can have on one's life. (I have thought in particular about rooms from childhood.)

In my book about early television, for example, I wrote about our family's den, in suburban Boston. It was a fairly small room, and I spent a lot of time there, while growing up. 

As I noted in the book, there were a number of family photographs on one of the room's walls--which included photos of my mother, from her years in early TV. There were pictures of her with bandleader Kay Kyser, and other performers from his TV show; photos of her and her fellow singers on Your Hit Parade; and pictures from other shows on which she sang during the era. 

My mother had a desk, in the room, and at some point in childhood I discovered, in one of the desk's drawers, more memorabilia from her years in early TV--newspaper and magazine articles, scripts, additional photographs, and the like.  There were further items--such as magazines, and records (78s that she recorded with Kay Kyser's orchestra), stored in the room's closet. 

Looking at the photos on the wall, and then finding the many other out-of-view artifacts, during childhood, set off something in my young and evidently susceptible mind, that stayed with me from then on. 

Another photograph on the wall drew my attention. It was a picture of my uncle, Philip Benjamin.  He was my mother's older brother, her only sibling (and my sole Uncle; my father was an only child). 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Philip was a reporter for The New York Times, and the photograph on the wall of the den showed him interviewing Fidel Castro in April of 1959, during a visit Castro made to New York City. 

In January of 1959, Castro's revolution in Cuba had overthrown the rule of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had seized power, via a military coup, in 1952.

On April 15th of that year, Castro began an eleven-day trip to America.  The trip started in Washington DC, during which Castro visited The Lincoln Memorial, and George Washington's Mount Vernon home, in nearby Virginia.  

He also met with Vice President Nixon, and appeared on Meet the Press. He spoke English, during the television appearance.  His English, at the time, was reasonably good, yet watching the video of his appearance, today, one at times strains to understand some of his words. He was accompanied, on-camera, by an interpreter, to whom he turned periodically.

From April 20 to April 25, Castro visited New York City. While there he went to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, and spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations. He also gave a speech to some 16,000 people in Central Park.

During his American visit, he also traveled to Boston, Houston, and Princeton, New Jersey (where he spoke at Princeton University).

Philip interviewed Castro, at the hotel where he and his entourage stayed, during the New York visit.

Here is the image I saw, growing up:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was, as a child, very much taken by the photograph, looked at it often. There is, I think, a sense of drama to the picture. Looking at it today, I am interested in the construction of the photo, the different elements contained within.  There is a crowded, bustling feeling to it--a sense of motion (yet at the same time the absence of motion).  Castro is facing my Uncle, looking somewhat impassive; my Uncle, leaning slightly forward--his hand on Castro's arm.  The two men behind my Uncle--also leaning forward, almost as though joining a huddle (perhaps the man at the far left is a translator).  There is also a man behind and to the right of Castro, who, I only noticed recently, looks to be holding a cigar. There is also the woman seated behind Castro, looking to her right, and one notes, too, the backdrop of the painting on the wall of the room.

I have seen other, similar images of the interview. One of them, below, appeared in an April of 2019 Times story, shortly before the fiftieth anniversary of the start of Castro's New York visit. In the picture below--my Uncle and the photographer, I will note, were not identified, in the 2019 caption--the man who is (presumably) holding the cigar, in the above picture, is now standing near the center of the photo, to the side of my Uncle. Perhaps he, too, was a translator. 

In early January of 1959, shortly after Castro took power, Ed Sullivan went to Cuba to film an interview with him; the interview aired on Sullivan's Sunday night program a few days later.  During the interview, Castro denied that he and his revolution had any connections to Communism.  He repeated this during his April, 1959 appearance on Meet the Press.  In an April 26, 1959 Times story about his departure from New York, my Uncle wrote that Castro again denied, to assembled reporters, any linkage between his revolution, and Communism.

Castro said, in the article: "Why are you worried about Communists?  There are no Communists in my Government.  You should worry about our success as a nation.  We are a democracy."  It wasn't until  December of 1961, in a Havana television and radio speech--several months after the Bay of Pigs invasion--that Castro spoke, publicly, of his alliance with Marxism-Leninism.

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

Though my Uncle Philip died when I was ten years old, I remember looking up to him, as a child, and remember how warm and quietly funny he was.

In 1956, the year I was born, he wrote a piece for the Times Sunday magazine, about New York City's mounted police.  The accompanying biographical note (which I am sure Phil wrote) said this:

Philip Benjamin, of The Times staff, interviewed a number of New York mounted police and their horses for this article.

In 1964, while working for the Times, a comic novel he wrote, Quick, Before it Melts, inspired by reporting trips he had made to the Antarctic for the paper, was published by Random House, and became a best seller. 

(The novel was later made into a film, starring Robert Morse and George Maharis.  The film was not a success--despite being directed by the very talented Delbert Mann, who had been well-known as a director in early television; Mann was also one of the film's producers.  In the 1950s he had, notably, directed both the live television version and the subsequent film version of Marty.)

Philip's atypical biography, on the back flap of the novel's dust jacket, began this way: "Philip Benjamin was born in Stamford, Conn., but spent the next ten bleak years of his life in Indianapolis..."

The biography also noted that as a reporter for the Times "he has made two trips to the Antarctic, covered school integration in Little Rock, interviewed Fidel Castro, and taken innumerable walks with former President Truman.  On a trip to Hong Kong he once was fitted for and received nine suits in seventy-two hours, but subsequently the threads came out."

In Philip's obituary, written by a friend at the Times, the beginning of one of his news stories was cited. The story was from 1955, and concerned a flood in Danbury, CT.

In normal times in Danbury, they say you can toss a match into the little Still River in the morning and find it floating in the same place in the evening.

But over the weekend the river for the second time in two months washed out this maxim, along with the industrial and business center of the town.

In 1996, Richard F. Shepard, a longtime Times reporter, wrote a book about the newspaper's private archives, The Paper's Papers (Times Books),  In the book, Mr. Shepard wrote that Phil "was counted among the best writers on staff."

In City Room, a memoir about his many years at the Times (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003), Arthur Gelb, a prominent editor at the paper--who in the 1980s became its Managing Editor--wrote this: "Phil Benjamin was a mild-mannered man with a humorous outlook and had the potential for a literary career that was tragically cut short."

Philip left the Times in 1965, after the success of Quick, Before it Melts, and was at work on a second novel. 

In 1966, he was diagnosed with melanoma, and underwent surgery for it.  A few weeks later, he went for additional surgery, to determine if the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. (The cancer, it would turn out, was not found in the lymph nodes.)

At the start of the second surgery, however, there was a rare and catastrophic complication.  He went into a coma on the operating table, after the anesthesia was administered.  He never emerged from the coma, and died two weeks later.  He was 43.

This past Saturday was the sixtieth anniversary of his April 18, 1966 death. He left behind his wife, my Aunt Lois, who at the time was a senior editor and columnist at The Ladies Home Journal, and their two young sons, my cousins.  The entire family, it will not be a surprise, was heartbroken, shattered.  My mother was thirty-eight years old at the time. She adored her brother; I think it is fair to say that she carried the loss with her, for the rest of her life.

Let me mention, briefly, something that occurred years after Philip's death.  In 1999, when she was 70, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, which had already, at the time of the diagnosis, metastasized. She would die in May of 2001, twenty-five years ago next month. I was living in Virginia at the time of her diagnosis, and my brother, Chicago-based, and I both began making regular trips to Boston.

After she became ill, my mother and I spoke often on the phone. We talked, on a number of occasions, about Phil, who had died more than thirty years before, and about her parents, my grandparents (Victor, who died in 1970, and Dorothy, in 1983).  We reminisced about them, told stories about them, spoke about how much we each loved them. She told me at one point that the conversations about her parents, and her brother, meant a great deal to her. Hearing this meant a great deal to me, in a way that I cannot adequately describe.

(Above photographs, 1959, © The New York Times)

Two sentences

The sentences are from a short story, titled "Light Secrets," by the writer Joseph O'Neill. "Light Secrets" appeared in the January 26, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.

From the narrator of Mr. O'Neill's story:

"Despite my failing memory, I suffer more and more often from excruciating flashbacks in which I relive moments when I said or did something foolish.  The worst, most haunting kind of foolishness is unkindness."

I'm mainly focused, as I type Mr. O'Neill's words, on the latter sentence, concerning the realm of unkindness.

It is a subject I have thought about, off and on, through the years. 

A quotation

A quotation from Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), which is included in the book Two Jews, Three Opinions:  A Collection of Twentieth-Century American Jewish Quotations, edited by Sandee Brawarsky and Deborah Mark (New York: Perigee Books, 2000 edition):

"Literature and prayer have much in common.  Both take everyday words and give them meaning."

The Precipice

In a recent post, I noted that President Trump, in January, promised to come to the aid of Iran's citizens, ruled for decades by a cruel and despotic regime.  He wrote, on his social media site: "Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING...HELP IS ON ITS WAY."

We now know much more about the depth of his concern for the citizens of Iran.

His deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz expires tonight.  This morning, he wrote:  

"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.  I don't want that to happen, but it probably will."

He wrote: "However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?  We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end."

He concluded his post by saying: "God Bless the Great People of Iran!"  

On Easter Sunday he had written, of the Iran war: "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one.  There will be nothing like it!!!  Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell--JUST WATCH!"  He concluded the post with this: "Praise be to Allah." 

The U.S., Iran, and the world entire are now at a terrible precipice, brought there by an erratic, impulsive, and dangerous American leader--one who is driven by tantrums, and the daily issuing of threats.

Pakistan has been engaged in indirect talks with the United States and Iran.  Today, after President Trump's latest post, Pakistan's prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif--as reported by The New York Times--took to social media, in an appeal to Trump. Mr. Sharif, The Times wrote, argued "that diplomatic efforts were 'progressing steadily, strongly, and powerfully.' "  Mr. Sharif wrote: "To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks." 

A report in The Hill added this, from the prime minister's post on X:

“Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open [the] Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding period of two weeks as a goodwill gesture."

The prime minister also wrote:

“We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region.” 

Yesterday, during a press conference at The White House, Trump was asked about the effect his threatened bombings would have on the citizens of Iran.

A reporter asked, as recounted by People magazine:

“You said Iranians would be mad if you stopped these attacks, but why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure to cut off their power? Wouldn't that be punishing Iranians for the actions of the regime?” a reporter asked the Republican president.

“They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” Trump, 79, replied.

“We’ve had numerous intercepts… 'Please keep bombing,' ” the president continued.

Trump went on to say that bombs were falling near Iranians’ homes yet they welcomed the explosions, claiming that Iranians have said, “Please keep bombing, do it."

“These are people who are living where the bombs are exploding, and when we leave and are not hitting those areas, they’re saying, ‘Please come back, come back.’ ”

“All I can tell you is that they want freedom," Trump concluded, referencing the country’s strict religious law. 

I of course don't know what "intercepts" the president was referring to, or when they might have been seen; perhaps it was weeks ago.  Or maybe his remarks--"Please keep bombing"--were made up, or exaggerated, on the fly. President Trump is rarely a reliable source of fact, and one must routinely treat what he says with skepticism.

Perhaps, in the past weeks, he was told that some--or many--Iranian citizens wanted the war to continue, to destroy the Iranian regime. 

Yet I doubt that Iran's citizens want their country bombed back to the "Stone Ages," as the president has threatened in recent days.  I doubt they want their "whole civilization" to "die tonight," as Trump threatened today.  I am sure there are millions of Iranian citizens who--continuing to face the oppression and brutality of their own government--are terrified by what Trump may have in store for them.

And...

To all who are celebrating, today:  Happy Easter!

Tonight

Happy Passover, to my friends, family members, and readers of the posts on this blog, who are observing the holiday...

"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