The President thinks he’s a peacemaker

Mar 28, 2026

After flying down to Miami early to hide from the nationwide protests planned for tomorrow, Donald Trump slowly walked onto the stage at 5:32 this evening at the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach, stopping to take labored breaths as he made his way to the podium. With his face caked in uneven orange makeup, he gripped the sides of the podium during the Q&A portion, looked out at a room full of the world’s wealthiest people, and said “I always like to hang around with losers, actually, because it makes me feel better.”

Over the next hour and seventeen minutes, the President of the United States gave one of the most unhinged, reckless, and revealing speeches of his presidency. Not just to the American people, but to a room full of Saudi investors, billionaires, and foreign dignitaries at a conference backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. And what he ended up intentionally or inadvertently saying showed a steep decline in his cognitive ability and his connection to reality.

He opened by bragging about the war in Iran like it was a product launch. He described Operation Midnight Hammer, the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with giddiness. “Dead of night, no moon, 1:00 in the morning, we went in,” he said. “Every single one of those bombs hit their mark, air shafts.” He talked about bombs traveling down granite mountains through air shafts like it was the most exciting thing he’d ever witnessed. “Decimation,” he called it. “Obliteration.”

Then he started making gun sounds. Describing the missile defense system that intercepted 101 incoming Iranian missiles, he said, “Fire, poom. Fire, poom. One at a time, just knocked him out like they were nothing.” He made the gestures to match. This is the Commander in Chief, acting out war with sound effects while ten American service members were wounded that same day at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Two of them seriously. Yet, he didn’t mention them or that side of war.

He then recounted the devastation his “military operation” has inflicted on Iran with a disturbing lack of gravity. “Their supreme leader is no longer supreme. He’s dead,” he said with a grin. “His son is either dead or in very bad shape because nobody has heard from him.” What he didn’t mention was that their infrastructure was also attacked. Innocent civilians were killed, including children at the school that his military bombed. Most of the people caught in the middle of his war never had a say in any of it, and are now living in a country with no functioning government and no one willing to lead it. And instead of acknowledging that reality with even a shred of decency, he turned to a room full of Saudi billionaires and said, “Who would like to lead Iran? Please raise your hand.” The room laughed. “This is the only country where nobody wants to lead,” he said. And the laughter continued.

And then came the part that was as troubling as it was predicted. He admitted, once again, why he calls what is happening in Iran a “military operation” instead of a war. “This is for legal reasons,” he said. “Because as a military operation, I don’t need any approvals. As a war, you’re supposed to get approval from Congress, something like that.” It’s not “something like that”. It’s exactly that. The Constitution of the United States requires the President to seek congressional authorization before going to war. It’s not a suggestion or a technicality. It’s the law. And he stood there, in front of foreign investors, and admitted he is intentionally violating the Constitution on purpose. He shrugged off the foundational principle of civilian control of the military in such a crass way because he does not care about the Constitution and fancies himself above the law.

And it just kept getting worse. He renamed another body of water after himself. “They have to open up the Strait of Trump,” he said, before catching himself. “I mean, Hormuz.” He paused, then smiled, making it clear this was not a slip but an admission of what he wants it to be called, and said: “Excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake.” Then: “The fake news will say ‘he accidentally said.’ No, there’s no accidents with me. Not too many.” Trump is more focused on putting his name on a body of water, the Strait of Hormuz, than he is on ending his deadly war.

He again reminded us that his “military operations,” aka wars, have no end in sight. With Cuba next. “I built this great military,” he said. “I said, you’ll never have to use it. But sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba is next, by the way.” Then, smirking: “But pretend I didn’t say that. Pretend I didn’t. Please, please, please, media, please disregard that statement. Thank you very much. Cuba’s next.”

And the part of what he said in that room today, that made me stop and rewatch it multiple times was when he admitted that his end goal, his plan all along, is to completely abandon NATO. These few lines infuriated me and broke my heart, but he’s been working up to this. He has been speaking poorly of our allies. He’s been mocking them. He’s been trying to isolate us from them and them from us, and to break any of the safety and security agreements that have kept a World War III at bay for decades. When speaking of NATO: “we would have always been there for them,” he said of our allies. “But now, based on their actions, I guess we don’t have to be, do we?” Then he turned to the room, smiled, and said, “Is that breaking news? I think we just have breaking news.” He was proud of it. He wanted the headline of officially dismantling 75 years of Western alliance for applause.

He mocked our closest ally’s military to their faces. Talking about Britain’s aircraft carriers, he said, “They’re little ones. They’re not very good. I know they don’t go fast and I know they don’t work very well.” This is the military of the United Kingdom, our longest-standing ally, and he described their naval fleet like a used car to a room full of Saudi money.

There was much about his speech that was exactly what you would expect from a man of no character or shame. And we saw it when he told the room they could ask him about sex. “Unlike other politicians, they would like the question screened,” he said. “I don’t ask for screening of the questions. You can ask me anything you want. You can talk sex. You can do whatever the hell you want. I’m here for you.” This was during a meeting about investments. This was said by a sitting president of the United States of America. And it’s exactly what we would all expect from someone so ill-fitted for the title he holds. He continues to show what a dangerous embarrassment he is to our country.

As the speech was winding down, Trump was asked what he wants his legacy to be, the man who is currently bombing Iran without congressional authorization, who has invaded Venezuela, who just threatened Cuba, who is posturing to abandon NATO, said this: “I’d love my legacy to be made as a great peacemaker, because I really believe I’m a peacemaker.”

He was not attempting a joke or trying to stir a laugh in any way. This is how he truly sees himself. And that might be the most dangerous thing of all, because a man who believes he is a peacemaker while waging illegal wars is a man with no capacity to understand the reality of the world since he started to destabilize it. And no reason to stop his own destruction.

Earlier today, I was running errands and my first stop took me to a building that I first went to nearly 30 years ago. The businesses inside it have changed over the years. The landscaping is all different, and there are new signs all over it. But the moment I walked in, the scent was exactly the same. Nearly 30 years later, and it still smells the same. Through all those changes, something deeper held on, even when everything on the surface shifted.

And then I went home and watched Trump’s speech. And I realized something that I needed to hold on to tonight. Because as much as Trump is trying to destroy our country, as much damage as he is doing to our alliances, our institutions, and our standing in the world, there is a part of us that he hasn’t been able to reach. Something deeper than any executive order or speech to billionaires or renamed body of water. Something that held on through a Civil War, through two World Wars, through McCarthy, through Nixon, through every test this country has ever faced. The part of us that knows the difference between right and wrong. And the part that watches him laugh about dead leaders and knows that this is not what America is supposed to be. That instinct, that refusal to accept this as normal, is still here. He hasn’t killed it. He can’t. Because it doesn’t live in the White House or in Congress or in any institution he can corrupt. It lives in us. In the millions of people who are planning to march tomorrow. In the veterans who are speaking out. In every single person who watches what is happening and says, no, this is not who we are.

That’s the scent that doesn’t go away. That’s the thing that survives every surface change. And no matter how many alliances he breaks, no matter how many wars he starts, he cannot reach the part of this country that still believes in something better. And that is what terrifies him most.

That is why he threw that performance in Miami. Because he knows there are so many of us who see him for who he really is. Who he will never be able to reach with his propaganda. And because the evidence of his destruction was everywhere. The stock market closed at its lowest point in over seven months. The S&P 500 suffered its fifth consecutive weekly decline, the longest losing streak in nearly four years, while the Dow and Nasdaq both entered correction territory. Oil prices surged over 4 percent because of his war, the war he admitted tonight he’s fighting without congressional authorization, fanning inflation fears and killing any hope of the interest rate cuts families were counting on. Some analysts are even warning that the stock market could fall another 15 to 20 percent before this is over. His war isn’t just costing lives. It’s emptying the wallets of every American family.

This is why tomorrow matters so much. The protests planned across the country are our chance to have our collective voices heard and seen. If you can be there, please do. Show up for yourself and the people who can’t. Let the world see what it looks like when millions of Americans take to the streets and say: this is not who we are. That we are not the country he is trying to turn us into. And we never will be.

Regimes like Trump’s don’t collapse all at once. They fracture. Slowly. From the inside. And every crack we’ve seen lately, from Republicans opting not to run for reelection, to Congress still unable to pass a bill giving ICE more money, to his own senior White House officials privately calling his war videos “cringe and disrespectful and gross,” is evidence that the fracture is underway.

History has shown us this over and over. They look invincible until they’re not. Mussolini’s own Grand Council turned on him when the war started going badly. Ceaușescu stood before a crowd expecting applause and got booed off the stage. Milosevic tried to steal an election, and hundreds of thousands of people showed up and stormed the parliament. Pinochet held a vote he was sure he’d win, and the people said no. In every case, the regime looked like it would last forever. In every case, it didn’t. And in every single one, it was the same combination that brought them down: the incompetence eating away from the inside and the relentless, unbreakable pressure of ordinary people who refused to stop showing up.

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