There is something very wrong with Donald J. Trump

Apr 07, 2026

At 1:08 PM Eastern Time, today, Easter Monday, Donald J. Trump stood at the podium in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, clearly defeated and desperately trying to justify his war in Iran. With an aggressive, scratchy voice, he leaned on the podium, struggled to read his prepared remarks, and shifted his weight, unable to stay still. For the better part of an hour and 24 minutes, Trump reduced war to a transaction, where countries become assets and human lives become collateral. He jumped from threatening to destroy an entire country in one night, to bragging about a dictator who “likes Trump,” used a slur multiple times to describe a former president, threatened to jail a journalist, disclosed classified details of military operations, and even reminded us that he still wants Greenland. And when Trump was talking about Iran and said, “If it were up to me, I’d take the oil. I’d keep the oil and we’d make plenty of money,” and a reporter pointed out that the American people want their military to come home, his impulses got the better of him and he said, “I’m a businessman first.”

That was just the press conference. But it wasn’t even the beginning of his day. Before he walked into that briefing room, Trump had already spent the morning at the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn, surrounded by children, families, Easter eggs, and a person in a bunny costume, delivering war threats to a crowd that came to watch their kids roll eggs with wooden spoons.

What we witnessed today was not a series of isolated moments. It was a full day of behavior that, in any functioning democracy, would have brought the country to a halt. If any other president in American history had said or done even one of these things, Congress would have been called back into session. The press would cover it as the lead story. There would have been immediate, overwhelming demand for answers. But Donald Trump did all of it between breakfast and dinner, and the country barely reacted. That is not a failure of attention. That is the strategy. Flood the zone with so much chaos, cruelty, and contradiction that nothing can hold long enough to be examined, challenged, or stopped. This is how democratic norms erode. Not with one defining crisis, but through constant, relentless escalation that numbs the public and exhausts accountability. So tonight, we slow it down. We walk through it, piece by piece. Because when it’s all laid out in sequence, the weight of what happened today becomes impossible to ignore.

It started on the South Portico balcony. The Truman Balcony, named for the president who built it in 1948 as a private family porch, a place for shade and quiet evenings. It was never meant to be a stage. But Trump has turned it into one, and the image carries historical weight that cannot be ignored. Mussolini delivered his most infamous speeches from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, including his declaration of war on France and Britain. Ceaușescu gave his final speech from a balcony in Bucharest before his regime collapsed. When Trump staged a similar moment in 2020, returning from the hospital and standing on that balcony staring down at the cameras, presidential historian Michael Beschloss called it a “Mussolini stare.” Trump’s own former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said it directly: “the American Mussolini, standing on the balcony.” Weeks earlier, Beschloss had warned on MSNBC, “Go into Italian history and look at Mussolini. This is the way dictators come to power.” Today, Trump stood on that same balcony with the Easter Bunny at his side, looked down at the crowd, and started talking about war.

“Today is a very special day,” he said. “It’s a day where we celebrate Jesus. It’s a day where we celebrate religion. And it’s an honor to be the president of the United States.”

And then he pivoted. At a children’s event. On Easter Monday. “I just wanna say we have a great military. We have the greatest military, the most powerful military any place in the world. You saw what happened with Venezuela.”

He told a crowd that included children about pilots getting shot down. “In most instances, you’re really not able to go in because you’ll go in with 200 people and lots of jet fighters and helicopters and you really don’t have a chance. They get shot down.” Children were standing there. Holding wooden spoons. Waiting to roll eggs.

Then the threats escalated. “We are obliterating their country,” Trump said, “and they just don’t want to say ‘uncle.’ They don’t want to cry, as the expression goes, ‘uncle.’ But they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges. They’ll have no power plants. They’ll have no anything.” Then he added, “I won’t go further because there are other things that are worse than those two.”

When a reporter asked what he would say to the 61% of Americans who oppose this war, Trump called them “foolish.” He said, “They’re foolish, because the war is about one thing. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” He called the majority of the country foolish for opposing a war that has killed more than 3,400 people across the Middle East, driven gas prices past $4 a gallon, and tanked his approval rating to 35%.

Then came the gaslighting. Trump claimed Iran killed “45,000 protesters” and that Iranians “want to hear bombs because they want to be free.” He is asking us to believe that we are bombing people to liberate them from violence, without mentioning that we’ve killed nearly 2,000 of them, including 244 children. This from the same president whose agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti on American soil. He condemns a regime that kills its own people while his government is doing the same thing at home.

When a reporter asked how bombing civilian bridges and power plants wouldn’t constitute a war crime, Trump called Iranian leaders “animals.” When pressed further, a reporter gave him what should have been the easiest question of the day: “Are there certain kinds of civilian targets though? I’m thinking schools that you would…” All he had to say was yes, schools are off limits. Any president, any human being, should be able to say that without hesitation. Instead, Trump cut the reporter off and said, “I don’t want to tell you that.” He would not rule out bombing more schools. And when a reporter turned to the First Lady and asked, “Madam First Lady, can you tell us your message to children who find themselves in war zones during this holy week?” Melania Trump stood there, hands in her pockets, next to the Easter Bunny, and said, “Well, all of this is happening for their future. So they will be safe in years to come.” Trump jumped in and added, “The time the Iranian people are the most unhappy, when you hear bombs all over, is when those bombs stop. That’s the problem.” The bombing is for the children. That’s what the First Lady of the United States told the world on Easter Monday, while standing next to someone in a bunny costume.

And because no setting is too sacred for this man to turn into a campaign rally, Trump then turned the Easter Egg Roll into a political event. He asked the crowd, “How did I do with the voters that do eggs? Referring to egg farmers. Would you say 100% or 90%?” Then he said, “Would anybody in the egg industry vote for Kamala, a low-IQ person? She’s a low-IQ person.” He asked, “Who’s a lower-IQ person, Biden or Kamala?” He mocked Biden’s use of an autopen in front of confused children, telling them, “He was incapable of signing, let alone running a country.” And he also signed his name over a child’s drawing and told kids they could sell his autograph for “$25,000 on eBay.” And he led the crowd in a chant of “four more years,” testing the 22nd Amendment at a children’s event, then said, “The media will never cover it.”

After this embarrassing display of presidential failure, Donald Trump left the event and shortly thereafter, headed to the next one.

Then he walked inside and held the press conference mentioned earlier. The Easter facade had completely faded by that point, and he told the press, “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” Then he got more specific: “Every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock. And it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to.”

He told us he ordered a bridge destroyed as a negotiating tactic and that his son-in-law was one of his lead advisors and negotiators. “I got a call from Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner, and JD saying, ‘I think they’re breaking the deal,’” Trump said. “I said, ‘Tell them that’s okay. Don’t worry about it, but tell them to look out their window and watch.’ And within 45 minutes, I gave the order to knock out the biggest bridge.” Jared Kushner is a private citizen with enormous financial interests in the Middle East. He is on calls about military strikes. And the President of the United States ordered the destruction of civilian infrastructure as a negotiating stunt after talking to him.

Trump then described what the future holds for Iran if they don’t comply: “If we left today, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country, and it would never be as good as it was. And the only way they’re going to be able to rebuild their country is to utilize the genius of the United States of America.” We will destroy you, and only we can put you back together. That is colonial language. That is the language of empire.

And if there were any doubt about how he sees the countries he targets, he made it clear with his confession about Venezuela, which shows how far his mind has gone. “The people of Venezuela, they say if I ran for president of Venezuela, I’m polling higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela,” Trump said. “So after I’m finished with this, I can go to Venezuela. I will quickly learn Spanish. It won’t take too long. I’m good at language, and I will go to Venezuela. I’m going to run for president.” He said this about a country he invaded, whose leader he kidnapped, whose oil he is now refining in Houston, and a country where he installed Maduro’s former vice president as the new leader. He doesn’t see countries as sovereign nations. He sees them as acquisitions.

And then Trump made way for Pete Hegseth to deliver his own remarks, while Trump stood behind him barely able to stay awake. Hegseth delivered remarks that wrapped the entire war in a Christian holy war narrative. “Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday,” Hegseth said. “Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good.” When a reporter asked Trump if he believes God supports the United States in this war, he said, “I do, because God is good, because God is good, and God wants to see people taken care of.”

When a reporter pointed out that Trump’s messaging has swung from “the war is coming to an end” to bombing Iran “to the stone ages” and asked directly, “Which is it? Are you winding this down? Are you escalating?” Trump said, “I don’t know. I can’t tell. Depends what they do.” He doesn’t know. But earlier in the same press conference, Hegseth said, “Per the president’s direction, today will be the largest volume of strikes since day one. Tomorrow, even more than today.” And Trump himself said the entire country could be “taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” He knows. The answer is escalation. He just won’t say it out loud. And if he truly does not know, the situation is just as bleak. Because the man at the top of the chain of command should know.

And then came the moment that revealed everything about where his loyalties lie. When bashing our democratic allies, calling NATO “a paper tiger,” attacking South Korea, Japan, Australia, Britain, and Germany for not helping, Trump pivoted to the dictator he admires. “We have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong-un, who I get along with very well,” he said. “Do you notice he said very nice things about me? He used to call Joe Biden a mentally retarded person. Okay, so don’t tell me about your stuff. Joe Biden, he said, he’s a mentally retarded person. He was so nasty to Joe Biden. It was terrible. But to me, he likes Trump.” He used that slur twice. He put it in the mouth of a nuclear-armed dictator and wielded it like a badge of honor. And reporting from The New Republic indicates that Kim Jong-un never actually used those words. North Korean state media called Biden an “imbecile” in 2019. “Mentally retarded” appears to be Trump’s own language, attributed to a dictator he admires, so he could use it himself.

He bragged about his relationship with Putin. “Putin’s not afraid of NATO,” Trump said. “Putin’s afraid of us. Very afraid of us. And he’s explained it to me a lot of times. I got to know them very well. I know them very well.” He praises dictators. He uses their words as weapons. He attacks every democratic ally we have. Every single time.

And then a reporter did something remarkable and asked the question that needed to be asked. They referenced Trump’s Easter Sunday Truth Social post, the one where he called Iranians “crazy bastards,” threatened to unleash “hell” on them, and signed off with “Praise be to Allah,” and asked directly: “What is your response to critics who say that it is your mental health that should perhaps be examined as this war continues?” Trump’s response: “I haven’t heard that. But if that’s the case, you’re going to have to have more people like me.” When asked separately about the profanity in his Easter morning post, he shrugged it off. “Only to make my point,” he said. About the expletive: “I think you’ve heard it before.”

And then, while arguing about the rescue mission, Trump pretended to aim a sniper rifle at reporters in the briefing room. The Associated Press photographed it. The President of the United States mimed aiming a weapon at the press corps.

He ended the entire press conference with this: “And you know it all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said bye-bye.” As much as we have a lot already going on. We can’t forget that he does still plan to somehow take Greenland or at least wants to take it. The question is, will it be Cuba first?

And that brings us to something else that he said that is still on my list of things that keeps me up at night. The assault on the free press. During that same press conference, Trump threatened to jail the journalist who first reported that a second servicemember was missing in Iran. “We’re going to go to the media company that released it and we’re going to say: national security, give it up or go to jail.”

This is one of the most dangerous things a sitting president can do. Every authoritarian regime in modern history understood this. Hitler had Goebbels to control the narrative. Putin jails reporters who tell the truth. Erdogan seized every major newspaper in Turkey. The methods are different, but the goal is always the same: silence dissent, flood the public with propaganda, and make the truth so dangerous to speak that people stop trying. That is what Trump is working toward. Not all at once, but one threat at a time.

The Knight First Amendment Institute responded: “President Trump’s threat should be understood as an effort to intimidate the press and to prevent journalists from doing work the public needs them to do.” The National Press Club said it was “a direct threat to the First Amendment and the core function of a free press.” The Freedom of the Press Foundation said, “Journalists don’t work for the government and their right to publish government leaks is protected by the First Amendment which, despite Trump’s efforts, remains the law of the land.”

Today was not a good day for the United States of America or the American people. There is no way to sugar coat it. But here is what we need to hold onto. During that press conference, a New York Times reporter asked a tough question. Trump attacked the publication, called it failing, tried to discredit the reporter. And the reporter ignored the insult and kept asking the question. Another reporter asked Trump directly about war crimes. Another asked about his mental health. Another pressed him to reconcile his contradictions about whether the war is winding down or escalating. They didn’t flinch. They didn’t back down. They did their jobs. That is how Trump has to be dealt with. That is how all of us have to deal with this. You ignore the noise and you keep asking the question. And more people are doing it.

I’ve been thinking about how quickly this has evolved. How just a few months ago, every three days or so he would say something downright shocking. Now it’s practically daily. There’s so much that I don’t even know what to cover anymore. Yesterday, I would have said that his Easter Sunday Truth Social post was the most diabolical message he’s ever sent. And then today I’m here to tell you that today was the most diabolical messaging of his presidency. Every single day it comes quicker. There is no impulse control whatsoever. And there’s no one around him who will stop it. That is the reality of the moment. We can’t expect a break. We have to just keep pushing through and pushing back.

And as I’m writing this tonight, I’m seeing reports that Hegseth canceled his 8 AM press conference and that more troops from Arkansas are heading to the Middle East. None of this sounds like peace, but we will have to see how tomorrow plays out to know for sure.

Tonight I’d like to ask our international readers for your help. We need you to ask your own governments to speak out even louder. I am deeply concerned for all of our futures. We need the warning bells to be ringing as loudly as possible. Not just from inside our country but from outside of it as well. There is an escalation of the war to unthinkable levels on the table. The President of the United States said he could wipe out an entire country. I only know one type of weapon that could do something like that. I hold the belief that even Trump has his own lines he would not cross, but we no longer have the luxury of pretending that is a certainty.

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