"I can do whatever I want with Cuba," Donald Trump says in a slurred murmur, after half-strung together a few almost disjointed sentences ("I think I'll have... the honor of taking Cuba... whether it's liberating it, taking it... to tell you the truth, I think I can do whatever I want with Cuba"). He said this sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, which, along with Air Force One, the presidential plane, are two of the orange pachyderm's favorite locations for his staged performances. It's worth remembering that Trump honed his public image by producing trashy television for many years and that he continues to apply the same formula to a T. The quality of the messages is another matter: unfinished sentences, pointless pauses, repetitions. "I think we could bomb Jarg Island again for fun." These are messages that aim to be threatening, intimidating, but they also give the impression of being uttered by someone who's not quite himself.
Is Trump just messing around? Is his mind weakening like Joe Biden's, whom he so often mocked? Is the Caesar of 2026, the absolute leader of the empire guided (according to Steve Bannon) by divine providence, losing his physical and mental faculties? Is it true or not that he's having trouble controlling his bowels? The control he has certainly lost is that of the third Gulf War: Iran maintains the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the international alliance that Trump demanded has not been supported by either Europe or its supposed allies in the region, the instigator of the war—Israel—has started another war in Lebanon without a clear objective, just like in the 1980s, the threat of inflation and economic contraction is more than just a specter haunting Europe, and even a MAGA fanatic like Joe Kent—until this week head of counterterrorism intelligence in the US—is resigning, proclaiming that Iran was no threat to the US and that if they want, they can go to Israel. Regarding his work on counterterrorism, it's worth remembering that Kent was a staunch supporter of working with Nazis and Proud Boys and that he supported the attackers of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Therefore, now he, as a dissenting voice, has become part of the terrorist threats that must be combated for the sake of the world.
Whatever Trump's state of health, his scattered and capricious pronouncements, combined with the inflammatory rhetoric of his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who speaks of fire and destruction like a raging kindergarten child, in no way project the image of a power that is truly in control. What is being conveyed from the Oval Office and Air Force One is rather a constant headlong rush forward to nowhere, a string of sensationalist pronouncements in the form of invasions and threats, which already have an intolerable cost in human lives and environmental destruction, and which constantly flirts with temptation.
