The entire world waits with bated breath to see what actually happens at 8:00 p.m.tonight. Iran has said it has no intention of surrendering anything. Trump has threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization, which many have interpreted to mean that WWIII is about to start. Pope Leo XIV chimed in.
AP: Pope sharply criticizes Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization
“Today as we all know there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable,” Pope Leo XIV said, adding that any attacks on civilian infrastructure violate international law. pic.twitter.com/kWrgBiupS9
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 7, 2026
From Rachel Bitecofer’s newsletter:
We don’t know exactly what will happen at 8 p.m., but we do know something about Donald Trump. And that’s what makes this moment so dangerous. Trump has two options tonight. He can admit that he made a mistake, or he can double down so he never has to admit the mistake in the first place.
If you’ve been paying attention for the last decade, you already know which one he tends to choose.
This is a man who staged an insurrection rather than accept losing an election. His own advisors, intelligence officials, and campaign staff told him the same thing: he lost. The votes had been counted. The outcome was clear. But Trump couldn’t accept it. Instead of acknowledging reality, he tried to overturn the result and cling to power. For Trump, admitting error is worse than creating a crisis.
We’ve seen this pattern play out before in smaller but revealing ways. Bob Woodward documented one of the clearest examples in his book Fear: Trump in the White House, on Trump’s first term. In a meeting inside the Pentagon’s secure conference room — known as “the Tank” — senior military leaders tried to explain NATO to Trump. These were generals and national security experts walking the president through the logic of the alliance, why it exists, and why it benefits the United States. They spent hours laying out the strategic case. Trump’s reaction, according to Woodward’s account, was to repeatedly tell them they were wrong. Generals, diplomats, career experts — all wrong. Only Trump was right.
That meeting was what made then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “fucking moron” if you remember that.
We’ve seen the same thing play out publicly. At one point Trump sat in front of a room full of economists at the University of Chicago — one of the most respected economics departments in the world — and essentially did the same thing. Rather than engaging with the substance of what they were saying, he dismissed them. The experts were wrong. Trump was right.
That personality trait matters right now, because the crisis with Iran didn’t emerge out of thin air. When Trump launched his attack during what were supposed to be peace negotiations, the military would have briefed him extensively on the consequences. They would have walked him through the risks of escalation and the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz. That’s how military planning works: scenarios are modeled, risks are explained, and the potential fallout is laid out in detail. There is simply no way he wasn’t warned about what might happen if Iran responded.
He did it anyway.
Now we are staring at a public ultimatum, a literal ticking clock, and a president who has announced to the world that “a whole civilization will die tonight.”
Now that’s genocide.
Your guess is as good as anybody’s. Nobody knows what this madman will do.
I guarantee you President Trump won’t have THAT photograph on his wall.