Jeffrey Epstein’s assessment of Trump’s character (from an email to Larry Summers, 2/8/2017): “I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump. not one decent cell in his body.” The words of a monster speaking of another monster. We see Epstein’s words come to life in Trump’s declaration of war on the Vatican through his attack on Pope Leo XIV. It was interesting that the Vice President, JD Vance, said:
‘… it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality.’
Can I be so bold as to suggest this was EXACTLY what the Pope was doing when speaking out against an illegal war? A war that has already resulted in the death of at least 1700 innocent civilians, including 254 children, as of April 7th. This is based on data provided by Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), a US-based NGO. If you would like more details on the broader casualties from the conflict to date, take a moment to read a piece by Nayera Abdallah and Menna Alaaeldin from Reuters.
The Pope, unlike Trump, has been unequivocally consistent in his messaging on war.
Trump’s narrative is
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” the president wrote in his post, adding: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
He is treating the head of the Catholic Church, the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, as a political adversary, because that’s how his mind works. It’s not the job of the Pontiff to comply with Trump’s messaging narrative, as he stated to reporters:
“I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.”
The Pope’s position is exactly as you would expect from the head of the Christian faith:
“The message of the church, my message, the message of the gospel: blessed are the peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political, a politician.” [His position is that the gospel] should “be abused, as some are doing”.
“I continue to speak strongly against war, seeking to promote peace, dialogue and multilateralism among states to find solutions to problems,”
Trump Jesus’ blasphemous white Christian Nationalist response?
In what will be the comedy sketch of 2026, his response to the image, which incidentally he thought had been created by a ‘very talented artist’, was :
“I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,”.. “I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that’s what it was viewed as. That’s what most people thought.”
My friends, we are living in a crazy world where Asian economies are already grinding to a halt as the carnage creeps towards Europe. Once again, Trump finds himself isolated after having said on Truth Social :
"The Blockade will begin shortly. Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade,"
The problem is that once again, US allies never received the memo and refuse to take part, indicating they are working collectively on their own initiative without the US. It is yet another indicator that the world is adjusting to life beyond US influence. I was very struck by the outstanding speech Mark Carney gave at the Liberal National Convention a few days ago in Montreal. I have taken the time to edit it for an English-speaking audience, but should you want to listen to the full bilingual speech, you can find it here.
I said when he decided to run, it was a history-defining moment because I felt, in a time of global uncertainty, the world needed a serious leader with not just leadership skills but someone who had an intimate understanding of the global economic landscape. Ironically, he was the first leader Trump helped to elect.
Carney is a man who, in my opinion, has not disappointed. I see this speech as another step towards his vision for a pragmatic approach to navigating the imperial obsession of an out-of-control transnational extortion gang run from the White House. What has struck me, though, is the visceral hatred the right in Canada has towards him. There is no question that the hard right toxicity from the US has crept over the border into Canadian politics.
What’s becoming increasingly evident with each passing day is that the far right is in trouble and a state of panic. Panic made worse by the electoral annihilation of Viktor Orbán in Hungary over the weekend. For the Trump doctrine to survive and prosper, Orbán needed to remain in power in Hungary. Time and again, we are witnessing the toxicity of Trump on the global stage, and already, we are seeing Reform UK beginning to panic as they attempt to brush off Orbán’s defeat as ‘unsurprising’. Encouragingly, shoots of political change are emerging and need nurturing.
Trump is beginning to do damage to the far right in Europe, and the Iran War only serves to increase the pressure. He now appears to have lost Giorgia Meloni in Italy over Iran and his attacks on the Pope. Trump's 2024 reelection marked the beginning of what he and his acolytes saw as a revolution against the established world order. An order created by the United States itself following the Second World War. As the useful idiot of the wealthy elite, Trump is slowly becoming the Frankenstein monster, setting fire to their whole world domination ambitions.
It’s pointless to speculate on where this Middle East conflict will go, but Trump finds himself in the unenviable position of being at war with an ideological enemy for whom civilian casualties are simply seen as a propaganda tool; the more civilians are killed, the more fuel they have to paint the US the same as the world is now painting Israel.
Iran has long prepared for this war and is expert at using social media as an extension of their wider geopolitical capabilities. To make matters worse, Trump has underestimated the relationship between Iran and China, who are now making clear that the US will not be allowed to interfere with their ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump is unable to focus on more than one thing at a time, and he is immensely irritated that the Iran conflict has not gone the way the Venezuela interdiction did. He just can’t comprehend that he has the most powerful military on earth, and he can’t defeat what he believes to be the ‘shithole country’, that is, Iran. Welcome to the new world of conventional military limitation. Strength is no longer defined by might, so the whole idea of peace through strength is as outdated as Trump’s bordello taste.
Over this weekend, the Ukrainian military made history by taking a Russian forward position without a single soldier present in the engagement. It was done entirely with robots and drones, a standoff engagement. The Russian unit surrendered to robots. In an ironic twist, the US can take credit for this groundbreaking achievement because its denial of support to Ukraine has forced innovation, which has catapulted the Ukrainian army to become one of the deadliest fighting forces on earth, and that is not hyperbole.
Trump might have thought he was helping Putin by denying support to Ukraine, but he has done the exact opposite. Russia is currently losing between 1000 and 1500 troops per day, while Ukrainian losses on the frontline are diminishing as a direct result of innovative digitisation of the battlespace. They have developed killer drones that can operate in the field for 45 days at a time, only needing to return to be reloaded. The drone technology has not only been developed and produced in-house but also tested in the field. It’s a technology that replaces the infantry soldier.
I’m sure there's still a lot of work to do, but Ukraine remains a shining example of adaptation to asymmetric warfare on the conventional battlefield. This is a paradigm shift in military strategy that huge organisations like the US military, which are still living in the world of battle tanks and aircraft carriers, can’t adapt quickly enough to meet the challenge. I liken it to the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. There is no question that renewables are the right move as China is so ably demonstrating, but it derails the gravy train that so many have come to rely on for big profits.
We are living through a technological revolution, and those who choose to live in the past will remain there. This will apply to everything from business to finance to the battlefield. Hegemony is slowly being democratised. Ukraine, as a country of around 40 million, has inflicted the largest losses on a military force since World War II. According to a piece by Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies:
Since February 2022, Russian forces have suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties, more losses than any major power in any war since World War II. At current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could reach 2 million by the spring of 2026. After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century. Meanwhile, Russia’s war economy is under mounting strain, with manufacturing declining, slowing growth of 0.6 percent in 2025, and no globally competitive technology firms to help drive long-term productivity.
The assertion by Trump that Zelenskyy “holds no cards” has proved beyond ludicrous to the point where Gulf States are now begging to buy Ukrainian anti-drone technology. In just four years, Zelenskyy has transformed from a comedian into one of the most formidable wartime leaders in modern history.
Trump, far from being in the driving seat, is fighting a battle for political and economic survival.
Best article yet! Thank you!
What Zelenskyy and Ukraine have accomplished is truly amazing. He really does have the cards! I hope he wins the Nobel this year, which would really be a defeat for Trump, the biggest loser.