The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you just declare war on Latin American drug cartels, you can skip all the boring parts like evidence, due process, or Congress. US Southern Command announced yet another strike on a small boat in the eastern Pacific, killing three more people and nudging the death toll from these floating executions to 202. As usual, they insist the vessel was "engaged in narco-trafficking" and tied to a terrorist group, and as usual, they provided exactly zero proof beyond "trust us, we blew it up".

This time, though, the Pentagon upgraded the snuff film: the video is in color now. The clip shows a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean, then an explosion, then debris and packages bobbing in the water. So congratulations to the US military on bringing its months-long campaign of alleged unlawful extrajudicial killings into the 21st century of cinematography, if not the 18th century of basic legal norms.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are calling the strikes what they look like—unlawful executions carried out under a made-up "armed conflict" with cartels. The ACLU is even blunter, calling the administration’s claims "unsubstantiated, fear-mongering" nonsense. Meanwhile, Gen Francis L Donovan, the top US commander in Latin America, both ordered the strike and found time to meet Cuban military officials near Guantánamo Bay, that famous shrine to due process. America’s global message under Trump remains consistent: we don’t need courts, treaties, or proof—just a target, a drone, and a really nice color filter.

Trump has decided that 1962 called and wants its foreign policy back, so he’s answered by slapping a de facto fuel blockade on Cuba to force regime change or pry the island open for US capital. Factories are idle, transport is frozen, and hospitals are begging generators to keep wheezing along, but don’t worry, Washington insists it’s all about “freedom.” To really underline how principled this is, the US has even indicted 94‑year‑old Raúl Castro over a 1996 shootdown, because nothing says “rule of law” like retroactive show trials for ancient enemies while your own coup-curious ex-president walks free.

The great socialist safety net Cuba once had – USSR, Venezuela, assorted leftist patrons – has been shredded, partly by their own collapse and partly by Trump’s “lightning” decapitation of Venezuela’s government, complete with abducting Nicolás Maduro and his wife for export-justice in the US. With Venezuelan oil gone, remittances doing triage, and even Havana Club rum stuck in imported bottles because domestic glass is too energy-intensive, Cuba is basically being slow‑walked into the Stone Age to make a point for the next campaign rally.

Meanwhile, Europe is performing its favorite trick: moral outrage via strongly worded statements followed by absolutely nothing. Spain, Mexico, and Brazil managed a joint communique bravely condemning “the dire situation” in Cuba while somehow forgetting to mention the United States or, minor detail, the blockade that’s causing it. The EU, once reliably opposed to the embargo, can’t even keep a UN vote together anymore as Hungary and assorted post‑Soviet tough guys rediscover their love of US hard power now that it’s aimed at someone else’s sovereignty.

China shrugs because Cuba isn’t a big enough market, Russia’s too busy losing wars and allies, and leftist icons like Corbyn and Mélenchon are reduced to solidarity convoys and op‑eds while Trump casually re‑boots the Monroe Doctrine on hard mode. Call it what it is: collective punishment dressed up as democracy promotion, with an entire country’s access to electricity, food, and medicine held hostage so a reality‑TV caudillo can claim a foreign‑policy “win.” Freedom, apparently, now comes by tanker—assuming Trump lets it sail.

The U.S. has conducted yet another strike on Iran, because if there’s one thing this administration never tires of, it’s lighting more fuses in the Middle East and calling it "defensive." U.S. forces hit Iranian targets on Wednesday while President Trump helpfully clarified that the upcoming November midterms will absolutely not pressure him to end the war he started and keeps casually expanding like it’s a streaming series he refuses to cancel.

Trump is bragging that the elections won’t make him "rush" into a deal to end the Iran war, which is a very poetic way of saying: voters can go pound sand, the bombs will keep flying regardless of what you think. Congress remains largely a decorative branch of government while the White House treats war powers like a personal subscription service, renewed automatically unless someone cuts the cable. Democratic accountability, meet the drone strike.

The Trump administration’s favorite new pastime—extrajudicially vaporizing boats in Latin American waters—has claimed another life. US Southern Command released a hype video of a "suspected" drug boat speeding along before it’s turned into a floating fireball, then patted itself on the back for calling the Coast Guard after the explosion to see who might still be alive. One man is dead, two survived, and we still have zero public evidence that the boat was carrying anything more illegal than a bad life plan.

This is part of Trump’s ongoing oceanic snuff-film campaign that’s been running since early September, killing at least 194 people on the theory that the US is "at war" with Latin American drug cartels. Conveniently for the White House, "war" here means you can skip trials, skip proof, and go straight to remote-controlled execution in international waters. The Pentagon inspector general has bravely stepped up to announce a "self-initiated" review—not of whether it’s legal to blow up untried suspects at sea—but of whether the paperwork and six-phase targeting cycle were filled out correctly before the missiles flew. America: where the real crime is improper form routing, not turning the Pacific into a jurisdiction-free kill zone.

The president has announced his latest galaxy-brain peace plan: if Middle Eastern countries want in on the Iran deal, they have to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel — including, checks notes, Egypt and Jordan, which already have diplomatic relations with Israel and have for decades. Bold strategy: threaten to exclude countries from a major regional security agreement unless they agree to do something they literally already did.

Trump also magnanimously declared that Iran itself is invited to the accords once it signs a deal with him, because nothing says "mutual trust" like forcing your negotiating partner into a public loyalty ceremony with their regional rival as an entrance fee. Analysts, who still insist on using words like "reality" and "conditions," note that the odds of key states signing on after Gaza are somewhere between slim and "Lindsey Graham tweet." Speaking of which, Graham rushed onto X to proclaim the idea "simply brilliant" and the most significant Middle East change in "thousands of years," which is a normal thing to say about a plan that confuses basic facts available on Wikipedia.

This administration’s approach to diplomacy continues to be: treat complex regional conflicts as a branding exercise, slap "Abraham Accords 2.0" on everything, and hope nobody notices that the fine print is mostly vibes, amnesia, and domestic political damage control for Iran hawks who get cranky if Trump wanders within ten feet of actual de-escalation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated Cuba’s independence from Spain and U.S. military occupation by… urging Cubans to get right back under Washington’s thumb, this time under the benevolent guidance of Donald J. Trump. In a slick State Department video, Rubio tells the Cuban people that Trump is offering them a "new path" — which, coincidentally, begins right after the part where the U.S. topples Venezuela’s government, seizes its oil industry, and cuts off Cuba’s fuel like a landlord turning off the heat to win an argument.

Rubio gravely explains that Cuba’s 22-hour blackouts have nothing to do with an American-enforced oil blockade and everything to do with Raúl Castro and GAESA plundering the country. The fact that Washington just took control of the region’s gas pump and slapped a "no oil for Havana" sign on it is, apparently, a minor footnote. While the Trump administration slaps new sanctions on top Cuban officials and tightens the economic screws, Rubio beams in Spanish subtitles about freedom and a "new Cuba" — the kind of freedom that arrives packaged with U.S. indictments, embargoes, and strategic starvation.

So on the anniversary of Cuba’s independence from foreign rule, the top U.S. diplomat appears on YouTube to say: your government is corrupt, your lights are out because of them, and your best bet is to side with the people blockading your oil. It’s less diplomacy and more protection racket: nice little island you’ve got there — shame if anything else happened to your fuel supply.

Global strongman cosplay seems to be hitting its sell-by date. Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine adventure has turned into a years-long meat grinder with an estimated 350,000 Russian soldiers dead, sanctions chewing through the economy, and so much paranoia in Moscow that the guy who poisons people for a living is now reportedly worried about being poisoned or couped himself. When your Victory Day parade gets downsized because you’re scared of Ukrainian drones, the whole ‘new Russian empire’ thing starts to look less like Stalin and more like a failing MLM scheme.

Over in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is discovering that running a permanent war state while under corruption indictment has some minor downsides. He failed to stop the 7 October 2023 attacks, refused a real inquiry, promised to ‘destroy’ Hamas and didn’t, helped launch a catastrophic US–Israel war in Iran with Trump, choked off the Strait of Hormuz, and is still clinging to an illegal occupation in Lebanon. Now he’s limping toward an election where the ballot question is basically: ‘Would you like to keep the indicted warmonger who broke the judiciary and tanked the economy, or try literally anything else?’

And then there’s Donald Trump, the discount autocrat in a gold-plated suit, who managed to turn America’s Iran misadventure into a domestic inflation machine and then pretended the people paying $7 for eggs don’t exist. His greatest hits: trade wars that punch Americans in the face, climate denial while the planet cooks, open contempt for NATO, and a never-ending crush on fellow authoritarians, most recently on display as he swooned over Xi in Beijing like a reality TV fan at a meet-and-greet. Foreign policy disaster, economic pain, creeping imperial fantasies – it’s all there, and yet his big political problem might simply be that voters notice their wallets are empty.

The hopeful twist, if you squint, is that all three of these guys – Putin, Netanyahu, Trump – are finally bleeding political capital. Their approval ratings are sliding, their wars are unpopular, their economies are wobbling, and their once-inevitable strongman narratives are starting to look more like a bunch of aging bullies who stayed too long at the party. The bar for ‘hope’ is now so low that merely watching would-be autocrats trip over their own disasters counts as optimism.