More Complications Arise In the Trump Universe

Ruling the world is a tricky business

The top story last week, at least in terms of shock value, might well be the ongoing saga of the Trump White House ballroom, which started out as a $200 million development off of the building’s East Wing accommodating 300 guests and completely paid for by private donors. It then grew to 600 guests and the price doubled. The East Wing of the White House was then completely demolished without approval by Capitol architectural authorities to make way for a greatly expanded facility. The wholesale reconstruction of the White House by Trump is taking place even as preservation groups have belatedly increased their efforts to stop the whole tacky gilded enterprise, describing it as an abomination that would overwhelm and diminish the entire historic White House layout. For what it’s worth, Trump has already paved over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden and made many structural and decorative changes to the inside of the building.

But that was only the beginning. The recent alleged attempt to assassinate Trump at the Washington Hilton Hotel created an opportunity to make the ballroom even bigger and multifunction, to include security features like an underground bomb shelter, a glider and drone resistant exterior, and an in-house medical facility. To no one’s surprise this boosted the cost of the ballroom and its add-ons by $1 billion more beyond the already doubled cost, which additional expense Trump is now seeking from the taxpayer by way of the Department of Homeland Security budget. Trump’s talking heads are maintaining that the extras are essential as they will keep the president “safe.”

Donald Trump is reportedly preparing for a trip to China next week to meet with that country’s political leadership. He apparently is doing that in part through visits to two of his golf courses. There is speculation that the China trip might not come off as there is renewed fighting taking place between the US and Iran in the Persian Gulf region. China will certainly be pushing for measures to reestablish some kind of sanity to the world’s energy supply chain and will be disinclined to want to do so while active disruption of the Strait of Hormuz oil and gas tanker bottleneck is taking place. Any agreement between Iran and the US, even a temporary one, will have to address as a first priority restoring normal traffic through Hormuz.

So if the trip does not take place, that will leave Trump in Florida, where he can hang around the twenty foot tall golden statue of himself recently unveiled at his Trump Doral Golf Course, where Christian Zionist preachers and also two Rabbis led prayers to honor and presumably consecrate the gilded image of the fist-raised man they regard as America’s greatest president. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio was just in Rome meeting with Pope Leo, the Church-state relationship also produced a response from Christian Zionist stalwart Pastor Robert Jeffress, who opined “It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the Pope.”

Or Donald could conceivably stop trying to hit a ball with a stick and instead put in some time at the White House actually talking to staff members who might be interested in make the lives of ordinary Americans less miserable. Admittedly, however, that would be a long shot as no one in the Trump cabinet, nor the president himself, actually seems to care about Americans.

Another hot topic at the moment in Trumpworld is NATO, more particularly the whine coming from Trump about how Europeans are not supporting his Israeli driven senseless war against Iran. Trump is also undoubtedly piqued by the fact that many European states have become fed up with the war crimes of his “best friend and ally” the apartheid state of Israel. Francesca Albanese, the UN’s rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, who has energetically made the case for Israeli genocide and has been punished by the US and Israel with sanctions as a response, recently received an award from the Spanish government to thank her for her work. Spain and a number of other Eurostates have been cutting military and diplomatic relationships with the Zionists and have even pledged to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) warrant if he should show up in their countries. They have even denied Israeli use of their airspace when Netanyahu seeks to travel.

Given his displeasure with NATO, Trump has consequently decided to remove 5,000 US military from bases in Germany, which leaves only 30,000 in place who should also be brought home. Someone should tell Trump that it is way past time to remove the soldiers from the UK, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey as well as they are no longer serving any useful purposes beyond existing as forward bases for American aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere. If any of them are truly fearful of aggression coming from Russia they should probably work with the Russians to come up with an arrangement for better political and economic relations, something they had before the United States under Genocide Joe Biden blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022.

Donald Trump is of course under tremendous pressure from Israel and its powerful US lobby to continue the war against Iran until it is destroyed. He is tap dancing around an agreement with the Iranians to end the fighting but may not have the intestinal fortitude to tell Netanyahu to go to hell even if he manages to convince himself both politically and with his “feelings” that that is the right thing to do. He keeps reverting to genocidal threats about what he is prepared to unload on the Persians. Most recently, it has been a promise to raise the ante if they do not agree to the proposal that he came up with last week. As observed above, the proposal somehow became wrapped around several tit-for-tat shooting engagements between Iran and the US in the Strait of Hormuz regarding which Trump characteristically with a lie described to reporters as how “They trifled with us today. We blew them away.” Regarding whether the ceasefire was off, he answered “No. If it was off, you’d know it!” before adding “If there’s no ceasefire you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran.” Trump subsequently declared Iran’s response to his willingness to negotiate a compromise was “totally unacceptable!”

“One big glow” sounds to me and others like Trump is threatening an “extreme response” if Iran does not play things his way, and an “extreme response” in this case would no doubt be nuclear weapons if his generals let him get away with it. And if Iran hesitates, bear in mind that Israel too has a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it on target in Iran which might even be accomplished by way of a “false flag” that would put the blame on the United States rather than on the Jewish State. That would be the ultimate betrayal, but the Israelis are really good at that! And those of you who are somewhat relieved to think that the game ends when Iran is destroyed might pay attention to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett who recently declared that when it comes to doing what it takes to create Greater Israel “Turkey is the new Iran!”

Posted by Philip Giraldi on May 11 2026 . Filed under CNI Authors, Commentary & Analysis . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.