First Draft: Donald Trump, Warmonger-in-Chief
The president is bombing more and more civilian targets in Iran while preparing to unveil a new $1.5 trillion war budget, funded by cuts to US healthcare. He also can't stop firing... women.
On this day in 1948, President Harry Truman formally created the Marshall Plan, providing aid to European Cold War allies. In a move the current president might question, Truman kept his name off the plan, instead using bipartisan respect for Secretary of State George Marshall to smooth its passage through Congress.
Good morning, Mehdi here. Thank goodness it’s Friday? Normally, yes. Normally, you can relax a bit at the end of the week. But during this war, Fridays bring an ominous feeling to all of us here at Team Zeteo. Because the weekends, with markets closed, are when Trump likes to escalate. Will this be the weekend, the long weekend, that Trump decides to send ground forces into what could become a “bloodbath” for US troops? We’ll be watching.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ warmonger Trump picks the military-industrial complex over his own working-class base; women don’t seem to last long in the Trump administration; Tiger Woods calls Trump from the scene of his DUI car crash; and Hamas refuses to disarm until Israel withdraws its forces from Gaza.
Warfare Not Day Care, Says Donald
Do you remember when private citizen Donald Trump and then 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump pretended to be anti-war? When he said US wars in the Middle East had “bled our country dry,” and railed against “wasting lives and money” overseas? When he repeatedly insisted that those billions should be used at home to “rebuild the USA”?
Today, President Donald Trump is spending billions of dollars every single day on his own illegal and catastrophic war of choice in the Middle East. One online tracker puts the direct cost of his Iran war at almost $40 billion in less than 40 days. The Trump administration is already seeking more than $200 billion in additional funding from Congress for the Department of Defense, to pay for the war and to restock munitions.
But that’s not all. Later today, the president of the United States will unveil his 2027 White House budget, which is expected to feature a massive and unprecedented escalation in defense spending across the board.
The expected 50% jump in Department of Defense spending, from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, would mean the US would be spending roughly three times as much on defense as all of the European members of NATO combined. It would be the biggest increase in US defense spending since the Korean War and would exceed the biggest year-on-year increases in Pentagon expenditures under Republican hawks like Ronald Reagan (around 20% in 1983) and George W Bush (around 15% in 2003).
But wait… there’s more.