The most powerful idiot in history - and he is proud of it

Donald Trump collects awards the way other people collect debt. The FIFA Peace Prize. The “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.” The Nobel Peace Prize trophy from a Venezuelan opposition leader who handed him her own copy because he wanted one so badly. Now he is earning himself a new title - and this one is real: the most powerful idiot in the history of the world.

Columnist David Rothkopf described Trump in exactly those words. One can try to refute it. One will fail.

The proof does not lie in a single mistake. It lies in the consistency with which every mistake becomes a bigger one. The war against Iran has claimed more than 3,000 lives in Iran, more than 1,000 in Lebanon, displaced one million people, killed 13 American soldiers, and destroyed tens of billions of dollars. No strategic objective has been achieved. The regime stands. The uranium is still there. China is supplying, more than just a strong suspicion, missiles. And Iran now has something it did not have before the war - an economic sledgehammer over twenty percent of the world’s oil. America started the war and handed Iran a gift it could never have bought for itself.

George W. Bush started the Iraq war. That, too, was a catastrophe. But Bush consulted experts. He sought international support. When nothing worked, he changed strategy. Trump does none of that. Trump does not consult experts because experts say inconvenient things. Trump does not seek allies because allies demand something in return. And Trump does not change strategy because that would mean admitting he never had one.

Then: Islamabad. The highest direct talks between America and Iran since 1979. Five Americans against sixty Iranian experts. On the American side: JD Vance, with no negotiating experience whatsoever. Steve Witkoff, whose greatest success was a ceasefire in Gaza that immediately turned out not to be one. And Jared Kushner - not a government official, with conflicts of interest that would have removed anyone else from the room, but here he sat anyway. After a single day, everyone packed their bags and flew home. Failed before the coffee got cold.

And Trump? Trump was at a combat sports event in Miami. Ringside. With Marco Rubio - Secretary of State and National Security Advisor - sitting next to him. The man who was supposed to be saving world peace was watching two men punch each other in the face. This is not satire. This is a schedule.

What came next surpasses everything. Iran had blocked the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s response: he blocks the blockade. With an American blockade. A blockade against a blockade, announced by post, without consulting allies, without legal basis, without a plan. Trump like a four-year-old on a playground shouting: “Oh yeah? Then I’ll block your blockade with a double super blockade.” The difference from the four-year-old: the four-year-old does not control a navy.

Twenty percent of the world’s oil flows through that strait. Allies who depend on it will no longer see America as a protector, but as a second obstacle. And if China sends its ships through the blockade - which it will, because it has to - America will face a confrontation for which it has no answer, because no one prepared one.

Earlier, Trump had written on Truth Social: “An entire civilization will die tonight.” Bridges gone, power plants gone, Stone Age. Rothkopf writes that Trump has thereby joined a very small, very dark club - people who openly announced mass killing. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot. The difference between him and all those men: none of them quietly buried their threat of destruction hours later and pretended nothing had happened. Trump did. Apocalypse before lunch. Ceasefire for dessert. And then UFC.

“Donald Trump reveals that he almost renamed the Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of Trump’ but decided against it.”

At the end, Trump publicly considered renaming the Persian Gulf to “Gulf of Trump.” Rothkopf responded with the only counterquestion that matters: the name is already taken. For the large empty space between his ears.

It would be his most honest renaming of all time.