This post replaces today’s newsletter, The Narativ.
Denver’s series about the Trump kleptocracy can be found here.
The White House accidentally leaked video of President Trump speaking at an Easter prayer breakfast with evangelical leaders yesterday. The recording was briefly available before being pulled. What it reveals is a president who admits his war aim in Iran is oil theft, dehumanizes an entire immigrant community with fabricated statistics, repeats debunked lies about Olympic athletes, brags about economic numbers his own war destroyed, and threatens to pull the United States out of NATO — all while pastors pray over him and compare him to Jesus Christ.
“His off-camera persona is worse,” said former Congressman Denver Riggleman, a Republican who served in the 116th Congress and attended private meetings with Trump at the White House. “I was in private speeches with the National Republican Congressional Committee. And if you think he lacks nuance or any type of class publicly, privately, it’s even worse.”
“He sounds like the drunk guy at a party,” Riggleman said. “Or the guy at the end of a party at about 1:30 in the morning that combined cocaine and alcohol and then wants to philosophize on the meaning of life.”
This is what Trump said when he thought the cameras were off.
“I’d Prefer Just to Take the Oil”
The most consequential moment comes roughly halfway through. Trump, discussing the ongoing war in Iran — now in its fifth week with no end date — says plainly: “I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily. I would prefer that. But people in the country sort of say, just win. Come home.” He’s talking about Kharg Island, a 22-square-kilometer island that processes 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, roughly 1.5 million barrels a day. Seizing it would require ground troops. The Washington Post has reported that military experts say it would risk American lives and may not end the war.
Trump’s only stated reason for not doing it is that Americans lack “the patience.” Not that it would be illegal under international law. Not that it would constitute theft of a sovereign nation’s resources. Just that voters wouldn’t tolerate it. In the same breath, he claims the United States now controls “59 percent of the oil in the world.” The actual figure is approximately 12.8 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Public sentiment and public backlash against this war has forced him to reconsider his plans to try and take Kharg Island. He didn’t tell the nation that in his primetime address last night, but he told this crowd. As Riggleman put it: “He has no consistent message because there was never an exit plan for Iran to begin with. He did this really on hubris.”
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