Operation Epic Fury and the Politics of Self-Worship

From Melania’s glossy infomercial to Trump’s Keen-tucky firehose, everything in Trumpworld becomes branding first and consequences later, even war.

Good morning! Melania Trump apparently decided that a White House Women’s History Month event was the perfect occasion to remind everyone that the most important woman in the room was, in fact, Melania Trump. She began with the usual polished, weightless first-lady language about women shaping “their children’s character, education, and morals,” communities forming the “voice and vision of our next generation,” and women balancing career and family. Fine. Generic. Harmless enough. Meanwhile, beside her, Trump was already doing that familiar fidgeting, swaying, impatient little side-to-side shuffle of a man forced to endure someone else’s speaking slot before the main event, which in his mind is always himself.

Then her speech took a hard turn into what was essentially a luxury-brand LinkedIn bio delivered in a cathedral voice. At some point, “women are important” gave way to “as a visionary, I know success is not born overnight,” which is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder whether someone accidentally swapped in the keynote from a wellness CEO summit. She informed the audience that she is driven by instinct, laser focus, originality, and solitude, where her “creative mind dances,” because apparently even her inner monologue has a PR team. From there she moved briskly through her résumé: mother, humanitarian, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and then, with all the subtlety of a billboard on the interstate, her “new film,” where she “shaped its creative direction, served as a producer, managed post-production and activated the marketing campaign.”

What should have been a brief ceremonial introduction turned into a deluxe self-branding exercise. She name-checked her ventures in fashion, digital assets, publishing, accessories, skincare, commercial television, and of course filmmaking, sounding less like a first lady than a lifestyle conglomerate preparing to go public. The message to young women was not so much civic engagement or solidarity as: diversify your portfolio, trust your instincts, and never miss a chance to cross-promote.

In a final little flourish of Trumpworld weirdness, the official White House video apparently cut her remarks altogether, which meant her words had to be recovered from another outlet. So even Melania’s glossy infomercial moment got half-erased by the house edit, as though someone in the building decided that two Trump brand monologues in one event might be one too many. In Trumpworld, even the ceremonial praise has to double as product placement, and sometimes not even that survives the final cut.

That made for a fitting prelude to Donald Trump’s appearance in Keen-tucky, where the production values suggested a county fair talent show directed by a casino lounge manager having a mild dissociative episode. Nothing says “man of the people” quite like opening a political speech with a jukebox fever dream, “Bigger Paychecks” banners, and a medley that somehow wandered through “Be My Baby,” “This Is a Man’s World,” “Rich Men North of Richmond,” “God Bless the USA,” and then crash-landed in “YMCA.” It felt like a worker-branded hallucination sponsored by ego and processed cheese.

Then Trump emerged, marinating in applause and self-worship, to inform Keen-tucky that he loves Keen-tucky, won Keen-tucky by a lot, loves Keen-tucky some more, and is perhaps the greatest thing ever to happen to the state besides bourbon and indoor plumbing. He praised the company hosting him as proof that America is roaring back, then immediately turned the whole event into an infomercial for himself: his tax bill, his tariffs, his endorsements, his military, his instincts, his genes, and naturally, his uncle from MIT. Because no Trump speech is complete until family members are drafted, living or dead, into the argument that Donald is, in fact, a very stable super-genius.

The core message was the usual glossy sales pitch: everything is booming, every number is historic, every policy is the greatest ever invented, and every Democrat is a deranged tax goblin personally trying to steal your overtime pay and force you into an electric car that dies in a cornfield 150 miles from the nearest charger. He keeps repeating that workers are finally being respected, which is especially rich coming from a man who talks about working people the way a casino owner talks about the decorative ferns in the lobby.

His “no tax on overtime” pitch got the full televangelist treatment, including the charming aside that workers can bring their extra money home to “those beautiful children or whoever the hell you’re bringing it home to.” So there he was, supposedly championing hardworking families while sounding like your drunk uncle trying to emcee a rib cookoff after three bourbons and a head injury.

Because concentration is not really the star of this show, he ricocheted from warehouse expansion to Obama funeral gossip, to Biden stair jokes, to Gavin Newsom insults, to Iran war boasting, to coal worship, to windmill bird-slaughter mythology. It was less a speech than a leaf blower full of grievance. One minute he was rambling about Obama at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, calling it “like a political hit job,” then swerving into Biden mockery about how he “could never find his way off the platform” and “fell three times walking up” the stairs to Air Force One. Then came the Gavin Newsom detour, where Trump declared that Newsom had admitted he was “mental” and had “a cognitive deficiency,” because apparently this speech was being assembled by pulling topics out of a bingo cage.

At one point he was bragging about military strikes like he was reviewing fireworks, boasting, “We knocked out their navy,” declaring “we’ve won,” and marveling over the fact that he got to choose the name “Epic Fury,” as if launching a war were just another branding exercise. Elsewhere he delivered his usual fossil-fuel poetry, insisting coal must always be called “clean, beautiful coal,” as though carbon emissions were competing for Miss Congeniality. And of course no Trump rant is complete without the renewable-energy fairy tale, so he sneered that windmills “kill them by the thousands” and that “every time it goes around, it loses $25,” which is the kind of sentence that sounds authoritative only if you’ve already suffered a head injury at the county fair.

More telling than the comic-book title, though, was Trump’s explanation for why he acted at all. He said he moved based on what “Steve and Jared and Pete and others” were telling him, even though reporting says congressional staff were told U.S. intelligence did not indicate Iran was preparing an imminent preemptive strike on U.S. interests in the way Trump publicly implied. So yes, it increasingly looks like America may have been dragged into war because Jared had a feeling, Trump liked the vibes, and nobody in the room was strong enough or honest enough to stop him.

Harry Litman has the right frame for the whole thing: this looks like a war without a plan. Senator Chris Murphy emerged from a closed Senate briefing saying the administration’s case was incoherent and the endgame unclear, which tracks with the administration’s constantly shifting public justifications for the conflict. One day the purpose seems to be stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Later, maybe deterrence. Then, perhaps, regime change. Then definitely not regime change. Then maybe just blow up enough missiles, boats, and factories and hope history gets bored and leaves us alone. It’s like improv but with missiles.

The costs are no longer theoretical. The Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil moved last year, has become the obvious choke point everyone warned about before Trump lit the match. The IEA says the conflict has produced a historic disruption in flows through the strait, and Gulf producers have already lost an estimated $15.1 billion in energy revenue as cargoes sit trapped and exports sputter. So while Trump was in Keen-tucky admiring the phrase “Operation Epic Fury” like he had just approved the title of a straight-to-streaming action sequel, actual governments were watching one of the world’s most important energy corridors seize up.

That chaos is also enriching one of the world’s worst actors. The price shock from Hormuz has been handing Russia an estimated $150 million a day in extra oil revenue, and now the administration is reportedly easing pressure on Russian oil shipments to soften the price spike caused by Trump’s own war. James O’Brien captured the absurdity perfectly from across the pond: “Vladimir Putin stands accused of helping Iran attack Donald Trump’s United States while Donald Trump’s United States is relaxing sanctions against Russia to help Vladimir Putin.” The sentence is so ridiculous it sounds invented, but that is where we live now — in the geopolitical equivalent of a crooked carnival mirror.

Europe, notably, is not rallying to Trump’s side so much as scrambling to contain the damage. France and Italy have reportedly opened talks with Tehran to try to secure safe passage through Hormuz and restart shipments, while Britain focuses on supply continuity rather than joining the war effort. Europe is not exactly embracing Iran, but it is plainly trying to manage around Trump’s disaster rather than sign up for it. That is what strategic isolation looks like: your allies are not joining your campaign, they are quietly building alternate routes around your recklessness.

When regional wars spread, they do not spread politely. Four more U.S. service members are now confirmed dead after a KC-135 tanker crashed in western Iraq, according to CENTCOM, with the cause under investigation. President Macron has also confirmed that a French soldier, Chief Warrant Officer Arnaud Frion, was killed in Iraq and several other French soldiers were wounded. So the human bill is now landing not only on the people trapped under the bombs, but on allied soldiers who never signed up to participate in Trump’s vanity-branded war. When your war starts killing allied troops who were not there to fight it, you see how contagious and kakistrophic this war really is.

Heather Cox Richardson offered another angle worth watching: the leaks. What matters is not only what they say, but that they are happening at all. Military sources have reportedly corrected casualty counts upward. White House aides have leaked that they are worried about the direction of the war and either cannot get Trump to listen or do not dare confront him directly. In a disciplined administration, people do not usually run to reporters to mutter versions of “they’re lying” or “this is going badly” unless something inside the machine is starting to crack. Some of these leakers may be covering their own backs more than serving the public interest, but even that tells you something. There are people inside this administration who clearly know they are riding in a vehicle with no brakes.

Harry Litman also flagged one of those stories that is petty right up until it becomes sinister: the Pentagon reportedly barring photographers after unflattering images of Pete Hegseth were published, leaving the public increasingly dependent on officially produced Defense Department photos instead. Which is perfect, really. A war secretary who cannot handle a bad angle is now surrounded by a communications apparatus trying to airbrush reality in real time.

The people who sold this war as a quick display of American muscle are discovering that munitions are not magic and budgets are not vibes. The Financial Times reports the U.S. has already burned through what sources describe as years’ worth of critical munitions, including Tomahawks, while the Pentagon prepares a supplemental funding request that could reach $50 billion. Tomahawks cost about $3.6 million each. Patriot and THAAD rounds cost millions more. Iran, by contrast, can keep throwing much cheaper drones into the fight. As Senator Mark Kelly put it, the math on this does not work. But then again, kakistocracy rarely does math, it does chest-thumping, slogans, and emergency appropriations after the bill arrives.

Max at UNFTR put it in the bluntest possible terms: “We didn’t just launch a war in Iran. We may have pulled the fire alarm on the entire global economy.” And that is exactly the part the chest-thumpers never bother to understand. This is not some neat little patriotic side quest. Hormuz is tied to oil, LNG, petrochemicals, fertilizer, shipping, food prices, and credit markets. Europe is shaky. Asia is exposed. The U.S. is already drowning in debt service. So this administration did not just start another stupid war. It may have kicked the door of the global engine room and tossed in a flare.

Back at home, while Trump is burning through munitions, enraging allies, and improvising foreign policy off the vibes of Jared Kushner and friends, the old DOGE wrecking crew has come shambling back into view to remind everyone that domestic governance has been just as reckless. A Washington Post report described a whistleblower complaint now under investigation by the Social Security inspector general alleging that a former DOGE engineer claimed to possess two of the agency’s most tightly restricted databases, including records covering more than 500 million living and dead Americans, and discussed moving at least some of that data from a thumb drive to his personal computer so he could “sanitize” it for use at his new employer. Another complaint alleges DOGE personnel pushed sensitive Social Security data into the cloud using unsanctioned methods. According to the complaint, the former operative even suggested Trump would pardon him if his actions turned out to be illegal. Which is about as concise a summary of Trumpism as you will ever get: smash the safeguards, loot the state, and assume the boss will take care of you later.

The through-line across all of this is not competence. It is vanity followed by chaos, branding followed by damage, self-worship followed by cleanup. Melania turns Women’s History Month into a glossy bio reel. Trump turns a worker event in Keen-tucky into a three-ring revival meeting about himself. The Pentagon starts policing photographs because the war secretary dislikes his angles. DOGE alumni apparently treat the federal government like a USB buffet. Trump markets a war like a reality-show launch, then effectively admits the case for action came from what “Steve and Jared and Pete and others” were telling him. This administration does not merely want power. It wants staging, lighting, applause, product placement, and a flattering camera shot. Everyone else gets the consequences.

So here we are on Friday the 13th. Andy Borowitz may have summed up the whole grotesque spectacle better than any straight-news analyst. In his satire, Iran retaliates not with missiles but by dropping unredacted Epstein files over the United States beneath a banner reading “Omission Unaccomplished.” That lands because it captures the ugliest suspicion hanging over this war: that beneath all the macho branding, patriotic chest-thumping, and “Epic Fury” nonsense, there is still a panicked need to keep attention away from the files Trump never wants fully opened.