The Reflexive Absolution of Trump

A failed Iran gambit, fresh domestic corruption, and the ongoing transformation of every Trump aberration into something his movement feels obliged to defend

Good morning! Welcome to Sunday’s edition of America’s ongoing experiment in whether chest-thumping can substitute for strategy, governance, or basic adult competence. Over the weekend, the Trump administration managed to turn a delicate cease-fire window into a showcase for exactly the kind of foreign-policy malpractice that has become its trademark. JD Vance went to Islamabad for 21 hours of talks with Iran and came home empty-handed, announcing that the United States had made its “final and best offer” and that Iran had refused to accept American terms. The phrase “final and best offer” is doing a lot of work there. It really means Trumpworld once again mistook ultimatums for diplomacy and swagger for leverage.

The more details that emerge, the worse Vance looks. Al Jazeera’s reporting made clear the U.S. position was not merely tough but irrationally maximalist, with Vance demanding an “affirmative commitment” that Iran would never seek a nuclear weapon and never seek the tools that could let it quickly achieve one, “for the long term.” That is not really an arms-control framework so much as Washington announcing that it reserves the right to define the permanent outer boundary of another country’s sovereignty. It is a demand you make when you are less interested in reaching an agreement than in blaming the other side for not surrendering on command. The same reporting also underscored the White House’s chronic incoherence. As Al Jazeera noted, Trump had already flip-flopped on the Strait of Hormuz, at one point saying it was of no real interest to the United States and other countries should handle it themselves, then later declaring it central to U.S. demands and saying there could be no negotiations unless it was reopened. He was similarly slippery on the purpose of the talks themselves: while Vance was in Pakistan insisting the administration needed a long-term Iranian commitment on nuclear capability, Trump was simultaneously signaling that whether or not there was a deal “makes no difference” because the U.S. had already “won.” The familiar Trumpian pattern of holding several incompatible positions at once, depending on which audience, mood, or social media post happens to be in front of him.

That incoherence hardened into outright danger in the latest New York Times live updates, which reported that after the talks failed to produce an immediate deal, Trump started threatening a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The Times noted the obvious point that a blockade is widely considered an act of war, which means the administration’s sequence here was: fail at diplomacy, then menace the region with escalation, then expect everyone else to treat this as proof of strength rather than evidence of a governing philosophy best described as “angry guy at the end of the bar.” Iran appeared to leave the door open to further diplomacy before the April 21 cease-fire deadline. Once again, the supposedly serious men of Trumpworld managed to make themselves look like the least serious people in the room.

All of this becomes even more dramatic, and a little more ridiculous, if the credible reporting about U.S. munitions strain is correct. There is now enough serious reporting to suggest that while the United States is not “out of weapons,” it is under real pressure in several high-end categories, including long-range strike missiles and advanced air- and missile-defense interceptors. Reporting has pointed in particular to strain around systems like JASSM-ER, Patriot/PAC-3 interceptors, THAAD interceptors, and other precision weapons that are not easily or quickly replaced. That makes the administration’s earlier macho claims about bottomless American firepower look less like confidence and more like poker. Threatening wider escalation is one thing when you have comfortable reserves, a deep bench of ready munitions, and an industrial base that can replenish losses without breaking a sweat. It looks very different when reports are already circulating that the stockpiles most relevant to a modern regional war are being chewed through faster than they can be comfortably replaced.

It is not simply that shortages are embarrassing or that they expose the emptiness of all the “unlimited strength” rhetoric. It is that every missile burned through in the Gulf is a missile unavailable for some other contingency, whether that means deterring China in the Pacific, sustaining aid commitments in Europe, protecting bases and ships elsewhere in the Middle East, or simply maintaining the kind of credible reserve that keeps adversaries from testing American weakness in the first place. A country can still be militarily formidable and yet become strategically exposed if it starts treating finite inventories as props in a political performance. Awkwardly, empire, like everything else, runs on inventory, production lines, shipping schedules, and replacement rates.

The most damning contrast, though, is historical. A Crisis Group expert pointed out that the 2015 nuclear agreement Trump blew up took two and a half years of arduous negotiations, with political will on both sides, and professional diplomats working line by line to reach a deal focused on the nuclear file alone. That was before the additional complications of missiles, proxies, frozen assets, Hormuz, and the ocean of mistrust created by Trump’s own behavior. To imagine that JD Vance could swagger into Pakistan and sort out a far more complicated crisis in 21 hours is not just naïve, but is the kind of delusion that only thrives in a political culture where ignorance is mistaken for authenticity and amateurism is marketed as strength. Trump already destroyed the painstaking diplomatic architecture that existed when he pulled out of the 2015 agreement. Now his administration is trying to brute-force a much harder negotiation with less trust, less credibility, and a supporting cast that appears to have been assembled by opening a bag labeled “guys who think real estate makes them Kissinger.”

That impression is not helped by the fact Vance was flanked pt by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, which is not exactly a tableau that inspires confidence in the gravitas of the mission. Nothing says “trust our geopolitical judgment” quite like surrounding a failed negotiation with two of Trumpworld’s most overrated avatars of inherited influence and billionaire pomposity. When even the friendliest interpretation is that these are the people trying to navigate one of the world’s most combustible strategic flashpoints, it becomes increasingly hard not to conclude that Trump foreign policy is what happens when a group project is assigned to the least prepared boys in the seminar, each of whom is certain he should be in charge.

If there was any moral clarity to be found amid this mess, it from Rome. Pope Leo condemned the “delusion of omnipotence,” rejected the use of God to sanctify violence, and called on leaders to stop choosing the table of rearmament over the table of dialogue. In a few sentences he managed to sound more serious, humane, and strategically coherent than the entire Trump administration has sounded in weeks. While Vance flew home with no agreement and Trump lurked online threatening blockade theater, the Pope offered what sounded like actual civilization: less bombast, less worship of power, less idolatry of force, and more recognition that real strength serves life instead of staging death as spectacle.

Which brings me to a term I think we need to start using more openly: Trump Devotional Syndrome. For years, MAGA has tried to throw around “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as though the irrational people are the ones who notice his lies, corruption, cruelty, ignorance, or instability and respond accordingly. What we are actually watching is Trump Devotional Syndrome: a condition in which devotees respond to Trump’s conduct by excusing it, glorifying it, and reshaping reality around it. This is a man who is a convicted felon, whose charitable foundation was shut down for misuse of funds, who has long been shadowed by his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and who has faced numerous accusations of sexual assault, including the civil case in which E. Jean Carroll proved he sexually abused her and defamed her. None of that dislodges the devotion. Instead, every disgrace is recast as persecution, every humiliation as proof of courage, every corruption as just another sign that the leader is above ordinary judgment. The syndrome is that millions of people have conditioned themselves to treat moral depravity, criminality, and public failure as things to be rationalized, sanctified, and absorbed into the mythology.

If anyone wants to see where that kind of devotional politics leads when it becomes a national model, look at Hungary. The Financial Times published a devastating assessment of Viktor Orbán’s economic record, noting that Orbánomics has centralized power, undermined independent institutions, fueled corruption, weakened public services, driven some of the worst inflation in the European Union, and left Hungary poorer, less productive, and demographically weaker. The global right loves Orbán because he wraps decay in nationalist aesthetics. He gives them the vibe of dominance while delivering the reality of stagnation. That is the heart of Trump Devotional Syndrome: the damage is obvious, but the faithful keep calling it renewal.

At home, the domestic side of the story remains exactly as rotten as you would expect. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has repeatedly joked, and perhaps not entirely joked, about issuing mass pardons to administration officials before leaving office, including quipping that he would pardon everyone who had come within “200 feet of the Oval.” The dark comedy of that image is real, but the darker truth is even more revealing. Trump increasingly treats the pardon power not as an instrument of mercy or justice but as a form of advance indemnity for loyalists willing to carry out his agenda and absorb the legal consequences. Stay close, obedient, break what needs breaking, because the boss will take care of you later. Mob-law with a presidential seal on top.

That same authoritarian instinct shows up in the fight over Section 702, a part of U.S. surveillance law that lets intelligence agencies collect the emails, texts, and other communications of foreigners overseas without a warrant, often directly from American tech and communications companies. The government insists the target is foreign intelligence, but the problem is that Americans’ communications can get swept up in the process too, and officials can then search that data later. That is why civil-liberties advocates have long warned that Section 702 creates a back door to warrantless surveillance of Americans. Now The Washington Post reports that the White House wants Congress to rubber-stamp an 18-month extension of this already controversial authority even as a recent classified court ruling reportedly raised new concerns about how the program handles Americans’ data. Trump is demanding more spying power at the exact moment oversight is suggesting the safeguards may not be nearly as solid as advertised. The sales pitch is that only the paranoid, unserious, or disloyal would object. But what keeps happening in this country is that the people asking for extraordinary power are also the people least interested in restraint, transparency, or constitutional modesty. Funny how that works.

So that is the picture this Sunday morning. Abroad, Trumpworld is trying to substitute ultimatums, blockade threats, and mediocre-man confidence for serious diplomacy, all while acting as though the painstaking agreement Trump himself wrecked should somehow be reproducible in a long weekend by Vance, Kushner, and Witkoff. At home, the administration continues to normalize impunity, pre-negotiate absolution for loyalists, and press for broader surveillance authority despite fresh warning signs of abuse. Looming over all of it is the deeper pathology: Trump Devotional Syndrome: the compulsive excuse-making that turns Trump’s aberrant behavior into proof of genius.

The real story is that Trump is a vain, impulsive, deeply unserious man whose greatest political achievement has been convincing millions of people that his every weakness is secretly a kind of dark political alchemy. As the country and the world keep relearning, there is nothing more dangerous than a cult that mistakes failure for revelation.