"Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled [sic] all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.”
It’s hard to see this Truth Social post by the president on Tuesday and make sense of, well, anything right now.
Iranian civilians have been protesting in the streets for weeks, in an effort to express their frustration with a bruising economy, an inflation rate greater than 40%, food shortages, and rolling blackouts. In response, the Islamic Republic has opened fire on its own people, killing anywhere from 2,400 to as many as 20,000 people in just two weeks.
The situation is dire — there are reports that doctors and aid groups cannot keep up with the amount of injuries they are seeing, and that the regime will start publicly executing protesters, including 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, whose judicial proceedings were “fast-tracked” in just two days.
Trump is vowing “very strong action” if Iran follows through with those threats to execute Soltani and others, action which could include everything from sanctions to strikes on military installations to cyberattacks.
It’s hard to reconcile this Trump — rescuer of the oppressed, defender of democracy — with the other one who’s simultaneously threatening his own citizens for protesting his immigration policies.
In the wake of an ICE officer shooting and killing an unarmed Minneapolis mother, Trump and his cabinet have been defiant. They’ve largely refused to offer even a modicum of sympathy for Renee Good. Instead, Trump has suggested her “highly disrespectful” attitude may have justified her death. Vice President JD Vance decided immediately that she was to blame. “What I am certain of is that she violated the law,” he said. He called Good, who leaves behind three children, “a deranged leftist who tried to run [the officer] over.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of “an act of domestic terrorism” just hours after her death, despite no one having conducted any investigation of the incident yet.
The administration, furthermore, strategically boxed out Minnesota law enforcement from joining a federal investigation of the shooting, and now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says there’s “currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” of any kind.
The irony of Trump’s pro-democracy message to Iranians and his decidedly despotic message to Americans should be lost on no one, nor should the parallels.
That Iranian leaders are calling their protesters “rioters” and “terrorists” while Trump officials are using the same language against Americans is chilling.
That Iran is jailing and “fast-tracking” the due process of protesters while Trump officials immediately decided the ICE officer who killed Good was innocent, and not even worth investigating, is deeply disturbing.
That Iran is threatening to execute protesters while masked ICE agents in unmarked vehicles have also threatened to kill protesters and have already used deadly force against them, is terrifying. At least one agent was recorded asking a protester, “Did you not learn from what just happened?”
Understandably, Americans are alarmed. And they should be.
According to a new SSRS/CNN poll, Trump’s anti-immigration efforts in Minnesota and elsewhere are not popular.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling immigration.
Fifty-one percent say ICE’s actions are making cities feel less safe, versus just 31% who say more safe.
Forty-seven percent say they are more concerned that the government will go too far in cracking down on protesters versus 37% who say they’re more concerned the protests will get out of control.
Fifty-six percent say the use of force against Renee Good was inappropriate, versus just 26% who say it was appropriate.
While a majority of voters may have been with Trump on the need to lower crime and curtail illegal immigration, it’s hard to imagine any wanting to see our cities militarized to the point where they feel unsafe, where they fear protesting could get them killed, where it’s totally possible they could be rounded up without due process, where there are eerie parallels to what’s happening in Iran, a theocratic dictatorship.
While ICE agents have their proverbial boots on the necks of American citizens, Trump is unironically promising to defend democracy a world away. But it’s hard to maintain the moral high ground and wag your finger at Iran when you’re stomping all over democratic freedoms here at home.
It’s a perplexing and alarming place to be for a country that was once considered a beacon of freedom, a shining city on a hill. And with every threat to American democracy Trump issues, he weakens our nation.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.