Republicans Bend Over Backward to Defend Trump’s Sick Threat on Iran

After Donald Trump escalated his threats against Iran Tuesday by warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Republicans in Congress still came to his defense. 

Despite the fact that many of Trump’s former allies, as well as Democrats, think that he could be alluding to nuclear war or genocide, Republicans like Representative Jodey Arrington are saying, “Thank God we have a commander in chief that is not full of empty rhetoric, because we’ve delayed this inevitability for 50 years.”

“We’d have another North Korea,” the Texas representative told Fox Business only minutes after Trump made his genocidal threat, “save and except for President Trump, who is a man with a bias for action, and a man who presented with the facts that we have imminent threats, today and for our children’s future, is going to act even if it’s against his personal political interests. Thank God for President Trump and for the courage and political will to do what he’s doing.” 

Representative Mike Lawler tried to claim on CNN that Trump wasn’t “really talking about ending a civilization.” 

“He is talking about the energy and civilian infrastructure, that’s what he’s talking about,” Lawler said to CNN’s John Berman, who emphasized that Trump’s message stated “never to be brought back again.”  

“He just means the bridges and the infrastructure?” Berman asked. 

Lawler paused and blinked for a few seconds, before trying to claim that “we’re talking about taking decisive action against Iran’s energy and civilian infrastructure. That is what the president is talking about. He’s not talking about obliterating innocent people.” 

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have not commented, as of this writing, on Trump’s threat of apocalyptic violence, either to reporters or on their social media accounts. As Trump’s arbitrary 8 p.m. E.T. deadline approaches and a U.N. Security Council resolution to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was vetoed, is there any chance of a sensible solution? 

At least one Republican senator is finally speaking out against President Trump’s genocidal threats against Iran. 

“I am hoping and praying that President Trump … [that] this really is bluster. I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure. I do not want to see that,” conservative Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said on an episode of the John Solomon Reports podcast released Monday. “We are not at war with the Iranian people. We are trying to liberate them.” 

While this statement is stronger than that of most congressional Republicans, Johnson’s dreams of liberation have been all but deferred. On Tuesday, Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” 

While former MAGA acolytes like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones have criticized  Trump’s threats—even calling for his removal—Johnson is one of the few Republicans in Congress to voice a similar opinion. Other than him, Rand Paul has been the only Republican senator to try to rein in Trump’s war.

In fact, many Republicans spent their Tuesday morning doing incredibly unconvincing damage control.

“The new threat from the president is that a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. You say the president doesn’t want to do it. Does being reluctant to end a civilization make it OK?” CNN’s John Berman asked GOP representative and staunch Israel supporter Mike Lawler on Tuesday.

“I don’t think we’re talking about ending a civilization, the issue—”

“Do you say you don’t believe the president’s threat?” the host said, interrupting Lawler. 

“It is their energy infrastructure and their civilian infrastructure, including roads and bridges. That will cripple the Iranian regime and certainly their economy,” Lawler said, deflecting. “It is not something we want to do.… We are not at war with Iranian people, we want them to be free from this oppression and tyranny that they have lived under for 47 years. But if the president has to take necessary action to strike their energy and infrastructure, that is going to cripple the regime. 

“You don’t take him at his word that he will end a whole civilization?” 

“He is talking about the energy and civilian infrastructure,” Lawler replied.

“He said ‘never to be brought back again.’ He just means the bridges and the infrastructure?” 

“Again John, we’re talking about taking decision action against Iran’s energy and civilian infrastructure. That is what the president is talking about. He’s not talking about obliterating innocent people.” 

This is sad and pathetic. We’re watching politicians trying to rationalize the president’s genocidal intent by arguing full-throatedly that he doesn’t actually mean it when he says, “A whole civilization will die tonight.” Trump has already bombed multiple civilian targets beyond bridges, including a school full of girls on the first day of the war. Why would we put anything past him at this point?

Once a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson has fully turned against him over the war in Iran, going as far as to liken Trump to the Antichrist on his eponymous podcast.

“Could there be a spiritual component to this?” Carlson said on The Tucker Carlson Show on Monday. “Is it just a conventional escalation ladder in a badly thought out war … [or] could it be something bigger? Is it possible what you’re watching is a very stealthy yet incredibly effective attack on what, from a Christian perspective, is the true faith: belief in Jesus?”

Carlson went on: “Is it possible that the president sees this in bigger terms? Sees this as the fulfillment of something? An elevation of some higher office beyond president of the United States?”

Trump responded in a typically petulant manner to Carlson’s comments on Tuesday morning. “Tucker’s a low IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” he told the New York Post’s Caitlin Doornbos. “He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him. I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”

Carlson, a former Fox News host, aggressively campaigned for Trump during both of his winning presidential bids; Trump even told reporters in 2024 that he was considering picking Carlson as his vice president. But since the president’s reelection, Carlson has soured on Trump on issues such as the Epstein files and, in particular, the war on Iran.

On Easter Sunday, Carlson described Trump’s expletive-laden threat towards Iran’s civilian infrastructure as “vile on every level.” In his Monday podcast, he also criticized the president’s frequent disparaging of Islam: “No president should mock Islam. That’s not your job. This is not a theocracy. We don’t go to war with other theocracies to find out which one is more effective. We are not a theocracy, and God willing, we never will be.”

With millions listening to his show each week, Carlson is undoubtedly the most popular figure within a Christian isolationist sect popular with young, online Republicans, and that is increasingly unhappy with the president.

In fostering this crowd, Carlson has cozied up to white nationalists and Holocaust deniers such as Nick Fuentes and James Fishback. This has led to bipartisan criticism (though not, notably, from Trump himself, who apparently prefers to bash Carlson only when he feels personally slighted). Some expect Carlson to launch a presidential campaign himself in 2028, and he hasn’t yet ruled it out.

The willing publicization of some of the more sensitive information pertaining to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom has caused federal prosecutors to wonder if he’s inserting himself into the project’s legal filings.

Former assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner spoke at length about the issue on his podcast Justice Matters Monday, arguing that certain details spelled out in the filings—such as the national security additions intended to be built beneath the 90,000-square-foot dance hall—were so naïvely included that he wondered if Trump hadn’t picked up his “beloved Sharpie” to edit the documents himself before they were submitted to the judge.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s kind of curious that this public court filing is announcing not just to the American people, but to the world, including our enemies, exactly what kind of ‘top secret facilities’ this ballroom will contain,” Kirschner said.

“I find it impossible to believe that a legitimate, self-respecting Department of Justice attorney authored this garbage,” he continued. “It’s embarrassing. It’s an insult to the court. And more importantly, it’s an insult to the American people because that’s whose interests DOJ attorneys are supposed to represent.”

The filings make mention of planned bomb shelters, a hospital, a medical area, protective partitioning, and “top secret” military installations. They also clarify some of the building materials, which include missile-resistant steel columns, drone-proof roofing materials, and bullet-, ballistic-, and blast-proof glass.

The court filing is also riddled with typos and unconventional grammar choices, more akin to the president’s litany of social media posts than a judicial filing submitted by the DOJ. The first page is doused in exclamation points, improper capitalization, misplaced parentheticals, redundant synonyms for emphasis, rhetorical flourishes, and run-on sentences.

Trump’s idea to build a ballroom on the White House grounds larger than the executive estate itself has been riddled with problems and colored by lies since he first announced the project in July. Initially, Trump pledged that the development would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing.

Months later, his construction teams completely razed the FDR-era extension, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission or the express permission of Congress, both of which were conveniently unavailable at the time due to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The ballroom’s estimated price tag has been similarly difficult to nail down. Trump originally claimed that the project would cost $200 million, but a decision to tack on extra construction to the site doubled its expenses to $400 million. The new building will have 40-foot ceilings, be able to accommodate up to 1,000 seated guests, and would constitute 22,000 square feet of the 90,000-square-foot development, according to projections offered by East Wing ballroom architect Shalom Baranes in January.

New Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin wants to punish “sanctuary cities” for refusing to cooperate with Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda by stripping them of customs and immigration services.

Mullin floated the idea in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier Monday night, saying that he believes “sanctuary cities is not lawful.”

“Some of these cities have international airports. If they’re a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city? Seriously, if they’re a sanctuary city, and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out the airport, they’re not going to enforce immigration policy?” Mullin said.

“So, you’re saying that big cities that are sanctuary cities that have a big airport, they might lose their customs?” Baier replied.

“Well, I’m saying we’re gonna have to start prioritizing things at some point,” Mullin said, blaming Democrats for shutting down Customs and Border Protection. “Who processes those individuals when they walk off the plane? I’m going to have to be forced to make hard decisions. Who’s willing to work with us and partner with us?”

Such a move would be catastrophic for the busiest airports in the U.S., such as those in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, and cause major disruptions in international travel. Several commentators on social media pointed out that this could tank the economy and would be catastrophic ahead of the World Cup this summer.

Removing customs processing from cities deemed hostile to Trump’s agenda would likely be met with immediate lawsuits and an outcry from most Americans, not just over the economic impact but also because people who don’t live near these airports often depend on them for connecting flights. If the security lines are bad at airports now with the partial government shutdown, removing customs processing would only make them exponentially worse. If this is how Mullin’s tenure at DHS is beginning, we’re about to see a whole new level of incompetence from the Trump administration.