By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
As it happens, Monday was another big day of note: the
60-day deadline for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran.
You know, the one that was supposed to buy us a window to tidily resolve that whole
“self-inflicted quagmire in the Middle East” thing that Trump swore he’d avoid
yet somehow managed to stumble into — again. To mark the occasion (and with no
deal in sight), Trump idly responded by threatening to bomb Oman, a third party guilty primarily of being located
across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. Then he went back to grumbling about Fox News’ coverage of his “Military
Complex/Ballroom site.”
Don’t worry, Trump won’t bomb Oman. He won’t do much of
anything except whine on Truth Social about how strong he is. Because, in
truth, Trump is a patsy, a bad businessman; an easily duped stooge currently
being fleeced by Persians far more sophisticated about geopolitical realities
than he is, with the patience to match. As I have only occasionally pointed out
in these pages since late February — because nobody wants to read it and I
don’t want to write it — the Iran war is an episode of modern American history
comparable in its shame only to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. . . . and
look at that common denominator.
Only when Trump is gone from office will the Republican
Party feel comfortable acknowledging most of this — which is why Trump’s
presidential legacy will be a fraught one even for those who are currently his
biggest defenders, regardless of what he does or has done domestically. (The
executive orders we cheered will be repealed on Day One of the next Democratic
administration, alas. The undoing of the tariff regime will follow soon after
that — this I’ll approve of. And as a compromise to please everyone, the
scaffolding will finally come off the façade of the Kennedy Center.)
Americans don’t forgive presidents who lose wars — wars
of arrogant choice, no less. And American history has rarely seen a bigger
military loser than hapless chump Trump. Whoever comes after him (from either
party) will be forced by simple reality to repudiate him — unless he or she
wants to make a case to the voters for the wisdom of handing permanent control
of the Strait of Hormuz to our sworn enemies, which is what the president has
done. (Don’t worry, Donny — surely that peace agreement is just another 60-day
memorandum away.)
I try to cope with all of this — with the unavoidable
disgrace of it all, which we are permitted to wave away by virtue of our
American cultural bubble but will have downstream effects worldwide — by
adopting a Marty
Feldman mindset: It could be worse — it could be November.
And soon it will be.
The GOP Faces Hard Odds in November
It’s time to square up with you, the readers of the
Carnival of Fools, because we need to take at least one of these sleepier weeks
to set the scene for what I anticipate comes next — and best to not delay until
a week before November 3. If the polls are anything to go by, Republicans are
going to get slaughtered nationally, up and down the ballot, on Election Day
this year. Not all of them — I hold out hope in some specific races, such as
Michigan’s Senate contest — but in general and in the aggregate, it’s going to
be a red harvest.
Midterms are almost always a walloping for the party in
power. Now with Trump, we have, for the first time, a president whose every
move seems designed to destroy Republican prospects at a time of populist
unease and outrage. It is only small consolation that his Democratic opponents,
who are busy setting themselves on fire in response to this historic
opportunity, cannot even agree on whether they stand for merely the overthrow
of the president or of the U.S. Constitution and capitalism as well.
The target grows fatter by the day. Trump currently
sports a 39.2–58.4 number in the RealClearPolitics polling averages, for a cool negative 19.2 percent job
approval rating nationwide. In the most recent Michigan polling, he sits at 33 percent
approval. In Wisconsin, it’s 40–58. In Texas — good ol’ blood-red Republican Texas! — he’s at
45–54. In Iowa, he’s at 43 percent, with nearly every single member
of the state’s congressional delegation set to be kicked to the curb this November. Things are a tick better,
perhaps, in Ohio — but it hasn’t helped either gubernatorial candidate Vivek
Ramaswamy or incumbent Senator Jon Husted, who have found themselves swimming in far
deeper and more turbulent electoral waters than either would have predicted in
2024.
Maybe all the polls are bad. Maybe there is a hidden
resiliency within the American electorate, one repelled by the cultural
impulses of the left. Maybe voters will simply refuse en masse to ratify the
Democratic Party even as they reject Trump, because people as demented as the
Democrats must be denied power on first principles alone. (It reminds me of my
father’s reason for voting Republican since 1994: “It’s not even that I want
them to win so much as I want to see Democrats lose.”) Good luck — and I
am being both cynical and incomparably sincere when I say that.
Trump is certainly depending on this slim reed of hope —
and history offers a weird sort of precedent for this outcome: In the 2022
midterms, the out-party (GOP) underperformed in House as well as Senate races
because the party holding the White House (the Democrats) successfully scared
enough swing voters off the fence and onto their side. Now, those with a keen
eye for history may spot the problem with using that playbook in 2026. But
we’ll find out on the other side, whether we want to or not.
What happens when you toss something as sharply cut and
crafted as a ballroom chandelier out of something as high as the Skydeck of the
Sears Tower? Nothing — at first. In fact, the glass almost looks graceful as it
plummets through the air, reaching terminal velocity as it spirals ever
downward to the ground. In those moments, it remains beautiful, intact, and
unspoiled. Until it hits the ground — and those below it.
But worry not. After this is all over, someone else is
going to come and clean it up, born and raised for the job. Someone always does.
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