General Andrew Jackson, America’s seventh president, liked to curse. But his bad language was only revealed at his 1845 funeral, when his wife’s African grey parrot Poll unleashed a torrent of cuss words on the shocked congregation.
The Watergate tapes were sprinkled with choice curses from Richard Nixon. (No doubt he saved a special expletive for his resignation.)
LBJ famously consulted with his Cabinet while on the toilet with the door left open. “I do know the difference between chicken s–t and chicken salad,” was one of his favorite remarks.
American leaders weren’t alone in using the bathroom as an office. Winston Churchill once received a call from the U.K.’s Lord Privy Seal while indisposed and shouted out to his secretary: “Tell him I can only deal with one s–t at a time.”
None of this bad language was for public consumption. Even in 2010, when Joe Biden was heard by TV viewers saying Barack Obama’s health bill was a “big f—–g deal,” it was only because he had inadvertently been caught out by a hot mic.
But when Donald Trump dropped the F-bomb in a fit of frustration on Tuesday, he had to have known it would be the curse word heard around the world.
There was real anger as the president leaned into reporters and told them that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the f–k they’re doing.”
In an era when television has cast off the once omnipotent censors, it is ridiculous to suggest that many people would be terribly shocked by the word. It’s not unusual to hear the F-word in a streaming network show. Just not from the President of the United States.
Trump’s profanity may, though, offer an insight into the president’s mindset just hours after he announced that he’d brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. The forever war predicted by his wavering MAGA friends was over, and the Nobel Peace Prize was beckoning.
Even some of Trump’s biggest critics were conceding that the triple strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities may achieve in a couple of days what his Oval Office predecessors had been trying for decades to achieve.
But by then, Trump would have learned the military intelligence that was made public later in the day. The strikes had not destroyed the three nuclear sites, and Iran’s nuclear program had only been set back by months. At least, that was the quick, first-look assessment.
Sources told CNN, The New York Times, and other outlets that the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency’s early opinion was that Iran’s uranium stockpile had survived and its delicate centrifuges were “intact.”
Trump, J.D. Vance, and Pete Hegseth had all insisted over the previous two days that the nuclear targets were “obliterated.”
“I think it’s been completely demolished,” Trump said on Tuesday morning. “Those pilots hit their targets. Those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit.”
“Based on everything we have seen—and I’ve seen it all—our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Hegseth, who accompanied Trump to Tuesday’s NATO meeting, added in a statement. “Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly. The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission,”
Karoline Leavitt, doubling down as ever, reacted to the reports by insisting: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.
“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
But saying a lie loudly and repeatedly doesn’t make it true. Nor does attacking the Defense Department leaker.
At the very least, there is room for doubt. Any other president would concede that. But Trump doesn’t think it is the media’s role to question him.
He may well have had some sharp words for his vice president. Vance was not-so-quick to claim that Iran’s uranium had been destroyed. He even told ABC News on Sunday that it was something America might want to talk to the Iranians about.
It did seem strange that the Israelis followed up Saturday’s U.S. bombing mission on Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan with a follow-up attack on Fordo on Monday. If it was already obliterated, what was the point?
The only answer I can come up with is that it was to further muddy the waters. With chemical and radiological contamination widespread across the damaged sites, full verification of the effectiveness of the bombings will be impossible for months, if not years.
It now seems clear that Tehran moved its 880 pounds of 60 percent uranium well before the attacks. Sixteen trucks, easily enough to transport uranium to construct 10 atomic bombs, were seen parked near an entrance to the mountain nuclear sites in the days before the strikes.
The stockpile was stored in 16 cylinders each about the size of a scuba tank.
Only fools would not have moved the material. Too many people knew where it was. Before Israel’s attacks began, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors checked at least one site a day to ensure the uranium was all accounted for and not being carved out for use in making weapons.
Experts are convinced that after the Israeli missile strikes began on June 13, the bomb-making equipment, including enrichment technology, was moved to an unknown location.
With all the talk of America’s daring “Operation Midnight Hammer,” what was the point of risking American B-2 pilots’ lives dropping 15-ton GBU-57 bunker buster bombs when the targets were long gone?
It’s either a failing of intelligence or strategy.
Laura Holgate, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it is “anyone’s guess” where the uranium is being kept.
“You can’t bomb knowledge,” she told CNN. “The people and the supply chain still exist.”
To be usable for a nuclear weapon, uranium requires 90 percent enrichment. With the correct conditions and equipment, 60 percent uranium could be brought up to bomb-grade in less than a week.
Holgate said Iran has a choice to “jump off the cliff” and try for a nuclear weapon or to step back and continue diplomatic efforts.
It may still turn out that Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been nullified, as the president claims. But what is certain is that the delicate framework that allowed the West to keep tabs on Iran is broken. Probably irretrievably.
Tehran’s tit-for-tat attack on the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Monday, and Trump’s self-professed ceasefire, allowed him to claim victory. No doubt, he was taking a victory lap in the Netherlands, where he was meeting with other members of the NATO alliance.
But we are running blind now with Iran.
Tehran’s Atomic Energy Agency issued a statement as Trump landed in Amsterdam, saying: “Iran’s nuclear program will resume without interruption, and we are ready to restart enrichment—our program will not stop.”
Maybe they are bluffing. We don’t know, and there is no way of finding out.
George W. Bush learned, to his detriment, that declaring a “Mission Accomplished” too soon will come back to bite you. The years that followed his victory speech on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, were the deadliest in the Iraq War, which left 4,500 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead.
Trump will claim he has tamed the bear.
But he may have just poked it.
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