Even by 2026 standards, the level of cognitive dissonance Donald Trump employs on a daily basis is truly astounding. While protests have erupted across the United States following the tragic killing of Renee Nicole Good — a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three gunned down by an ICE agent while driving home after dropping her kid off at school — the president has been busy repeatedly going after Iran’s leadership for the way they’re handling the ongoing unrest in the Middle Eastern country.
Let’s start with the Iran situation, which has Trump dusting off his greatest hits from the foreign policy blunder collection. Protests have been raging across Iran since late December, initially sparked by anger over the country’s ailing economy and the value of the Iranian rial plummeting before morphing into what many are calling the most significant challenge to the local government in years. And when you have Trump as your “president of peace,” the man is never too busy—or too self-aware—for saber-rattling.
On Friday, the president took to his Truth Social page to declare: “I tell the Iranian leaders: You better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting, too.” He warned that if Iran “kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
No wonder the man changed the name of the U.S. Department of Defense to the Department of War. Say what you will about the MAGA administration, but at least they’re honest about their strong-arm tactics. Too honest, perhaps.
But then, that’s precisely the problem. You probably don’t need a recap of everything that happened on January 7, when an ICE agent fatally shot an American citizen in the head. The Department of Homeland Security initially characterized it as a “vehicle ramming” incident, but witnesses described seeing the victim, Renee Good, simply trying to flee officers. And now, video footage is undeniably backing up what Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey already suspected, that the federal government’s self-defense story is complete fiction.
Now, instead of addressing the ICE situation, which has already escalated to a full-blown crisis with at least 16 shooting incidents resulting in several deaths and injuries since Trump’s second term began, plus another shooting in Portland just hours after Good’s death, what officials are referring to as a “pattern of violence,” (per NPR) the president decided to spend his weekend lecturing Iran about human rights.
“Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!” he wrote on Truth Social this Saturday, signalling that the U.S. military’s interventionist policies in the Middle East are making a comeback, despite Trump essentially building his campaign on the idea that Bush and Obama destroyed American lives with similar tactics.
The protests in Iran have already resulted in the deaths of dozens (via The NY Times) and maybe even hundreds of Iranians, but spurring people to more violence has never been too difficult from the safe confines of the White House. Besides, you can’t honestly position yourself as the champion of foreign protestors while your own immigration agents are shooting citizens in American cities and blocking doctors from reaching the victims.
Well, apparently you can — but the rest of us are allowed to notice. And we’re noticing.
