Cartoon by Nick Anderson
a cento of public quotes from President Donald Trump in roughly chronological order
"The United States military, together with the wonderful Israeli partners,
continues to totally demolish the enemy far ahead of schedule
and at levels that people have never seen before.
Well, I think we've accomplished more in one week
than anyone thought possible. We're winning the war by a lot.
We've decimated their whole evil empire.
It'll continue, I'm sure, for a little while.
Let me tell you, we've won.
You know, you never like to say too early you won.
We won. We won the bet. In the first hour, it was over.
It's an excursion that will keep us out of war.
The war is very complete, pretty much.
If you look, they have nothing left.
There's nothing left in a military sense.
We've essentially defeated Iran.
Uh, I guess they can have a little bit of fight back, but not much.
Not much.
We'll be leaving in pretty much the very near future.
Iran is close to demolished. The only thing is the strait.
We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down.
We're doing a five-day period. We'll see how that goes.
And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this.
Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
Iran is begging to work out a deal.
I don't know if we'll be able to do that.
I don't know if we're willing to do that.
I think we'll make a deal with them.
Pretty sure. But it's possible we won't.
We are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly.
We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.
We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.
MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT.
Time is running out—48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them.
Glory be to GOD!
Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell.
JUST WATCH!
Praise be to Allah.
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.
We're going to hit them very hard tonight.
We're going to hit them hard tomorrow.
We're going to hit them really hard the night after.
Next week gets really bad for them
because next week comes the power plants,
next week comes the bridges.
We're going to knock out all their power plants.
We're going to knock out all their bridges
unless they get to the table and negotiate.
The war in Iran is going along swimmingly.
We can do whatever we want.
And it should be, it should be ending pretty soon.
It was perfect. I mean it's perfect.
The Strait of Hormuz is completely open and ready for business and full passage.
We are winning big in Iran,
and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly."
I was the only president in modern history who did not have any new wars.
I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending war.
Ed Gold has three chapbooks including Sundown (2023) and Loveship (2025) from Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Think, In These Times, Passager, Kakalak, and others. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with my wife Amy and dog Edie, and he coordinates the Skylark poetry contest for SC high school students. Ed is lucky to be working with Richard Garcia and the Long Table Poets.
