Trump's Fmr. Lawyer Robert Barnes says he's no longer fighting Iran to achieve a strategic objective; Trump's fighting to force Tehran to kneel, and he may destroy MAGA trying.
He says Trump watched the enormous crowds turn out for Khamenei's funeral and became personally agitated by it.
He had convinced himself Iran's leadership was hated, that the regime was weak, and that a little more pressure would finally make the Iranian people turn on it.
Instead, millions came into the streets, and Robert says Trump took it almost as a personal insult.
And from there, the strategy became brutally simple: Make Iran cower.
Trump tried to reopen the Strait of Hormuz's Omani shipping lane.
Iran had repeatedly warned it would attack vessels using it before the dispute was resolved.
Trump apparently convinced himself they wouldn't, then Iran did exactly what it said it would do.
Trump became enraged and hit back, Iran kept fighting, Trump escalated again, but Iran still didn't capitulate, so Trump decided to hit harder.
Robert says this has been the same failed theory of victory for months.
The problem is virtually everyone around Trump who understands Iran has reportedly told him the same thing, but he ignored them.
Robert says Trump can now imagine only two outcomes: Iran cowers before him, or America conquers Iran.
That's why compromise keeps collapsing.
But while Trump waits for Iran to break, something else is breaking instead: MAGA.
Robert says the older Fox News Republican base is still with Trump, but the younger, independent, podcast-driven, anti-war wing of MAGA is increasingly getting off the train.
He says many of them briefly came back after the MOU, then he restarted the war.
Robert calls it a "nightmare version of Groundhog Day."
The same bombing, the same promises that Iran is days from capitulation, the same excuses.
And he thinks the political consequences could be catastrophic.
@barnes_law
