Letters from an American - The Whims of a Single Man

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

March 30, 2026Trump shares images of new White House ballroom, Trump again suggests discussions to end war in Iran are underway but Iran insists it is not engaged in talks with the US, Trump threatens to commit war crimes in Iran, Price of oil rises to $116/barrel, Current crisis shows what a government imagined by Movement Conservatives and beholden to the whims of one man looks like, Congress is out of session until April 13 and Trump is moving to escalate the Iran war, Republicans are considering cuts to health care spending, Insiders are leaking information about administration insiders, Trump’s approval ratings hit new lows. Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

March 30th, 2026. Showing reporters on Air Force One, a series of poster board images of his new ballroom last night, Trump told them, I thought I'd do this now because it's easier. I'm so busy that I don't have time to do this, but I'm fighting wars and other things. But this is very important because this is going to be with us for a long time, and it's going to be, I think it'll be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world. At 726 this morning, about two hours before the stock market opened, Trump's social media account posted,

The United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made, but if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Karg Island, and possibly all desalination plants, which we have purposefully not yet touched.

This will be in retribution for our many soldiers and others that Iran has butchered and killed over the old regime's 47, year reign of terror. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. When he decided to go to war with Iran, Trump apparently fantasized that the operation would look like his strike on Venezuela, in which a fast attack enabled U.S. forces to grab Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, leaving behind Vice President Delci Rodriguez, who appeared willing to work with the Trump administration in power. The initial strikes of Israel and the U.S. on Iran did indeed kill that regime's leadership,

but officials simply replace that leadership from within the regime, making Trump's claim of regime change as imaginary as his claim that the U.S. and Iran have been at war for 47 years. More shocking in this statement, though, is that Trump appears to be trying to force his will on the Iranians by threatening to commit war crimes. International law recognizes attacks on civilian infrastructure, like those Russian President Vladimir Putin has been carrying out on Ukraine for years, as war crimes. The Geneva Convention specifically prohibits attacks on drinking water, so Trump's threat to attack the de-Sept. galination plants that make seawater drinkable is, as Shashank Joshi of the economist notes, not only stupid because Iran could do the same to other Gulf states, but also quite obviously very illegal. Joshi notes that Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly at Al were right to warn

of illegal orders. And Charles A. Ray of the steady state explains that not just Trump, but anyone carrying out these orders would be implicated in potential criminality. Trump's threat comes the day after Christian Trebert and John Ismay of the New York Times reported that on the first day of attacks, U.S. forces hit not just the girls' school we knew about, but also, in a different city, a sports hall used by civilians and a nearby elementary school, killing at least 21 people. Trump apparently had no plan B for what to do if the initial plan to strike Iran and knock out its leaders failed, and now is flailing. His repeated assurances that talks with Iran are making great progress, contrast with Iran's insistence it is not engaged in talks with the United States.

Trump entered the war with vague promises of regime change and promises to guarantee Iran never developed a nuclear weapon, but now is reduced. to hoping for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, putting the U.S. in the odd position of fighting a war to achieve the conditions that existed before it started the war. On Sunday, Trump told the Financial Times that my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran, as the U.S. did when it took control of Venezuelan oil fields. This sounds like bluster,

but he is also amassing U.S. troops in the region. Meanwhile, the price of oil rose to $116 a barrel after strikes against Israel by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis have the potential to disrupt yet another key strait, the Bob El Mundem, through which tankers carry about 10% of the world's oil out of the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and into the Arabian Sea, from where it can go into the Indian Ocean and to the rest of the world. In the 1980s, a faction of the Republican Party that was determined to cut taxes and regulations and to get rid of programs that benefited racial minorities and women went to war against the federal

government. Those so-called movement conservatives, movement because they were a political movement, and conservatives because they wanted to take the U.S. back to a time before the New deal, became increasingly radical over time. Some, like activist Grover Norquist, wanted to take the government back even further to the time of the robber barons in the 1890s, before the socialists took over, with the progressive era and its income taxes and regulation. But Americans liked the programs that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, protected equality before the law and provided international security. So movement conservatives focused on taking power away from Congress, where the people's voices could be heard, and centering power in the president.

Now we are seeing what that sort of a government, devoid of experts and beholden to the whims of a single man, looks like. After a year in power, Trump's administration has embroiled the U.S. in a war of choice that has created an extraordinary global energy crisis. Inflation is rising, job growth is down, and Republicans in Congress have abdicated their authority to oversee the war or other government agencies, or even to fix a problem of their own making in a partial government shutdown. Instead, they are seemingly content to let Trump do whatever he wishes. Trump's imperial presidency has demonstrated the country's need for the allies he has disdained, as he has been forced to beg for their help. They have generally refused to get involved in a war Trump started without consulting them. Today, Spain's defense minister said Spain has closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in operations against Iran.

Trump appears not to be turning to the gutted State Department, but to his usual cadre of billionaires to help him figure out a way forward. Edward Wong, Theodore Schleifer, Tyler Pager, and Ryan Mack of the New York Times reported that when Trump talked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India last Tuesday, billionaire Elon Musk took part in the call, although the readouts from both the U.S. and the Indian government did not mention his participation. Now, with Congress out of session until April 13th, Trump is putting the people and material in place to escalate the war. And yet, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points memo notes, the new goal of freeing traffic in the Strait of Hormuz leaves the Iranians rather than the U.S. in control of the terms of declaring victory. An Associated Press National Opinion Research Center, or AP Nork, poll from March 25th, shows that 59% of Americans think the U.S. has gone too far in Iran, with only 13% supporting escalation.

62% opposed sending ground troops into Iran, while only 12% favor the idea. Even so, as David Kurtz wrote today in Talking Points memo, there's no telling what President Trump will resort to to save face, create the mirage of victory, and extricate himself from the Box Canyon into which he so triumphantly galloped. What we do know, though, is that Trump is extraordinarily unlikely ever to do anything that will conflict with the wishes of Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Trump has blockaded Cuba, strangling its energy sector by blocking off all oil tankers from the island. Although he has stopped Venezuelan and Mexican tankers,

today he permitted a Russian flag tanker to get through the blockade to sell oil that will help fund Russia's war against Ukraine. Asked why he permitted that tanker through, Trump answered, He loses one boatload of oil, that's all it is. If he wants to do that and if other countries want to do it, doesn't bother me much. World Affairs journalist Frida Gides commented,

When Mexico tried to send oil to Cuba, Trump immediately threatened to impose crushing tariffs on it, or on any country that broke his blockade of the island. Now Russia is sending Cuba oil, and Trump says it's fine, no problem. The mystery continues. We can also be sure that Trump will find time to keep attacking those he perceives to be as enemies. As J.D. Wolf of Midas News reported today, Trump has posted about continuing to try to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James 14 times in the past five days. James successfully prosecuted Trump, some of his children, and the Trump Organization for fraud.

Trump has tried unsuccessfully and repeatedly to charge her with mortgage fraud or insurance fraud. Peter Sullivan of Axios reported today that to pay for the war and find more money for immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, Republicans are considering making cuts to federal health care spending. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican of Louisiana, told Sullivan that they were looking at areas of waste and fraud and abuse. As the administration flails, insiders are leaking about some of the administration's most powerful individuals. Two senior sources from the Department of Homeland Security leaked stories about White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to the Daily Mail, a tabloid out of the United Kingdom.

They claimed Miller demanded agents in Minneapolis be sent to areas where DHS knew there would be a lot of protesters because he wanted to force confrontations between agents and protesters that would enable the administration to win the PR battle. They echoed others in suggesting that Miller, not the president, was in charge of immigration policy. Yesterday, Michelle Borestein of the Washington Post reported that former high-ranking military officials, experts on religion and law, and veterans groups,

as well as current Pentagon staff and officers, have expressed deep concern over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's extremist evangelical worship services and is casting of the military as a force for Christian holy war. Last Wednesday, he prayed for U.S. troops to assert overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy, saying, we ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.

G. Eliot Morris of Strengthen Numbers and 50 plus 1 reported today that Trump has hit a new approval low among all American adults, with 58.1% disapproving of his job in office and just 37.6% approving, an overall difference of negative 21. A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll has Trump's job approval rating at 33%. Tonight, Trump's social media account posted an AI-generated video of a future President Donald J. Trump presidential library. To triumphal music, the video features a gleaming skyscraper, containing what appears to be the airplane the president pressured cutter into giving him, along with what seems to be a replica of the Oval Office and a model of his anticipated ballroom.

Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead of Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.