Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
TUCSON — The Tomahawk missile that pulverized a girls' school killed perhaps 170 kids and their teachers the day a megalomaniac president set Iranian targets ablaze and plunged a woebegone world into crisis because of heedless hubris.
Obvious facts were immediately clear, but Donald Trump doesn't do truth. He planned the onslaught far in advance and struck during productive peace talks. A weakened Iran posed no immediate threat. Still, stoked after Venezuela, he wanted a perfect war.
"Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran," he said, adding, "they are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran."
Two weeks later, Pete Hegseth, his gung-ho toy soldier "secretary of war" says investigations continue into what generals watched happen in real time on secure monitors.
That one tragedy in what Trump now recasts as "an excursion" is among countless acts of self-focused folly that define him. From his Covid denial in 2020 to slashed foreign aid last year, he is responsible for needless deaths already into the millions.
We should be clear as elections approach. A dissembling government for sale to the highest bidders at home and abroad is no democracy. When faux "journalists" parrot its leader's palpable lies via propaganda "news media," it is a brothel with borders.
For nearly a decade, Americans have watched a malignant narcissist wreak havoc. At first, he was an unknown quantity with an uncommon gift for selling snake oil to the gullible. By now, there are no excuses. We are out of time.
A world threatened by climate collapse and unstoppable conflict needs law-bound, empathetic global leaders with integrity who want something better for their own families and everyone else's.
"Stupid" is an unkind and indefinable term. I'll go with Forrest Gump's mother: stupid is as stupid does. But "ignorant" defines us all. It only means lack of knowledge about any subject we have not taken time to understand.
Elections this year are about power, not politics. America needs a two-party system. But Trump's perverted brand of Republicans, cowed and cowardly, are committing crimes against humanity. Anyone who votes for them is complicit, inadvertently or otherwise.
TUCSON — ICE terrorizes parts of America. Ice paralyzes much of the rest. Polls turn against a corrupt, climate-denying autocrat who sees the White House as his Versailles Palace and runs roughshod across the globe jabbing big sticks into hornets' nests.
Reporters close in on Donald Trump's starring role in shielded Epstein files. They include FBI interview notes with a woman who maintains that when she was in her early teens, he forced her to have oral sex, then slugged her when she bit his penis.
And so now, flushed with hubris after a quick abduction in Venezuela, Trump attempts a wag-the-dog war with the country that fought Saddam Hussein's Iraq to a standstill in the 1980s after eight years of artillery fire and human waves shouting, "Allahu Akbar."
At least a half million combatants and civilians died, likely many more.
This report will be brief. No one can predict the future. But after covering conflicts of every sort since the 1960s, my scalp tingled when Trump said the attack would last several days, if not weeks.
My guess is years, if not decades, if you factor in the fallout. Iran's supreme leader, at 87, is more interested in martyrdom than capitulation to the Great Satan. Proxy guerrilla groups on Israel's borders are weakened but still active. Remember the Houthis.
Iran's navy and shore batteries immediately blocked the Straits of Hormuz, throttling global oil supplies. They can bedevil shipping across the Middle East. Israel likely faces extended retaliation. Iranian operatives can bring terror attacks to the heart of America.
Trump declared: "You must lay down your weapons. Or, in the alternative, face certain death."
Perhaps he is the genius "peace through strength" statesman he claims to be. In this case, I hope he is right. But I think he is insane.
