Trump, the guy with a well-established tracking record of lying about most things, claims that there are negotiations going on with Iran. Meanwhile, Iran state media, which also has a long track record of lying about most things, claims that there are no negotiations going on.
What can we actually establish to be factual?
Reuters reports that the U.S. has sent Iran a proposal through intermediaries, that Pakistan conveyed a U.S. proposal, and that Turkey is also passing messages between Washington and Tehran.
At the same time, Iranian officials and state media have publicly denied that there are negotiations, with one spokesperson saying the U.S. is “negotiating with itself,” and earlier denials also rejected both direct and indirect communications.
In other words, the actual truth is that indirect backchannel mediated messages have been exchanged that basically involves both sides issuing utterly ridiculous and unrealistic demands.
Meanwhile, when it comes to Iran “negotiating” with Trump, what they are actually doing is relentlessly trolling him by acting on social media just like him.
In recent days, Iran has borrowed from Trump’s online insult-comic playbook in what seems like an effort to shape how the rest of the world sees the war. The X accounts of Iranian embassies have posted cartoons mocking Trump’s negotiating position, likened him to the hapless spike-collared bulldog in Looney Tunes, and even referenced the Epstein files. Iran’s official TV networks and allied social media accounts have aired A.I.-generated propaganda videos that show it winning the war, not unlike the White House’s TikTok-style hype reels featuring clips from movies and video games.
“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange,’ ” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday. Well yes, looking in a mirror sometimes is.
As for what the Trump strategy really is, it is the usual “improvising”, which simple means that as things happen he declares that to have been the plan but all he is doing is making it up as on the fly.
So how might this all play out?
There are various options:
- The most probable is that this messy, limited conflict will drift toward a mediated de escalation
- The second most probable is a longer, uglier standoff in which the fighting stays below full scale invasion but the economic damage keeps spreading, especially through oil and shipping.
- Another option is even more escalation driven mostly by Trumps ignorance.
What we can perhaps expect is more threats, some more strikes or coercive moves, more public denial from Tehran, more triumphalist language from Washington, and then eventually a mediated arrangement that reduces the temperature without truly resolving anything in this utterly pointless war … but who really knows.
Meanwhile, over in Tehran what seems to be happening is not a clear regime change, but a wartime shift in the balance of power inside the same regime. Iran is still formally a clerical theocracy, but the IRGC appears to be exercising more influence than before, which could push it in a more openly military direction.
Also, we are also entering the phase where the oil shock starts to unfold as the tankers in transit start to arrive and offload their final deliveries, and then no more are coming. That will truly endear us to all those on the receiving end of that.
Overall, I believe the best word to sum it all up is “clusterfuck”. It truly does illustrate what an utterly incompetent idiot Trump really is.
What is now very clear is his willingness to literally burn the world just to benefit himself …
This is going to be such a fucking disaster, and it’s for absolutely nothing.
Rob Rogers – Trump keeps saying we’re winning his unprovoked war with Iran that’s resulting in an unstable world and higher gas prices. I’d hate to see his definition of losing. #Trump #war #Iran #affordability #GasPrices #economy #StraitOfHormuz #oil
Monday
So this happened Monday, and in the context of the Trump Administration, it is just another Grifting Monday …
Permit me to play back to you how truly weird this was.
A man who lies publicly 10x/daily (per major-media tallies) says something clearly false.
So how does media respond? Like good stenos, they confidently report Trump’s lie that high-level peace talks are ongoing, thereby convincing the markets to rise and providing cover for Trump’s obvious fuck-up of issuing an ultimatum to Iran that failed.
Then a comparatively more reliable source—yes, the Iranian regime—confirms it to be a lie.
There were actually negotiations going on, but Iran was not involved, the negotiations were financial. This is what was really going on …
The story is a POTUS lying to his citizens about an active war. The story is about war profiteering, bribery, extortion, market manipulation, self-dealing, AI-controlled targeting systems killing kids. And what do we get instead?
Pure bullshit.
Dennis Goris – Pay no attention to the grifter behind the curtain #stocktrading
Wargames
The is also no ducking that the grifter-in-chief really is very easily manipulated …
NEW RULE: Anyone writing op-Eds about how we should send in troops to die should be forced to go to the front lines themselves and enlist their own children You first, seth cropsey — and @wsj.com y’all can go with him …
Nick Anderson – The Illusion of an Exit
Imagine the Media if this was Biden
But Hey … Trump Style “Press Freedom”
Actions really do have consequences
A Class Act
Adam Zyglis – Leaving his mark…
Multiple layers of Lunacy and utter incompetence
This reveal landed …
Clay Jones – Those aliens are going to starve. #InsiderTrading #Trump #IranWar #GrifterInChief
Airports on ICE
If you are wondering were things are right now, well here you go – The immediate crisis has been partly addressed because DHS said it would start paying about 50,000 TSA workers, with paychecks expected as early as Monday, March 30, 2026, after weeks of disruption. But the underlying staffing problem and travel disruption were still ongoing as I write.
When people don’t get paid, then don’t suck it up. Bills need to be paid, and so many walked, and will not be back.
Meanwhile ICE are still in many airports standing around doing next to nothing.
Nick Anderson – Airports on ICE
Dennis Goris – We’re here to help. #TSA #ICE
Clay Bennett – Airport Security
Voting Rights
The guy who hates you voting by mail … voted by mail …
- “for me but not for thee“
- Trump was asked about voting by mail himself despite calling it “cheating” He says there are exceptions when you’re away or on a business trip (Narrator Voice Over: “he was in Florida at the time“)
Matt Wuerker – Icing out our voting rights….
ICE Gestapo updates
Wealth
A few get far richer by taking from the rest of us …
MAGA Christian Cranks
The nuttier right-wing religious fanatics within the MAGA cult are as always doing their thing, and so here are this week’s samples.
- To paraphrase Kipling’s IF … “If everybody all around you is running around screaming in raw panic and you can remain calm, then not only is there something going on you don’t full grasp, you my son are also an idiot“
- This is not your traditional Christian Theology, they appear to believe that the Sermon on the Mount needs a body count.
- These people talk about building a Christian nation, but the mask slips when ‘love your enemies’ gets replaced by ‘there are times where we have to kill them.’ That is not moral leadership. That is extremist rhetoric dressed up in church language
William Wolfe is not a fan of James Talarico, saying the Democratic Senate nominee is what would happen if you took “the most hostile to Christianity Reddit lib atheists and you put them in a room with coastal elite Democrats consultants”: “This is what would have been generated in an AI lab.”
- This is less an argument than a man yelling ‘synthetic human’ because someone used complete sentences and didn’t worship his politics.
- It says more about Wolfe’s own culture war imagination than it does about Talarico. Apparently, in his world, any Christian who does not sound angry enough must be fake.
- Apparently Jesus carried the cross, but these guys can’t carry a boarding pass.
Dale Partridge laments that modern Christian men are far less intense than their ancestors: “I point to the way that our ancestors dealt with Muslim invaders. They would kill them, cut their heads off, and stick them on spikes and set them outside of the city to make sure that no more Muslims would come in.”
- It is always revealing when someone talks about Jesus and somehow ends up sounding like a rejected villain from Game of Thrones.
- Nothing says “strong Christian man” like fantasising about medieval head spikes because modern life no longer lets you cosplay as a blood soaked warlord.
- The real issue is not that modern Christian men are less intense. It is that some pastors think the Sermon on the Mount needed more decapitation.
Shane Vaughn defends President Donald Trump’s celebration of the death of Robert Mueller: “If I told you Hitler died how would you respond? If I told you that Charles Manson died how would you respond? They were horrible men They destroyed lives…. You’ll pardon Donald Trump if he equates Bob Mueller as a destroyer of lives.”
- So now Bob Mueller is apparently Hitler and Charles Manson because he investigated a politician. That is not an argument. That is what happens when your sense of proportion falls down the stairs and never recovers.
- What Shane is doing is basically fan fiction for people who think accountability is persecution.
Lance Wallnau insists that he is very careful about labeling things demonic because it is dangerous to “call something extreme when it really doesn’t qualify.”
- Really? Because Right-wing Watch have an archive full of videos showing Wallnau repeatedly calling things demonic.
- Remind me again which church his orange child rapist messiah attends.
- He acts like Trump saying ‘Merry Christmas’ was some brave stand against tyranny, when really it was just a rich guy repeating the most commercially successful phrase in December and expecting applause like he nailed 95 theses to the food court door.
- So now we have that bizarre claim that this was the “huge” act of courage? Not feeding the poor, not healing the sick, not telling the truth. Just saying the one phrase literally everyone already says every December, it’s just so utterly weird.
- (Checks Calendar), yet it’s definitely March, not Dec.
- Turns out that he was supposed to submit his five most recent income tax returns with the Secretary of State’s office, but he never did it.
- His campaign said they’ve raised $893,700.51 in contributions so far, but since he is not actually on the ballot, what the hell are they raising contributions for?
- Ahn isn’t going to be on the ballot. He’s known for at least two weeks that he won’t be on the ballot. Yet he’s been going around collecting donations and doing interviews without letting on that he may not be on the ballot.
- Oh come now you know how this stuff works. Next move is that he’ll continue to fundraise based on political and religious persecution … in 3. 2. 1.
The sound of tumbleweed from these people is utterly deafening when faced with the corruption of the convicted felon, their beloved rapist orange messiah. Adam Kinzinger nails it …
Just when you think it can’t get any weirder … it does …
Tennessee congressman Rep Andy Ogles invokes the crusades to imply everyone in the US who isn’t Christian is “evil”
- Think of it as diet-christianity – lots of religious cosplay without any of the actual teachings of Jesus.
Weirdest of the Weird
Even More Political Cartoons from the past week
As always, there are many excellent cartoons.
Clay Bennett – The Trump Coin
Clay Jones – ICE Butts in
Dave Whamond – Remember Baghdad Bob?
Emily Gregory
US Healthcare Update
Unsocial Media
Clay Jones – Sure, he’s a stranger danger, but you don’t give a Zuck. #Meta #SocialMedia #MarkZuckerberg #StrangerDanger
But Her Emails
No Kings
Reuters reported that more than 3,200 events happened across all 50 states.
Have we reached the 3.5% threshold?
Perhaps.
What makes that 3.5% number important is not magic. It is a proxy for scale, legitimacy, and disruption. If millions of people are not just sympathetic but actually turning out, striking, boycotting, organizing, and refusing cooperation, that usually means a movement has spread well beyond a narrow activist core. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who originated the 3.5% idea, explains that once that many people are actively involved, an even larger share of the country is often quietly supportive. That changes the political balance.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
If you are wondering why people keep doing the math for such protests, this is why.
Finally
Trump Bulls**ts About Iran Negotiations & Throws ICE Into Airport Chaos Mix | The Daily Show
5,953,948 views 24 Mar 2026 #DailyShow#JonStewart#Iran
Trump’s eventful weekend of golfing, sightseeing, and ignoring the imploding effects of the war in Iran has Jon Stewart wondering who the hell the president has been claiming to negotiate with overseas, and whether this “top person” even exists. Plus, airport chaos amid a government shutdown has ICE filling in for the TSA as part of Trump’s escalating chaos rampage. #DailyShow#JonStewart#TSA#Iran
- 0:00 – Jon Stewart’s TDS Welcome
- 0:42 – Jon Stewart Recaps the Weekend Events
- 2:30 – Donald Trump Takes a Trip to Graceland
- 3:19 – Trump Shares Iran Negotiations
- 4:56 – Punch the Monkey Spotted with a Girlfriend
- 6:09 – The President Makes False Claims About Iran Negotiations
- 15:01 – Chaos Continues at U.S. Airports as ICE adds to the mix
- 19:28 – MAGA Calls for Americans to give Trump some “Grace”