Date: Friday, 20 March 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/trumps-iq
https://theduran.com/trumps-iq/
Trump’s IQ
19 March 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
On March 18th, Douglas Arthur Johnson headlined “NATO ARTICLE 5 DOES NOT APPLY TO IRAN” and opened: “Donald Trump has told the world he is shocked that NATO countries refused to come to our aid in Iran. I’m trying to figure out if he’s really that stupid or does he think WE are really that stupid. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is a collective defense clause. It applies only when a NATO member is the VICTIM of an armed attack.” Here is the great Vanessa Beeley with relevant video about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSo9I5yvNY
19 March 2026, Vanessa Beeley
Transcript
0:00 Vanessa um what's the situation there and particularly what's Trump been talking about?
0:08 8 seconds
Yeah. Well, I mean I stumbled upon sadly um this press conference um uh with Trump and with the Irish Prime Minister
0:17 17 seconds
Michael Martin who apparently was in the US for St. Patrick's Day. Um and I just wanted to play some sections of it. I mean, effectively, he spends almost the
0:25 25 seconds
entire time bashing NATO for not coming to his support in the illegal war against Iran. But let's just have a
0:32 32 seconds
listen um to his response to one question here.
0:37 37 seconds
QUESTIONER: “I said that your war against Iran is illegal. It's an attack on international law.” TRUMP: “Who said that?” QUESTIONER: “The Irish president.”
0:45 45 seconds
TRUMP: “Look, uh he's lucky I exist. That's all I can say because if you're going to
0:52 52 seconds
allow countries that are sick and demented, and they are demented, to have nuclear weapons, they everybody in the
1:00 1 minute
whole world should be very thankful. And I'm disappointed in NATO, very disappointed. I'm disappointed in a couple of other countries, too. But uh
1:10 1 minute, 10 seconds
they should be very thankful that this group of people feels the way we do because if a country like Iran was allowed to have the power of a nuclear
1:19 1 minute, 19 seconds
weapon, if we didn't stop them, I stopped him twice. I stopped him my first term when I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which was Barack Obama's
1:28 1 minute, 28 seconds
deal. It was one of the maybe the worst deal I've ever seen.
1:33 1 minute, 33 seconds
And actually that's the first and only time in that discourse that he doesn't call uh Barack Obama Barack Hussein
1:40 1 minute, 40 seconds
Obama with emphasis on the Hussein. So um let's hear what he then continues with.
1:49 1 minute, 49 seconds
It gave everything to Iran including billions of dollars in green cash. I don't mean cash. I mean green cash flown over by airplanes.
1:58 1 minute, 58 seconds
I I I can't to this day believe that was allowed to happen. And come to think of it, it would be a good thing for somebody to
2:05 2 minutes, 5 seconds
look at. How could does the president have the power to hand hundreds of millions of dollars of cash to terrorists? But it began with that and I
2:13 2 minutes, 13 seconds
terminated that deal. If I didn't terminate that deal, we might not be here right now. If I didn't terminate that deal, uh unbelievable. Nuclear
2:23 2 minutes, 23 seconds
holocaust would have taken place. And then I did it” BEELEY: I, I mean, I'm impressed that the Irish
2:31 2 minutes, 31 seconds
prime minister had the decency to look puzzled at that commentary from Trump, and he has every right to do so. This again is Trump just making history up
2:40 2 minutes, 40 seconds
out of nowhere. So I had a quick look at this from the Brookings Institute [Institution] in the United States. This was in 2016,
2:48 2 minutes, 48 seconds
um “The United States, Iran, and $1.7 billion: Sorting out the details” So what are the details that Trump is claiming that Barack Hussein
2:56 2 minutes, 56 seconds
Obama handed this money over in, um plane loads to Iran? In the 60s and 70s, Iran
3:03 3 minutes, 3 seconds
under the shah of course was the largest partner of the US foreign military sales, the FMS. As an Obama administration official explained
3:11 3 minutes, 11 seconds
earlier this year, as part of the FMS program, a trust fund was established with Iranian funds to pay US contractors
3:19 3 minutes, 19 seconds
as work progressed on the various contracts. In February 1979, days before the culmination of Iran's revolution,
3:27 3 minutes, 27 seconds
the US and Iran agreed to a memorandum of understanding that halted these payments and voided many of the
3:34 3 minutes, 34 seconds
remaining purchases. They also called for Iran's uh unexpended FMS funds to be
3:40 3 minutes, 40 seconds
placed in an interest-bearing account. So what did effectively happen? Uh this would, was [adhered to] both under the Bush and the Obama administration. Well, guess what?
3:51 3 minutes, 51 seconds
The US were put under huge pressure to return not only the money being held
3:57 3 minutes, 57 seconds
in the unexpended funds account but also to pay uh not only the 400 million
4:04 4 minutes, 4 seconds
600 million sorry um, but also 1.3 billion in interest. []That totaled to $1.7B.] So just another demonstration of how Trump literally
4:12 4 minutes, 12 seconds
makes stuff up as he goes along and that any information that he's putting out should be considered extremely unreliable. And I just wanted
4:19 4 minutes, 19 seconds
to play here, because of course the insult towards the Iranian people, not only with the U video game that you mentioned, Charles, but also the
4:28 4 minutes, 28 seconds
language that is being used to describe a 6,200-year-old civilization. And I just wanted to play
4:34 4 minutes, 34 seconds
two videos. The first one is a young Iranian woman that has returned to Iran from the safety of Europe to stand with
4:42 4 minutes, 42 seconds
the Iranian people and to be in her homeland during this time. So, let's just play this.
4:49 4 minutes, 49 seconds
“It's all about war against imperialists because uh in this world you don't have the third option. You either
4:57 4 minutes, 57 seconds
have to fight with them or you have to be their slave. We choose not to be a slave. And that's why the struggle of Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese,
5:06 5 minutes, 6 seconds
Syrians, you're all connected.
5:09 5 minutes, 9 seconds
It's the same thing. I was living in Europe. I came in the second day of war just to say that I'm here. I'm in my
5:16 5 minutes, 16 seconds
country. It's our land and here will be your grave. Here will be the grave of anyone who has the plan of big Israel.
5:24 5 minutes, 24 seconds
Big Israel will be big Israel. Many people asked me, ‘Oh, you are going back to do what?’ And I said, ‘It's not about doing what? It's about being there.’ I
5:33 5 minutes, 33 seconds
came here just to be, because me being here is the sense of solidarity that I'm standing with my people, and it's not like oh
5:42 5 minutes, 42 seconds
my people are being on the bomb government — I'm just sitting in Europe on the sofa in on my sofa and reading the news. No, I couldn't do that.”
5:52 5 minutes, 52 seconds
Which is quite extraordinary because if you consider the the videos we've seen of Iranians in the diaspora actually cheering on the bombing of their people,
6:00 6 minutes And finally,
this is what I found a very moving um conversation with a young Iranian woman with her son out on the
6:08 6 minutes, 8 seconds
streets while they are being bombed. And because it's in Iranian, Persian, sorry.
6:15 6 minutes, 15 seconds
Um, there are subtitles, um, but basically she responds to to them asking her how she will deal with the hardships
6:22 6 minutes, 22 seconds
having a young son. So, let's just play this.
6:38 6 minutes, 38 seconds[music]
6:50 6 minutes, 50 seconds[music]
6:55 6 minutes, 55 seconds[music]
7:06 7 minutes, 6 seconds
So, what she's effectively saying is why should she worry about any hardships that she faces after the hardships being
7:13 7 minutes, 13 seconds
faced by the children in Gaza and that Iran and everyone really must stand up against the um oppression by the Zionist entity.
…
I just wanted to quickly show this map which I think is a little bit out of date. I think it's from the 4th to the 6th of March.
11:52 11 minutes, 52 seconds
But nevertheless, not much has changed.
11:54 11 minutes, 54 seconds
Um, the [nearly 100] green dots show the level of bombing or the concentration of bombing in the south of Lebanon. The blue
12:01 12 minutes, 1 second
squiggly line is the Latani River. And the shaded area is the area that Israel is now claiming as a buffer zone. And so
12:10 12 minutes, 10 seconds
it's begun a ground invasion. You can see from the little blue man um going up to uh the right hand side of of the
12:18 12 minutes, 18 seconds
border there. Um and the arrow pointing to a town called Khayam, um which has been uh witnessing some of the heaviest fighting for the last couple of weeks.
12:29 12 minutes, 29 seconds
Actually, Israel has so far been completely unable to invade or to take any position within it. But it's
12:37 12 minutes, 37 seconds
interesting, well, not interesting. It's sort of shocking that the Israelis now are talking about sending something like 450,000
12:45 12 minutes, 45 seconds
so half a million reserves to the border to take on a 100,000 maximum Hezbollah fighters um inside Lebanon. So they are
12:54 12 minutes, 54 seconds
making a very big push. Um the video upcoming is just a demonstration of um the strikes last night. This is the same building from um two different angles.
13:06 13 minutes, 6 seconds
So let's just have a look. [SEE IT HERE, High-Rise building gets bombed, instantaneously becomes an enormous plume of black smoke.]
13:09 13 minutes, 9 seconds
13:36 13 minutes, 36 seconds
it has to be said that there still people living in these areas in um the suburbs. And all of these strikes were
13:44 13 minutes, 44 seconds
to kill one person, a targeted assassination which brought down numerous apartment buildings and killed
13:50 13 minutes, 50 seconds
I think to date about 10 civilians. Um some images here, these were pre-dawn strikes also. So while people were
13:58 13 minutes, 58 seconds
sleeping, it's still Ramadan. So um people obviously are are kind of sleeping in in the morning. massive
14:06 14 minutes, 6 seconds
damage to civilian infrastructure and property. And then also um the two images that are coming up next. This is
14:14 14 minutes, 14 seconds
a family that were killed in strikes on the eastern border of Lebanon in the Balbeck area. An entire family apart
14:22 14 minutes, 22 seconds
from one boy who's now in hospital who you can um see on the right. And then I also just wanted to show this video
14:30 14 minutes, 30 seconds
which was taken this morning showing just some of the devastation in the Dahei area um from uh the recent bombing and
14:41 14 minutes, 41 seconds
of course they've been unable to reconstruct from the war back in 2024 when the ceasefire came into effect in November. No one has been able to
14:49 14 minutes, 49 seconds
reconstruct and Israel has continued violating the ceasefire. Um, and then this is just a comment. The longer
14:56 14 minutes, 56 seconds
comment uh is on Marwa Osman's Telegram channel and the link will be in the show notes, but she's addressing the Lebanese
15:04 15 minutes, 4 seconds
government or factions within the Lebanese government who of course are aligned effectively with Israel and Washington. And she says, "Nobody is
15:11 15 minutes, 11 seconds
asking you to end the war. You're clearly not capable of that. At least show some spine and do something to do
15:18 15 minutes, 18 seconds
to support the displaced and terrorized uh children." And she's absolutely right. I have to say the government here
15:25 15 minutes, 25 seconds
is doing nothing. The most they're doing is suggesting that refugees and displaced people head to the north to
15:32 15 minutes, 32 seconds
Tripoli and to aka which of course Tripoli particularly is infested um with uh those that are aligned with Golani.
15:39 15 minutes, 39 seconds
So effectively Takfiri [jihadist]. So the chances of them remaining safe in Tripoli are very slim particularly if the threatened
15:47 15 minutes, 47 seconds
invasion from Syria goes ahead. And then finally, um I have been following Craig Mokhiber since before he was a UN official
15:57 15 minutes, 57 seconds
before he resigned over Gaza. Um and he is a human rights lawyer and he basically says um [she displays print of it] “All free people must work in solidarity with Lebanese,
16:06 16 minutes, 6 seconds
Palestinian, Iranian people. The alternative is death, destruction, and subjugation.” And I have to agree with
16:14 16 minutes, 14 seconds
him. He also said the Israeli regime’s lawlessness and impunity are existential threats to all who live in the region.
——
MY COMMENT:
So, Trump thinks he has a right to NATO Article 5 support from other NATO member-nations to participate in his and Israel’s (which isn’t even a NATO member-nation) enormous war-crimes to destroy Iran and all supporters in Lebanon of Palestinians, whom Israel wants to exterminate. He actually thinks that the NATO Treaty is a master-slave relationship between the U.S. Government and its European colonies. How stupid is that belief? Is the intelligence of such a person way below normal? Maybe even below 70, which is “Very Low” or “Lower Extreme”? When his father Fred Trump died in 1999 he left Donald Trump today’s equivalent of $535 million (after the 5% estate tax paid on Fred’s approximately billion-dollar estate); so, maybe even an idiot who was raised with such a fortune, and who has no qualms of conscience (he being a psychopath), can be very successful for a remarkably long time. But he might now be finding himself in a trap that he can’t get out of. If so, could he become so desperate as to go into WW3, to bring the whole world down with him? Such tyrants have been known to history and destroyed many nations, but never before had nuclear weapons.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
