An aide during Trump's first term has described the White House at the time as like living in a house that was "always on fire or in an insane asylum where you couldn’t tell the difference between the patients and the attendants or on a roller coaster that never stopped." Another, Miles Taylor, said Trump engaged in "repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back." That was when he was surrounded by sensible people forming the guardrails that only ever succeeded in frustrating Trump, who has spent a lifetime without any such restraints. Now, he has arranged his administration to dispense with guard rails, and the results are as we see. Nobody walks anything back and often encourages him to double down.
All of which leaves a problem, not only for the USA and the wider world, but also for the people surrounding Trump, all of whom have chosen to align themselves with Trump's frequently deranged version of reality and truth.
When the president insists, usually on the spur of the moment, to avoid admitting he doesn't know something (a mortal sin for Trump), that black is white or a very pale grey, his staff are forced to parrot and reinforce the lie and consequently look not just stupid, but sycophantic as well. His latest off-the-cuff comment, which is getting a lot of airtime, is to claim the Iranian nuclear enrichment programme has been "obliterated" by the recent attack known as 'Operation Midnight Hammer'.
The word obliterated hasn’t come from the Defence Intelligence Agency. They tend to be far more nuanced about what they know and don't know. Reports are usually full of caveats.
His Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, spent most of a press conference attacking the media, including Fox News, for even the slightest hint of doubt that the raid was anything other than a huge success. It was a remarkable performance by a man who makes an ordinary sycophant seem like a contrarian.
All Trump and his administration had to do was say the attack was carried out with skill and courage, but we need to wait for a full intelligence assessment before hailing it a success. That was how every other POTUS would have handled it. Not Trump, anything less than immediate and fulsome praise is a threat to his virility, so he couldn't do it. Instead, he oversells the whole thing and suggests the nuclear sites have been 'obliterated'.
The first doubts came via a leaked intelligence briefing saying Iran's centrifuges were largely "intact" and another unnamed person who said that "the assessment is that the US set them (Iranians) back maybe a few months, tops". This seemed to enrage Trump, a man who needs constant reaffirmation that he's a genius, so he sends out his attack dogs.
Next, we had Senators coming out of an official briefing with Hegseth having been given the clear understanding that the facilities in Iran were damaged but certainly not obliterated and could soon be back in action.
Chris Murphy, the Democratic Senator for Connecticut, said: “It still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months… the allegations that we have obliterated their program just don’t seem to stand up… “
Senator @ChrisMurphyCT reacts to being briefed on the Iran strikes: "To me, it still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months."— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) 26 June 2025 at 21:10
Senator Mark Kelly (D) from Arizona, a former US naval officer, said more or less the same thing.
On Saturday, Rafael Grossi, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the US strikes had caused severe but "not total" damage and Iran has the capacity to start enriching uranium again - for a possible bomb - in "a matter of months."
Now, the Washington Post has spoken to people who have seen classified intelligence about an intercepted telephone call between two Iranian government officials discussing the damage caused by fourteen bunker-busting bombs (at $20 million a throw) that was “less devastating than they expected.”
"The Trump administration did not dispute the existence of the intercepted communication, which has not been previously reported, but strenuously disagreed with the Iranians’ conclusions and cast doubt on their ability to assess the damage at the three nuclear facilities targeted in the U.S. operation."
Karoline Leavitt, Trump's press secretary, is one of the people who appear to have sold their own credibility in return for a job in the administration. She never helps to bring the 'fire in the asylum' under control, but usually douses more fuel on it. She told the assembled press corps:
"It’s shameful that the Washington Post is helping people commit felonies by publishing out-of-context leaks. The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense. Their nuclear weapons program is over.”
Nobody asked how Trump knew what had happened under hundreds of feet of rubble either. I would have thought Iranian officials would have had at least the same information, if not a whole lot more, than the current demented POTUS, who famously doesn't read briefings and needs everything condensed down to a single Janet-and -John style picture or simple one-page graphic.
When all this is over, a lot of men and women surrounding Trump are going to look even more stupid than he is. The missing guardrails will eventually lead to disaster.
