Stephen Colbert Spots Exact Moment Trump Was 'So Projecting' During Wild Rant
'Late Show' host Stephen Colbert said President Donald Trump celebrated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran ― then threw a fit amid reports that the two countries had violated it.
Trump complained on camera that Israel and Iran 'don't know what the fuck they're doing.'
Colbert read into that.
'Wow. He is so mad and/or so projecting,' Colbert said, then broke out his impression of the president.
'They don't know what the fuck they're doing. They're starting to wonder, I tell you folks, they're starting to wonder if they even wanted all of this,' he said in his Trump voice. 'Sure, they like the attention, but the job itself fucking sucks. All they want to do, all they want to do is eat fucking chicken and watch fucking TV and play a little fucking golf.'
See more in his Tuesday night monologue:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Atlantic
8 minutes ago
- Atlantic
A Military Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest
Seven years ago, Pauline Shanks Kaurin left a good job as a tenured professor at a university, uprooted her family, and moved across the country to teach military ethics at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. She did so, she told me, not only to help educate American military officers, but with a promise from the institution that she would have 'the academic freedom to do my job.' But now she's leaving her position and the institution because orders from President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, she said, have made staying both morally and practically untenable. Remaining on the faculty, she believes, would mean implicitly lending her approval to policies she cannot support. And she said that the kind of teaching and research the Navy once hired her to do will now be impossible. The Naval War College is one of many institutions—along with the Army War College, the Air War College, and others—that provide graduate-level instruction in national-security issues and award master's degrees to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. The Naval War College is also home to a widely respected civilian academic post, the James B. Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics, named for the famous admiral and American prisoner of war in Vietnam. Pauline has held the Stockdale Chair since 2018. (I taught for many years at the Naval War College, where I knew Pauline as a colleague.) Her last day will be at the end of this month. In January, Trump issued an executive order, Restoring America's Fighting Force, that prohibits the Department of Defense and the entire armed forces from 'promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories,' such as 'gender ideology,' 'race or sex stereotyping,' and, of course, anything to do with DEI. Given the potential breadth of the order, the military quickly engaged in a panicky slash-and-burn approach rather than risk running afoul of the new ideological line. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in New York, for example, disbanded several clubs, including the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. Other military installations, apparently anticipating a wider crackdown on anything to do with race or gender, removed important pages of American history about women and minorities from their websites. All of this was done by bureaucrats and administrators as they tried to comply with Trump's vague order, banning and erasing anything that the president and Hegseth might construe as even remotely related to DEI or other banned concepts. Some Defense Department workers 'deemed to be affiliated with DEI programs or activities' were warned that Trump's orders 'required' their jobs to be eliminated. Many professors at military institutions began to see signs that they might soon be prohibited from researching and publishing in their fields of study. Phillip Atiba Solomon: Am I still allowed to tell the truth in my class? At first, Pauline was cautious. She knew that her work in the field of military ethics could be controversial—particularly on the issues of oaths and obedience. In the military, where discipline and the chain of command rule daily life, investigating the meaning of oath-taking and obedience is a necessary but touchy exercise. The military is sworn to obey all legal orders in the chain of command, but when that obedience becomes absolute, the results can be ghastly: Pauline wrote her doctoral dissertation at Temple University on oaths, obedience, and the 1969 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which a young U.S. officer and his men believed that their orders allowed them to slay hundreds of unarmed civilians. For more than 20 years, she taught these matters in the philosophy department at Pacific Lutheran University, and once at Newport, she wrote a book on the contrasting notions of obedience in military and civilian life. When the Trump order came down, Pauline told me that Naval War College administrators gave her 'vague assurances' that the college would not interfere with ongoing work by her or other faculty, or with academic freedom in general. But one day, shortly after the executive order in January, she was walking through the main lobby, which proudly features display cases with books by the faculty, and she noticed that a volume on LGBTQ issues in the military had vanished. The disappearance of that book led Pauline to seek more clarity from the college's administration about nonpartisanship, and especially about academic freedom. Academic freedom is an often-misunderstood term. Many people outside academia encounter the idea only when some professor abuses the concept as a license to be an offensive jerk. (A famous case many years ago involved a Colorado professor who compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis who deserved what they got.) Like tenure, however, academic freedom serves crucial educational purposes, protecting controversial research and encouraging the free exchange of even the most unpopular ideas without fear of political pressure or interference. It is essential to any serious educational institution, and necessary to a healthy democracy. Conor Friedersdorf: In defense of academic freedom Professors who teach for the military, as I did for many years, do have to abide by some restrictions not found in civilian schools. They have a duty, as sworn federal employees, to protect classified information. They may not use academic freedom to disrupt government operations. (Leading a protest that would prevent other government workers from getting to their duty stations might be one example.) And, of course, they must refrain from violating the Hatch Act: They cannot use government time or resources to engage in partisan political activity. But they otherwise have—or are supposed to have—the same freedoms as their colleagues in civilian institutions. Soon, however, jumpy military bureaucrats started tossing books and backing out of conferences. Pauline became more concerned. Newport's senior administrators began to send informal signals that included, as she put it, the warning that 'academic freedom as many of us understood it was not a thing anymore.' Based on those messages, Pauline came to believe that her and other faculty members' freedom to comment publicly on national issues and choose research topics without institutional interference was soon to be restricted. During an all-hands meeting with senior college leaders in February, Pauline said that she and other Naval War College faculty were told that the college would comply with Hegseth's directives and that, in Pauline's words, 'if we were thinking we had academic freedom in our scholarship and in the classroom, we were mistaken.' (Other faculty present at the meeting confirmed to me that they interpreted the message from the college's leadership the same way; one of them later told me that the implication was that the Defense Department could now rule any subject out of bounds for classroom discussion or scholarly research at will.) Pauline said there were audible gasps in the room, and such visible anger that it seemed to her that even the administrators hosting the meeting were taken aback. 'I've been in academia for 31 years,' she told me, and that gathering 'was the most horrifying meeting I've ever been a part of.' I contacted the college's provost, Stephen Mariano, who told me in an email that these issues were 'nuanced' but that the college had not changed its policies on academic freedom. (He also denied any changes relating to tenure, a practice predicated on academic freedom.) At the same time, he added, the college is 'complying with all directives issued by the President and Department of Defense and following Department of the Navy policy.' This language leaves Pauline and other civilian faculty at America's military schools facing a paradox: They are told that academic freedom still exists, but that their institutions are following directives from Hegseth that, at least on their face, seem aimed at ending academic freedom. In March, Pauline again sought clarity from college leaders. They were clearly anxious to appear compliant with the new political line. ('We don't want to end up on Fox News,' she said one administrator told her.) She was told her work was valued, but she didn't believe it. 'Talk is cheap,' she said. 'Actions matter.' She said she asked the provost point-blank: What if a faculty member has a book or an article coming out on some controversial topic? His answer, according to her: Hypothetically, they might consider pulling the work from publication. (Mariano denies saying this and told me that there is no change in college policy on faculty publication.) Every government employee knows the bureaucratic importance of putting things on paper. Pauline's current project is about the concept of honor, which necessarily involves questions regarding masculinity and gender—issues that could turn the DOD's new McCarthyites toward her and her work. So she now proposed that she and the college administration work up a new contract, laying out more clearly—in writing—what the limits on her work and academic freedom would look like. She might as well have asked for a pony. Administrators, she said, told her that they hoped she wouldn't resign, but that no one was going to put anything in writing. 'The upshot,' according to her, was a message from the administration that boiled down to: We hope you can just suck it up and not need your integrity for your final year as the ethics chair. After that, she told me, her choices were clear. 'As they say in the military: Salute and execute—or resign.' Until then, she had 'hoped maybe people would still come to their senses.' The promises of seven years ago were gone; the institution now apparently expected her and other faculty to self-censor in the classroom and preemptively bowdlerize their own research. 'I don't do DEI work,' she said, 'but I do moral philosophy, and now I can't do it. I'd have to take out discussions of race and gender and not do philosophy as I think it should be done.' In April, she submitted a formal letter of resignation. Initially, she had no interest in saying anything publicly. Pauline is a native Montanan and single mom of two, and by nature not the type of person to engage in public food fights. (She used to joke with me when we were colleagues that I was the college's resident lightning rod, and she had no interest in taking over that job.) She's a philosopher who admires quiet stoicism, and she was resolved to employ it in her final months. But she also thought about what she owed her chair's namesake. 'Stockdale thought philosophy was important for officers. The Stockdale course was created so that officers would wrestle with moral obligations. He was a personal model of integrity.' Even so, she did not try to invoke him as a patron saint when she decided to resign. 'I'm not saying he would agree with the choice that I made,' she told me. 'But his model of moral integrity is part of the chair.' She kept her resignation private until early May, when a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Graham Parsons—another scholar who teaches ethics in a military school, and a friend of Pauline's—likewise decided to resign in protest and said that he would leave West Point after 13 years. Hegseth's changes 'prevent me from doing my job responsibly,' he wrote in The New York Times. 'I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.' Hegseth responded on X, sounding more like a smug internet troll than a concerned superior: 'You will not be missed Professor Parsons.' The episode changed Pauline's mind. She felt she owed her friends and colleagues whatever public support and solidarity she could offer them. Nor are she and Parsons alone. Tom McCarthy, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, recently resigned as chair of the history department rather than remove a paper from an upcoming symposium. And last month, a senior scholar at the Army War College, in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lee, also handed in her resignation, a decision she announced to her friends and followers on Bluesky. Jason Dempsey: Hegseth has all the wrong enemies Lee told me in an email that she'd been thinking of leaving after Trump was elected, because it was apparent to her that the Trump administration was 'going to try and politicize the military and use military assets/personnel to suppress democratic rights,' and that academic freedom in military schools was soon to 'become untenable.' Like Pauline, Lee felt like she was at a dead end: 'To speak from within the institution itself will also do more harm than good. So to dissent, I have little choice but to leave,' she said in a farewell letter to her colleagues in April. I asked Pauline what she thinks might have happened if she had decided to stay and just tough it out from the inside. She 'absolutely' thinks she'd have been fired at some point, and she didn't want such a firing 'to be part of the legacy of the Stockdale Chair.' But then I asked her if by resigning, she was giving people in the Trump administration, such as Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—who once said that his goal was to make federal workers feel 'trauma' to the point where they will quit their jobs—exactly what they want: Americans leaving federal service. She didn't care. 'When you make a moral decision, there are always costs.' She dismissed what people like Vought want or think. 'I'm not accountable to him. I'm accountable to the Lord, to my father, to my legacy, to my children, to my profession, to members of the military-ethics community. So I decided that I needed to resign. Not that it would change anyone's mind, but to say: This is not okay. That is my message.' At the end of our discussion, I asked an uncomfortable question I'd been avoiding. Pauline, I know, is only in her mid-50s, in mid-career, and too young simply to retire. She has raised two sons who will soon enter young adulthood. I asked her if she was worried about her future. 'Sure,' she said. 'But at the end of the day, as we say in Montana, sometimes you just have to saddle up and ride scared.'
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump bombs Iranian nuclear facilities in major escalation. What happens next?
President Donald Trump has claimed to have 'completely, totally obliterated' Iran's nuclear program in a series of missile strikes and bombings, marking explicit U.S. intervention into Israel's war that risks a wider international crisis. The true extent of the damage is unclear. Retaliatory strikes are expected, as are efforts to revive already-fractured negotiations and diplomatic efforts to lower temperatures. But the United States is now embroiled in a war between two well-armed nations that could spill out far beyond their borders with untold casualties, experts have warned. 'Remember, there are many targets left,' Trump said in a brief address to the nation on June 21, roughly two hours after announcing a 'very successful' series of strikes on nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan. 'If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.' The world is watching to see what will happen, as experts and analysts consider how current conditions, history and a volatile political environment could inform what's next. A 'dangerous escalation' Trump had campaigned on a promise to end all wars, including Israel's war in Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, yet the president has so far failed to negotiate an end to either. Israel sought American military support for its campaign against Iran after receiving virtual permission for its devastating war in Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks — 'undermining Trump's claim to be a peacemaker and his assertion that wars would never have started under his leadership,' according to Brookings Institution senior fellow Sharan Grewal at the Center for Middle East Policy. He now risks exploding a wider crisis across the Middle East that could endanger U.S. installations abroad and embolden Iran's allies to retaliate, following a legacy of U.S. intervention and destabilization in the Middle East dovetailing with U.S. support for Israel's ongoing devastation in Gaza and in occupied territories. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said late Saturday that he was 'gravely alarmed' by Trump's decision to bomb Iran, calling it 'a dangerous escalation' and 'a direct threat to international peace and security.' 'There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control — with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,' he said. Iran could also retaliate by blocking the strategically important Strait of Hormuz or attacking the energy infrastructure of the Arab Gulf — dramatically driving up global oil prices. Within hours after Saturday's attacks, roughly 50 oil tankers were seen scrambling to leave the Strait of Hormuz. Iran-backed Houthis have warned that Trump 'must bear the consequences,' Houthi political bureau member Hizam al-Assad posted on X. The Houthi-controlled Yemeni Armed Forces also said the group was prepared to target U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea 'in the event that the American enemy launches an aggression in support' of Israel. Houthi rebels had previously attacked ships linked to Israel's war in Gaza, and the United States retaliated with a series of airstrikes in Yemen earlier this year. Hardening Iran's resolve — or doing enough damage to force negotiations? Saturday's attack marks an 'unprecedented event that may prove to be transformational for Iran, the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, global non-proliferation, and potentially even the global order,' according to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.' 'Its impact will be measured for decades to come,' he wrote. 'It could entrench the regime — or hasten its demise. It could prevent a nuclear Iran — or accelerate one. ' Iranian officials have stressed for years that its nuclear programs are for civilian and peaceful purposes only, but Israel has claimed that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a claim central to the long and now accelerating conflict between the two nations. Following Saturday's bombings, Iran's atomic agency vowed 'never' to stop its nuclear program, according to Iranian media. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said the three targeted nuclear sites came under 'savage assault,' seen as 'blatant violation of international law, particularly the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.' The agency also accused the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog of 'complicity' in the effort as it urged the international community to condemn the strikes and 'never allow the progress of this national industry … to be halted.' Aerial bombardment alone would not be enough to conclusively stop any nuclear ambitions because 'neither Israel nor the U.S. can kill all the nuclear scientists,' former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker told Politico. Targeted strikes that significantly damage operations could convince Iran to negotiate, according to former U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross. But a wider assault — fueled by demands from Israeli officials and Iran hawks in the United States — could be seen by Iran as seeing that 'they have little to lose and their best bet is to show they can make us pay a heavy price,' he told Politico. When Israel struck nuclear programs in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, 'the long-term results were diametrically different,' according to Mara Karlin, former assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities under Joe Biden. 'Tehran could conceivably choose either path,' she said. 'And, as long as the uranium enrichment complex at Fordow remains largely intact, it does not need to decide.' Blowback in Washington — and across America Trump's attacks risk deepening a growing divide between his allies and anti-interventionist Republicans now tenuously aligned with a wider anti-war movement and the majority of Americans who do not want the United States involved with Israel's campaign at all. Several members of Congress have questioned whether the president's actions are even legal, amounting to an unconstitutional attempt to escape congressional authorization. At least two congressional Republicans — Rep. Warren Davidson and Thomas Massie — joined Democrats to immediately condemn the bombings as unconstitutional. 'The only entity that can take this country to war is the U.S. Congress,' Sen. Bernie Sanders said in remarks in Oklahoma as the crowd learned about the bombings in real time. 'The president does not have the right.' 'The President's disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers,' said Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 'He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations.' The New York congresswoman said the attack is 'clearly grounds for impeachment.' Top Democrats on congressional intelligence committees were also not briefed in advance of the attacks. 'The American public is overwhelmingly opposed to the U.S. waging war on Iran,' said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who has urged Congress to pass legislation that would require Trump to go to Congress before attacking Iran. He noted that Israeli officials said its bombs have already set Iran's nuclear capability back by two to three years. 'So what made Trump recklessly decide to rush and bomb today?' he said. 'Horrible judgment. I will push for all Senators to vote on whether they are for this third idiotic Middle East war.' While Trump touts what he claims are unequivocal military successes, he has also spent his first few months in office developing plans to crush dissent domestically. The deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to respond to protests against his anti-immigration agenda could be seen as a 'dress rehearsal' for far more expansive emergency powers to impose federal control of America's cities, according to The Atlantic's David Frum. More demonstrations against further military action in Iran are expected, adding to a steady rhythm of protests and unrest against the Trump administration that exploded across American streets in recent weeks.
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites: What was in the Iranian bases Trump bombed?
President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. struck three major Iranian nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Trump said the sites had been 'totally obliterated' while issuing a warning to Iran in an address from the White House on Saturday night. 'There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,' Trump said. 'Remember, there are many targets left.' 'Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal,' he added. 'But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill, most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.' B-2 bombers dropped six 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Fordow, while U.S. submarines fired 30 Tomahawk missiles at Natanz and Isfahan, Trump revealed. Iranian officials announced there were 'no signs of contamination' following the attacks, according to the Associated Press. Iran operates more than 30 facilities that carry out different steps of the nuclear fuel cycle, many of which have been hit by the latest Israeli strikes. Here's what we know about the three major sites the U.S. hit on Saturday: The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is buried about 300 feet underground near the Iranian city Qom. The plant is designed to produce enriched uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear weapons. The heavily fortified plant had an estimated 2,700 centrifuge machines, which are essential to the enrichment process. Fordow has always been the main object of international concerns regarding Iran's progress on uranium enrichment. 'The significantly increased production and accumulation of highly enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear-weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,' the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a May report. Natanz Nuclear Facility, located about 150 miles south of the nation's capital Tehran, is considered the country's largest uranium enrichment plant. Intelligence indicates the facility is used to build centrifuges for uranium enrichment, according to the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative. The plant has six above-ground buildings and three underground facilities. Two of those underground buildings can hold 50,000 centrifuges. As of October 2022, Iran had installed 4,000 advanced centrifuges in enrichment facilities across the country — a 44 percent increase from two months prior – according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center in central Iran is the nation's largest nuclear research complex. An estimated 3,000 researchers work at the center, which was built in 1984 with Chinese assistance, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The facility is believed to operate three small research reactors supplied by China. It also operates a uranium conversion facility, a fuel production plant and a zirconium cladding plant — all of which play roles in the development of nuclear power plants and weapons. Israel struck the center earlier this month, but the extent of the damage ahead of the U.S. strikes is unclear, the Nuclear Threat Initiative said.
