'Sick people': Trump now thinks the Iranian regime is no better than immigrants
The U.S. president is talking about his enemies abroad the way he talks about his enemies at home.
You know the months-long effort to end the war is going poorly when Donald Trump starts referring to Iran's leaders with the same rhetoric he usually saves for immigrants, people of color and his domestic political opposition.
"They're scum. They're sick people," the U.S. president said Wednesday at a NATO summit in Turkey, adding: "and they're vicious, violent people."
Trump's remarks came after the U.S. military launched what it described as a "series of powerful strikes against Iran" in retaliation for attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks from both warring parties came despite a ceasefire that was supposed to bring an end to America's special military operation in the Persian Gulf.
"As far as I'm concerned," Trump told reporters, "it's just a waste of time dealing with them."
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The pivot from no new wars to Forever War is notable. Trump did campaign on the idea that his Democratic opponent would get America bogged down in a quagmire, if not World War III. But we should be careful about asserting, without qualification, that Trump was lying then: at least for those paying careful attention, it was always obvious that Republican antiwar rhetoric was about Ukraine and the idea that it should be ceded to Russia's sphere of influence.
Iran's leaders are no doubt sick and violent. In May, Amnesty International accused Tehran of having "unleashed an all-out assault on people in Iran," one conducted in parallel with the illegal war launched by Washington. Dissidents, or those perceived as such, have been tortured into delivering false confessions; dozens have been executed after sham trials.
But these leaders are the same ones that Trump described as "very reasonable" just a few months ago, even as they were waging this campaign against their own population. He went even further just a few weeks ago.
"We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people," he said in June. "They were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people," he said, claiming "they’re not radicalized and they’re, you know, looking to help their country."
Charles R. Davis
The most jarring thing, really, is not the self-serving naïveté of yesterday, or the temporary acknowledgement of reality today. I would argue that what is most grotesque is that America's president — his lexicon limited by age, prejudice or both — is talking about Iran's theocratic regime in terms indistinguishable from the way he talks about refugees, asylum-seekers and anyone at home who is Democratic, Black or brown.
"These people are the most violent people on Earth," Trump said on the 2024 campaign trail, referring to immigrants who had entered the U.S. under President Joe Biden. "You can't live with these people," he said, broadly painting newcomers to the country as gang members, "animals" and "stone-cold killers."
He was even explicit about military force, at least at home.
"I think the bigger problem are the people from within," he said in 2024 when asked about the threat posed by foreign adversaries. "We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics."
They "are all crooks, the Somalians," he said in May, one of his more gentle comments about a community he has obsessively attacked this year.
"[C]razy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick," Trump posted on Truth Social following his State of the Union address, referring to Democratic lawmakers Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and saying "we should send them back from where they came" (both are U.S. citizens, and Tlaib was born in Michigan).
"They're sick people," Trump said the last time he met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, just about three weeks ago. He wasn't talking about mass executioners in Iran or even Somali-Americans in Minnesota, but people he claimed, without evidence, had damaged a reflecting pool in Washington, DC.
Charles R. Davis
It loses some force, doesn't it? It also reveals the extraordinarily limited worldview of the most powerful man on Earth. You're with him — not "us" — or against him, and only deranged criminals could be the latter.
Rhetorically, at first, it was the Iranian people whom the U.S. was coming to save back when this war began. Trump, who did nothing when the Iranian regime was gunning down people in the streets, encouraged Iranians to rise up; he then bombed a school full of children, and talk of "regime change" gave way to chatter about deals.
But it's not just in the Middle East where regular Iranians have found themselves scorned. After all, Iranians and immigrants are not mutually exclusive categories. According to a lawsuit filed July 7, the Trump administration, pursuing its policy of ethnic cleansing via mass deportation, has been sharing sensitive information on Iranians it plans to expel from the country — details from their asylum applications, including sexual orientation and dissident politics — with the "vicious" and "violent" regime they fled.
In the face of such rank disregard for the rights and dignity of vulnerable human beings, what else can you say, really? It's sick.
