19 April—A few days ago, His Scumminess Pope Donald the Narcissist, whose approval rating is deservedly as low as its ever been, bullshat in Las Vegas that the American economy is the best it’s ever been, despite what he—to no one’s surprise, of course—called “fake inflation,” brought about by his monumentally illegal, ill-advised, inept non-war with Iran as well as his monumentally illegal, ill-advised, inept tariffs. Of course, he also threw in three of his favorite lies, that gasoline prices at the pump aren’t very high, that overall inflation is low, and that he had inherited the worst inflation in American history from Joe Biden.

Never forget that Pope Donald the Narcissist is infallible.

But Trump’s treasury flunky, Scott Bessent, did even better, insisting to the press that while American consumers may tell “the survey people” that they’re dissatisfied and distressed by and disapprove of Trump’s unquestionably incompetent mishandling of the economy, “in their hearts they feel good.” And Bessent really thinks even the clueless unwashed buy that? A case, perhaps, of “In their hearts they know he’s right, in their guts they know he’s nuts”?

Mind you, Donald Trump has been able to con the great unwashed—as well as the great washed, whose greed, rather than intelligence or principle, invariably gets the better of them—for half a century.

And that takes us to the maritime turnstile Strait of Hormuz. First, it must be noted that even though the narrow passage—the choke point, as it’s called—is theoretically split between the overlapping territorial waters of Iran and Oman and is under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) an “international strait” open unconditionally to all commercial vessels, Iran essentially controls it by dint of its superior military power. (Not that minuscule, filthy rich Oman, an absolute monarchy that bans political parties and severely restricts expression, among other things, would be any better.)

So Hormuz’s status—whether it’s open or closed to commercial shipping—appears to change at any given moment, evidently depending upon what Pope Donald and the Iranian mullahs have had for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks. Last we knew, Trump insisted the strait was open even as the U.S. Navy was blockading Iranian ports and Iran insisted it was closed for that very reason. All things considered, the mullahs have it.

At least Trump appears (for the moment) to have given up begging/threatening U.S. allies, “I broke it, you fix it.”

In all events, Megyn Kelly put it very nicely: “Yay. We’re ending the war by getting them to open the strait that was open before we started the war. Great.”