Wag the Dog

Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro), Winifred Ames (Anne Heche), and Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) contemplate their next move in the 1997 political satire, Wag the Dog.

Wag the Dog was a 1997 film produced and directed by Baltimore’s own Barry Levinson. It is a political satire about a U.S. president’s spin doctor who hires a Hollywood producer to fabricate a war in Albania to distract the public from a sex scandal just before an election.

When I opened my news apps on Sunday morning and saw that the United States and Israel had conducted preemptive attacks on Iran, that movie was the first thing that crossed my mind.

If we have learned one thing about Donald Trump, he never makes a move that is not in his self-interest. He does not act for our country or its people. He has no political ideology. He has no moral compass. He operates without conscience or integrity. If you wish to know the why of his actions, always start and finish with what is in his self-interest.

A fabricated diagnosis of bone spurs in both heels by Dr. Larry Braunstein in 1968 saved Trump from the military draft. But the Epstein Affair has become his Achilles Heel over the last nine months.

In Wag the Dog, President Michael Belson is accused of sexually molesting a middle-school age “Firefly Girl” (Girl Scout) while she was on a visit to the White House. As spin doctor Conrad Brean, played by Robert DeNiro says, “Br’er Rabbit couldn’t get out of this one.”

So, a war with Albania is fabricated to “change the story, change the lead” and divert the country’s attention.

Similarly, as the Administration has projected all outward signs of a coverup of the Epstein affair, the news has gotten worse and worse for the President. While countries across the globe have stepped up and held their leaders accountable, Trump attacks the press each time the name Epstein is raised.

And, in the most recent Wag the Dog plot twist, FBI interview reports from a young victim who accused the President of sexual assault are now missing.

It will not go away.

So, could you blame anyone who might think taking America to war with Iran might be a tragically costly way to divert our attention, to change the subject?

We begin with the fact that you can’t believe anything the President says.

The State of the Union was just the latest display of lies stacked upon lies accompanied by the applause and cheers of the Republican House and Senate. It was two hours of record-breaking vaudevillian theater that might bring an end to the tradition of an annual presidential address if the Democrats control the House chamber next year.

Secondly, none of the reasons he has given for the attack on Iran can be corroborated by the facts.

He says that we were on the brink of an Iranian attack.

Congressional and other intel sources have denied that any imminent Iranian threat existed.

If we obliterated their nuclear program nine months ago, how can they suddenly be an imminent threat today? Lying then, lying now, or both?

Our senior military leadership was not shy about their counsel not to initiate the conflict, further leading one to question the level of threat.

Also it was about regime change, until it wasn’t.

The President addressed the people of Iran in his first remarks on Sunday to say that this was a generational opportunity to overthrow the current leadership. But even with the news of the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it became clear that his chosen team of successors were in charge and directing Iran’s retaliatory war in the region.

Oops, clean up in aisle one.

Secretary of Defense Hegseth appeared Monday with a bucket and a mop and a bellicose screed of unhinged, undisciplined remarks to tell us that regime change was not our goal.

Let me remind you that our record on regime change is now 0-2. The kidnap and extradition of Maduro in Venezuela, while fancy and textbook, did nothing to change the lives of Venezuelans. His deputy took over and changed nothing. Now, Iran has followed suit. When you think about it why would Trump want to improve the lives of the citizens of those two nations when he has done so little to improve the lives of ordinary Americans at home. The buffet at Mar-a-Lago is improving, but not the grocery or energy cost for us.

Given the fictional nature of President Melson’s war with Albania, no one died.

Sadly, Trump’s war is costing real lives, many of them innocent.

On the first day of operations, a strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, southern Iran resulted in 165 to 180 casualties. Little blood-stained backpacks and severed limbs were images I won’t soon forget. All for what? All for what?

Vote for me and I’ll lower your food bills, get “the worst of the worst” off of your streets, bring manufacturing back using world-wide tariffs, and end all of the stupid wars. I’ll be the peace president.

His public pout over not winning the Nobel Peace Prize was already a joke. When the first bombs landed on Iran, it became a cruel joke.

As he walks the halls of the White House and looks at the portraits of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman, does he now see his legacy as being a war-time president? Does he think that war will unify the nation and reverse his abysmal poll numbers? Does he think that questions about Epstein will seem obscene in the days of peril for the American military and a parade of flag-draped coffins coming off of planes at Dover Air Force Base? Will the blood of young Americans save him?

In this democratic republic, that is entirely up to you.

Don’t despair, act.

Don’t cower, vote.

Don’t just talk, march.

Note: As research for this blog, I rented Wag the Dog on Prime and watched it this morning. DeNiro has many of the best lines. Probably my favorite: "If Kissinger won the Peace Prize, I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up and found that I'd won the Preakness."