DAYS 53-65: World on the Brink in the Hands of a Madman

Netanyahu is his own case. He’s a very, very dark pathological figure. … This is what we have. We do not have either rational leadership or a rational process in I think either country, the U.S. or Israel. …Actually both countries add a strain of religious zealotry which is also pretty strange.”

One crazed man holds the fate of the world in his hands and his name is Donald Trump. Can his administration, the Deep State, the War Powers Act, Russia or anybody else stop him? asks Joe Lauria

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, May 4, 2026, https://consortiumnews.com/2026/05/04/days-53-65-world-on-the-brink-in-the-hands-of-a-madman/

Donald Trump “indefinitely” extended the ceasefire with Iran on April 21 and over the last 12 days the certifiable man in the White House has vacillated between words of peace and threats of all out war as he stands alone on the brink of a decision that could end the world as we know it for the foreseeable future.

Under unrelenting pressure from Israel to restart the war with with Tehran, Trump holds almost unprecedented individual power to unleash a series of events that could bring the world economic system to a crashing halt.

To those armchair warriors who think they are smarter than everyone else and ridicule anyone who thinks the American president sometimes actually runs the show and isn’t always subject to the wiles of the Deep State, consider what economist Jeffrey Sachs has to say about it.

Former British MP and TV host George Galloway asked him on Sunday: “If there is a war, it seems to rest on the tortured, fevered speculation and social media ramblings and so on of one individual. How can that be?”

Sachs responded:

“Do individuals make a difference? Well, when there are systems, the answer is no, not so much. But we have completely broken all rational systems in the United States. And by that I mean the actual processes of decision are quite exposed right now and they rest with Trump. It’s weird. But it’s not an exaggeration.”

At a White House meeting on Feb. 11, Israeli Prime Minister and Mossad Director David Barnea on video hook-up sold Trump on attacking Iran. Netanyahu later admitted he had been trying to convince American presidents for 40 years to do that. They had all disagreed because their advisors explained what would happen: Iran would fight back, striking Israel, U.S. bases and its allies in the Gulf and closing the Strait of Hormuz — exactly what has now happened.

“Trump was fool enough to to buy it or to go along with it given his range of pressure points and interests and delusions,” said Sachs. “Everyone else in this small room basically thought it was nuts except for [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth who’s an absolute blooming idiot right alongside Trump.”

The New York Times reported that none of Trump’s aides in the room spoke up at the time, but afterward told the newspaper they thought the Israelis were selling the delusion that the Iranian government would collapse in days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quoted as saying the Israeli pitch was “bullshit.”

“We’re not talking about an interagency process,” said Sachs. “We’re not talking about intelligence estimates. We’re not talking about a plan. We’re not talking about the president of the United States consulting with congressional leaders. We’re not talking about American public opinion, which runs overwhelmingly against everything that is happening.”

He said:

“We’re talking about a few people led by a delusional old man who never was very good at anything but is very bad at this. … So there’s no process. This is a case where an individual can make decisions. Netanyahu is his own case. He’s a very, very dark pathological figure. … This is what we have. We do not have either rational leadership or a rational process in I think either country, the U.S. or Israel. …Actually both countries add a strain of religious zealotry which is also pretty strange.”

Deep State Efforts

After the Deep State tried to destroy Trump’s first presidency by interfering illegally in domestic U.S. politics in the scandal known as Russiagate, Trump put together for the second term an administration of sycophants who won’t oppose him like John Bolton, Jim Mattis and Gen. Mark Miley, did in the first. (Bolton would certainly be on board for regime change in Iran.)

So this most consequential decision is up to one, very unstable man. Relaunching the war would invite vowed Iranian retaliation against energy installations throughout the Gulf, plunging the world into an economic dark age.

In trying to decide what to do, Trump may very well be calculating whether he will personally make a profit as he acts the part of the quintessential American businessman: profits über alles … (as I discussed today in my interview with Regis Tremblay.)

Trump is under considerable Israeli pressure to resume the bombing and risk catastrophe.

Miriam Adelson, Trump’s billionaire Israeli donor, was rumored to have been back at the White House to push war on Trump. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz last week said in a chilling video that Israel is “waiting for a green light from the U.S.” because “Israel is ready to renew the war against Iran … to return Iran to the dark and stone age by blowing up the central electric power facilities and crushing the national infrastructure.”

Katz complained: “We did not ask for a ceasefire, we were never looking for a ceasefire. … I want to emphasize that we will not abandon this field until the aggressor is seriously punished and until he finally repents.” Extraordinary that he called Iran the aggressor and in religious terms.

Afterward, Trump posted a picture of himself holding a machine gun in front of an exploding battlefield with the words, “No more mr nice guy….”

Can He Be Stopped?

A couple of weeks ago Galloway said that if a British prime minister had posted images of himself as Jesus Christ and in the next moment threatened a genocidal destruction of Iran’s civilization, men in white coats would be at No. 10 the next morning to remove him. Why is this not happening in America?

In a parliamentary system a British prime minister’s own party would in this case agree with a vote of no-confidence, the government would collapse, a new party leader and prime minister would be chosen and that would be the end of it.

In the American system, removing the leader, who is both head of government and head of state, is exceedingly difficult. The only options are impeachment and conviction, or an invocation of the 25th Amendment. Perhaps that’s what motivated Cole Allen, given the stakes and the unusual power in the hands of an unstable president.

The War Powers Act

The 1973 War Powers Act, which gives a U.S. president 60 days to start a war before Congress can end it, can’t seem to stop Trump either. Hegseth and Trump tried to deceive Congress into believing Trump “terminated” the war and that he’s waging only an economic blockade in order to beat the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Act.

Trump told Congress in a letter on the deadline day last Friday that “there has been no exchange in fire between United States forces and Iran” since April 7, meaning that the hostilities he began on Feb. 28 “have terminated.”

Regarding the need for Congress to either authorize the war, or he must end it, Trump said: “I don’t think that it’s constitutional, what they are asking for.” He said the U.S. is on its way to “a big victory” in Iran. “These are not patriotic people that are asking.”

If he restarts hostilities he may argue he’s started a new war with a fresh 60 days. Does Congress have the guts to call him out?

A Grand Bargain?

Russia is making its bid to prevent Trump from restarting the war. In a 90-minute call to Trump last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that resumed military action by the U.S. and Israel would have “inevitable and extremely damaging consequences.”

Trump told reporters that Putin “likes to be involved” and that he offered to take Iran’s 60 percent enriched uranium. Trump said he told Putin to focus on ending the war in Ukraine first. Trump said the two wars in Ukraine and Iran could potentially end on a “similar timetable.”

On Consortium News’s Saturday evening program The World This Week, analyst Scott Ritter suggested that Putin may be offering Trump a grand bargain to solve both wars. Russia would save Trump from the Iran trap by taking the uranium and in exchange Trump would accede to Russian terms to end the war in Ukraine.

Presuming such an offer was made, it would not resolve the issue of the hold Netanyahu has over Trump, very possibly because Israel in all likelihood owns a copy of the unredacted Epstein files and videos, which could well incriminate Trump.

There would also be the matter of getting the fiercely Russophobic Europeans, chief among them Britain, to go along with a deal in Ukraine that would favor Russia. While Trump ridicules Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he reveres the king. He looks into the king’s eyes and appears to see another one.

Charles Butts In

On the same day Trump spoke to Putin, King Charles III was at the U.S. Capitol addressing a joint session of Congress. At one point the king essentially spoke about preparing for war against Russia.

He said Britain was “committed to the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the Cold War.” He spoke of the U.S. and Britain standing “shoulder to shoulder, through two World Wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security. … that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people.”

He praised NATO for keeping North Americans and Europeans safe from “our common adversaries.” And then he praised the two most important of the Five Eyes. “Our defense, intelligence and security ties are hard-wired together through relationships measured not in years, but in decades,” he said.

Despite being mesmerized by the crown, Trump apparently didn’t get the message about keeping the pressure on Russia. Two days later he pulled 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany in a fit of pique after German Chancellor Frederic Merz accurately said Iran had “humiliated” the United States.

It is that humiliation of having lost the first phase of this war that could indeed be a chief factor in Trump being reckless enough to restart it.