Last night, President Trump supposedly “rushed” back to the White House despite plans to stay there for the entire weekend. If you watched the comedy roll on X, you likely would have laughed at the people going insane. World War III has started or is starting. Trump decided to strike Iran. So many people immediately became experts.
The fact that Trump supposedly “rushed” back to the White House meant absolutely nothing. There were a ton of tweets from people who claimed that they were staying up all night to be witnesses to history. I, on the other hand, powered down my laptop, grabbed a can of Coke Classic and went to bed. Fancy a guess as to what happened next?
I’ll tell you what happened last night: I drifted off to sleep. Guess what: I did not get vaporized. World War III didn’t start. Something else happened. I woke up the usual way. For me, the usual way is waking up at around 7:00 to my cat meowing and slapping (or pawing) my face because that’s when she wants to be fed. Immediately. Obviously, she did not get vaporized either.
Look, World War III will happen. I talk about it all the time. Hell, maybe World War III might be starting right now given that things seem to be happening in and around Iran and the Middle East region as a whole. I get that, but lets be realistic. It’s going to start with a conventional war. Yes, war. The kind that requires Congress to authorize. What’s happening right now, however, is not legally a war.
In theory, Trump could recall Congress for an emergency session, but that would take time to get 535 people on commercial flights. Or, these days, maybe Zoom. Hell, I don’t know. Zoom really isn’t secure enough for much of anything, in my opinion. All those logistics over something that will come to an end within the next day or so? It’ll never happen!
Things could happen so fast things could escalate into something that escalates our DEFCON, which at this point is likely at four out of five levels. If something happens, Trump still has broad authority as commander-in-chief, up to and including a nuclear retaliation given that we are not a first strike nation.
Yes, Congress could authorize a war, but hasn’t done so since World War II. Some people think that we’ve been through several wars since then. Not so! What reasonable person thinks they’d rush back now, given those facts?
The war will be a conventional one that will not happen on American soil. Nuclear war? It’s going to happen someday, with Russia nuking the United States or another NATO country. Then we’ll nuke Russia directly and we will answer in kind. Those of us who lived through the Cold War remember that nuclear war could happen within minutes. What happened? Nothing!
There will be a third world war, but not today. I am sure that we are not going to be nuked by Russia nor any other nuclear country as retaliation for what Trump has ordered to be done in Iran. So, chill. The reason that he cut his weekend short is a non-event. When the press pool reports that Trump is being urgently relocated to somewhere undisclosed (Mount Weather), that is when worrying is a mentally sound reaction.
Until that day, just relax.