"You can't put nuclear weapons in the hands of a lunatic," said Donald Trump at the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, 6 April 2026.
Just after 8:00 AM the following morning, Tuesday, 7 April, Trump reminded the world that the American people had already done that.
Twice.
In an unhinged post on Truth Social, Trump wrote in part:
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.... We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end."
Within a few hours, Timothy Snyder made clear why Trump's embrace of genocide should not be forgotten and could never be forgiven. "As any historian of mass atrocity knows, there is no such thing as 'only words,'" he wrote.
The world denounced Trump's words.
Democrats screamed for impeachment or the 25th Amendment.
And NBC News reported that a growing "roster of conservative luminaries rebuking Trump over Iran" included many of his most reliable supporters of the past, including: Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Candace Owens.
But even though Trump TACO'd out in the end, the idea had been planted in many minds — at The Atlantic, Newsweek, Mother Jones and elsewhere — that Trump's threat to wipe out "a whole civilization" didn't preclude the use of nukes.
The morning after, the idea that Trump's "madman" act was part of a calculated negotiating strategy backed by a reasonable belief that a ceasefire agreement was on the verge of being concluded may comfort some.
But, as Axios reports, right up until the ceasefire was announced, there was "confusion around Trump's thinking even among his close associates" and "U.S. forces in the Middle East and officials in the Pentagon (were) preparing for a massive bombing campaign on Iranian infrastructure (while) trying to figure out where Trump was leaning."
As one defense official said: "It was wild."
Who could have seen this coming?
The idea that Trump is a reckless and temperamental individual, uniquely unprepared for the presidency, and easily influenced by flattery and Fox News, isn't new.
Trump has long spoken about nuclear weapons with the kind of childish ignorance one might expect from an aging reality TV star.
The cartoon by Patrick Chappatte that appears at the top of this article was published in The New York Times on 1 July 2016, more than four months before Trump was first elected.
A month before that, on 1 June 2016, I published a short ebook—dismissed as nonsense by many—that imagined a crisis in which a failing president Trump, a global laughingstock whose domestic approval ratings are plummeting, is faced with a sudden international crisis. Surrounded by a cabinet filled with nincompoops and haunted by visions of his psychopathic father, an unhinged Trump, desperate for a "win," is prevented from starting a nuclear war only by the threat of the 25th Amendment. Ten years later, the premise remains the same. Only the nincompoops are different.
As I told one interviewer in 2016: "I wanted to write a story for people who don’t really think much about politics—one that would be fun to read, but also serve as a reminder that the world is a powder keg right now, and the next President must be ready to face sudden, unexpected, possibly terrifying challenges."
Those who know Trump best are scared the most
Trump's first campaign and first presidency were peppered with alarming references to nuclear war, including a threat to "totally destroy North Korea," and frightening Twitter outbursts, including bragging about how much "bigger & more powerful" his nuclear button was than Kim Jong Un's.
In 2020, though, the biggest and most terrifying challenge of Trump's first term revealed itself: Covid-19.
Trump's mismanagement of the crisis causes hundreds of thousands of unnecessary U.S. deaths—more casualties than America experienced even in World War II.
As Trump's Art of the Deal ghostwriter Tony Schwartz tweeted at the time, Trump cared "ONLY about being reelected."
If he thought it would help him beat Biden, Schwartz said Trump "wouldn't blink an eye" even at a Holocaust-level death toll of 6 million.
As it turned out, Trump lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes and, as predicted here, the frantic psychopath went to extraordinary lengths to deny that reality and overturn that result.
And even after Trump's failed attempt to storm the Capitol, the nuclear option was never off the table.
Trump was so out of control, reported Military Times, that, "Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley warned senior military officials that the commander in chief could 'go rogue' and instructed them to clear any nuclear launch orders with him first."
"A perfect storm of potential horror"
In a new interview with Thom Hartmann, Trump's psychologist niece Mary Trump comments on Trump's obvious mental and physical decline, saying:
"The rapidity with which his condition across his physical health, his neurological health and his psychological health is (deteriorating) is quite alarming."
Others don't even need a psychologist to define the problem. Hartmann quotes D. Earl Stephens, former managing editor of Stars and Stripes, who describes Trump as:
A racist, a woman-abuser, a convicted felon, a serial liar, a thief, a huckster, a user, a cheater, a phony, a complete moron, and a deviant, all of which have congealed to make him a monster, and the most dangerous thing on earth.
In The F*cking News, Jonathan Larsen writes:
The argument is not that Trump is deranged or senile or insane. He’s not. This is who he’s always been.... This is a man whose father never gave him a moral compass for Weihnachten. Who learned ethics from Roy Cohn. Whose only known friend was Jeffrey Epstein.
With both Cohn and Epstein now dwelling somewhere other than here, Trump, groomed by lunatic advisors like the Nixon-tattooed Roger Stone is still emulating Nixon's "Madman Theory."
But ten years in, it's a theory that only works if Trump can repeatedly convince the world that "he might actually do it this time."
At this point, what wouldn't he do to save himself and his ego?
We've seen this show long enough to know that Trump's madman behavior is not limited simply to tweets.
The problem isn’t the tweets. It’s the person.
Trump has always been stupid, reckless, and impulsive. We've seen how that plays out in everything from his bragging about assaulting young women to the Covid response to the tariff disaster to the attempted Jan. 6 coup to the idea he can start a war with Iran without a plan to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
It was insanity to think that Iran could be "a little excursion" of the same kind as his recent assault on Venezuela.
These days, Trump's brain and his body are disintegrating before our eyes.
Those who have enabled him as he has threatened the US economy, terrorized and killed U.S. citizens on American streets, and menaced the world with threats of genocide must, at some future date, be held accountable
In the immediate short term, Trump must be constrained.
Impeachment or the 25th Amendment are the tools we would be using if our democracy was functioning.
Instead, Trump is operating with the impunity of a "Get Out of Jail Free" card given to him by the most corrupt Supreme Court in history.
We now have a "fragile ceasefire" that gives Congress two weeks to force a war-powers vote, block Trump's funding requests, and establish the terms for any renewed military operations.
This is the moment. The world is watching. Congress must reclaim its power.
It's time to stop the insanity.
Thanks for reading and sharing! And an extra special THANK YOU to all my paid subscribers, past and present, and contributors to my "coffee fund." While paid subscriptions are always welcome, I’m continuing to offer all content free, so choosing a “free” subscription means you'll never miss an issue of UNPRECEDENTED.
To support this newsletter without subscribing, consider a one-time tip at Buy Me a Coffee.
Subscribe to Unprecedented
Subscribe to the newsletter and unlock access to member-only content.