David Frum

I'm the king.

Everyone rises when the king speaks.

He insulted them.

He berated them.

He had previously called the Supreme Court or six of nine judges in the sway of a foreign power.

They said, oh, by the way, I'm going to be back in a few days for a multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriation to pay for this war I never asked you to authorize.

So that's bad.

But what's also bad, and here's, again, to continue with what this imagined or not so imagined circle of my friends would say, is, look, Trump does actually have a plan.

He's a little shy about admitting it because it doesn't sound very nice, but his plan is the same plan as in Venezuela on a bigger scale, which is with the Israelis to kill everybody in the top 40 positions in the government.

And then to keep killing people until you find someone who says, okay, I'll do what you want.

And then when you find the guy who says, I'll do what you want, you say, okay, good.

You're now in charge.

And that plan, although unlovely, Anne Applebaum, our colleague, has written very powerfully about the abandonment of Iranian democracy.

If the goal is we have to get from here to there while keeping the electricity going, the water projects working, there are hospitals in Iran that have to keep functioning.

Children do need to go to school.

I presume there's some kind of pension system.

The pensions need to get to be paid.

And on your way to whatever a better future is,

in the six months after the collapse of the old regime, someone needs to run the place.

And maybe a former insider is the best way to get you from point here to point there.