The Battle of Brainless Twats

Lindsey "Goober" Graham thinks this is Trump's "Churchill" moment? I think not.

Meet the Press, which over the years has evolved from a Sunday news program into a kind of low-calorie ritual humiliation for the Republic, trotted out Senator Lindsey Graham this morning to perform his customary act of televised devotion before the court of Donald Trump.

Graham — part courtier, part panic alarm in human form — arrived to explain to the American people that presidential indifference to the price of food, fuel, and ordinary existence was not a political liability, but apparently a statesmanlike virtue on par with Churchill preparing Britain for the Blitz.

My friend Aaron, in an act of either civic duty or emotional self-harm, shared the clip to Substack.

This is his Churchillian moment, huh?

Well, at one point in my life, I was a speechwriter. If Trump were Churchill, it would have to sound something like this:

“My fellow Americans,

Many months ago, I promised you greatness. I promised you victory. Tremendous victory. The best victory. People said it couldn’t be done. The fake news said it. The globalists said it. Iran said it. Nobody respects America anymore, they said.

And now tonight, as flames rise over the deserts of Persia and the price of gasoline climbs like a SpaceX rocket subsidized by our own government — very unfairly, by the way — I come before you in this grave hour to tell the American people:

I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is happening.

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been explained so poorly by so many idiots on cable television. Generals are saying things. Experts are saying things. Nobody knows more about war than me, frankly, but even I look at some of these maps and say, “Wow. That’s a lot of arrows.”

The Houthis continue firing missiles out of what appears to be the side of a mountain held together by goats and Soviet plumbing. Oil prices surge. Shipping lanes burn. The markets tremble. Somewhere, Lindsey Graham is visibly moist with excitement.

And yet we are told this is strength.

Strength.

I promised you that I would sacrifice your blood, toil, tears, and sweat in defense of civilization. We are being offered premium gasoline at seven dollars a gallon and a Raytheon earnings call.

The American family asks, “Why are we doing this?”

And to them I say: But you must understand — weakness is provocative. Peace through strength. Strength through bombing. Bombing through procurement. Procurement through campaign donations.

This is how democracy survives. Through bombing our enemies. We have such beautiful bombs.

Some among you complain about prices. About food. About retirement accounts collapsing. About your sons being sent back into another desert to die next to an oil pipeline some consultant described as “strategically vital.”

To those people I say:

I don’t think about you very much.

This is leadership.

I stand before America and declare we will fight on the Sunday shows.

We will fight on Truth Social at three in the morning.

We will fight in the green rooms of Fox News.

We will fight in group chats with Saudi princes and defense contractors.

We will never surrender — surrender is for stupid people.

And should this war expand — should Hormuz remain closed, should missiles fly, should the economy crack like cheap plaster beneath the weight of imperial stupidity — then let history record that we faced the moment with courage, dignity, with absolutely no coherent strategic objective whatsoever, and that I was totally exonerated in the Epstein matter.

God bless you.

And please remember:
Any military setbacks are Biden’s fault.”

If Trump were Churchill, that’s how I think it would have gone.

---

PS:

Several years ago, standing on Omaha Beach, I listened as our guide described what unfolded there on June 6, 1944. Around us, tourists wandered in sandals. Couples walked dogs along the surf. Children played where boys once drowned in fifty pounds of wet gear before ever reaching the sand. The day was warm, peaceful, almost offensively beautiful.

Churchill once spoke of “broad, sunlit uplands.” Normandy today is precisely that. Green hills. Salt air. Quiet water. Civilization restored so completely that the horror which purchased it has become nearly invisible.

I stood there studying the geography of the beach — the impossible openness of it, the murderous exposure. I pointed toward the waterline and told my daughters that if they wanted to understand, even faintly, what those men faced, one should carry the other on her back and run from the surf to the shingle in under ten seconds.

Another father in our group nodded solemnly and said, “That’s what they had to do.”

“No,” I replied. “That’s what they had to do under a hail of MG42 fire.”

That is the part modern Americans — particularly the theatrical patriots of television and social media — never quite grasp. They inherit the victory and mistake it for the natural condition of mankind. They enjoy the uplands without comprehending the furnace required to reach them.

Churchill understood that leadership in a crisis meant preparing a population for sacrifice in defense of civilization itself. He did not flatter the public. He did not promise easy victories. He did not confuse bravado with courage or grievance with strength.

He spoke to a people facing annihilation and asked them to endure.

Donald Trump, by contrast, speaks to a nation drifting into decadence and asks only to be applauded while it happens.

And Lindsey Graham's comparison of Trump’s indifference to Churchill’s resolve is not merely historically illiterate. It is the sort of vulgar, performative stupidity that could only emerge from a political culture that has replaced statesmanship with cable-news pantomime.

We are not storming the beaches.

We are not meeting the moment.

And Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill.