Trump's genocidal threat against Iran is one of the most vile and dangerous things an American president has ever done.
Donald Trump talks with reporters on the South Lawn during the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, April 6, 2026. (Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
I didn’t think anything could top Donald Trump’s Easter Sunday rant, when he warned Iran to “open the Fuckin’ Strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” He promised to blow up bridges and energy facilities if Iran didn’t comply—a clear vow to commit war crimes, and one which might have sparked mass political outrage in any other era.
But Trump was just getting started. On Tuesday morning, with Iran still not having met his ever-changing demands, he issued what might be one of the most chilling statements any American president has ever made: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” He’s gone from threatening war crimes (on top of the ones he’s already committed) to threatening genocide in less than two days.
Trump has given Iranian leaders a deadline of 8 pm Eastern time tonight before he launches Armageddon. Until then, the world can only wait to see what this maniac has in store for us.
I vacillate between fear and rage. I fear Trump is more deranged than ever, and entirely capable of using even nuclear weapons. (Speaking in Hungary on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance made this threat even more real, warning, “We’ve got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use.)” And I am enraged, because those of us who have warned about the threat Trump poses for the last 10 years have been mocked, even by some on the left. When Hillary Clinton rightly declared that “a man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” some writers took the opportunity to look at her past hawkishness and declare her more dangerous than Trump. Who can forget Maureen Dowd’s odious June 2016 column, “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk”? (Nobody.)
When Kamala Harris made similar arguments about Trump, people derided her for not doing more to challenge Joe Biden‘s ridiculously compliant approach to Israel and the war in Gaza. Does anyone think Harris would be bombing Iran right now? Does anyone think Harris would have continued the policies that have worsened conditions in Gaza since Trump returned to power? But too many people sat out the 2016 and 2024 elections believing that both parties were equally bad, especially on foreign policy.
You know who makes me far more angry, though? Rageful, even vengeful? The Republicans who made some of the same claims as Harris and Clinton, and now back Trump slavishly even as he drags the world towards the abyss. Senator Lindsey Graham once warned, “if we nominate Trump, we will be destroyed, and we will deserve it.” Now he’s one of the president’s biggest supporters, as well as a proponent of this completely unhinged and unwarranted war in Iran. In fact, every one of Trump‘s opponents in 2016 made similar claims about his fitness for office, and the danger of trusting him with protecting national security, including Marco Rubio, who is now Trump‘s lapdog secretary of state. “Donald Trump is a serious threat to our party and to our country,” he said in a 2016 press release. That remains the truth.
Republicans could have, and should have, reined Trump in immediately after his second inauguration, when he began to encroach on congressional prerogatives, defunding programs like USAID that Congress had already appropriated money for, imposing tariffs that should have had the backing of Congress, and violating the War Powers Act, which requires Congressional consent for declaration of war, repeatedly. But they were happy to roll over, just as they did when they refused to impeach him during his first term.
It should go without saying that impeachment is, at the very least, more necessary than ever. But because of the GOP’s cowardice and craven love of power, Trump is pushing us to the brink of Armageddon.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting that the Iranian regime has cut off all diplomatic contacts with the US. So that makes a deal before tonight seem unlikely. The US is already bombing Kharg Island, but insisting it’s only targeting military facilities, not its oil infrastructure. The administration has already underestimated Iran’s willingness and capacity to strike back, whether at US military bases or at our allies in the Middle East. Whatever the madman does tonight, it will provoke more carnage in the region.
I debated whether it was worth writing a story on what might be the day before Armageddon. I’ve written so many stories warning of Trump’s racism, misogyny, corruption, hawkishness and derangement that have been ignored, if not mocked. Maybe it’s worth spending the day in Central Park with my dog, or getting on a train to see my daughter and son-in-law. Then I realized: Trump is terrorizing Americans, not just Iranians, with his increasingly unhinged threats. We can’t succumb to it. Whatever happens, there will be a day after, and we have to recommit to removing this war criminal from office.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.