Way back in June 2024, Andrew wrote that “one awkward thing about Trump discourse today is that all the vile things about him suck up so much oxygen that it can be hard to make space to talk about the ways in which he’s merely very stupid.”

We thought about that this morning—and about how it’s now become a government-wide phenomenon—when we encountered this Deadline headline: “Kash Patel Confirms UFC Fighters Will Train FBI Agents This Week, Calling It a ‘Historic Opportunity.’” What a time to be alive. Happy Thursday.

Epic Failure

by William Kristol

President Trump hasn’t been particularly coherent about what it is we’re trying to accomplish in Iran. He seems to have taken us to war without a clear plan or purpose. But he has given his war a striking moniker: Operation Epic Fury.

It’s an unusual one. Usually, in naming military operations, the Pentagon seeks to convey an attitude of strength or determination. Last June’s strike against Iran’s nuclear program was called Operation Midnight Hammer. January’s operation in Venezuela was dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve.¹

But such names no longer seem to satisfy Trump’s child-like grandiosity and dictator-like megalomania. As Trump explained yesterday at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky, it was “Epic Fury” that spoke to him.

In the midst of delivering a brief war update, Trump paused over the name. “Epic Fury!”, he shouted with relish. “Is that a great name?” he asked rhetorically. And then Trump explained: “They gave me, like, 20 names. And I’m like, falling asleep. I didn’t like any of them. Then I see Epic Fury. I said, ‘I like that name, I like that.’”

It’s a ridiculous and embarrassing name.

After all, this is a war that Trump has characterized as merely a “little excursion.” So by Trump’s own telling, it’s not very “epic.”

And “fury?” That’s not perhaps the term to choose if you want to reassure the American people and the world that this war you’ve started is based on sound strategic judgment, and that this military operation is well-considered.

But if you revel in tough-guy triumphalism and world-historical vanity, then I suppose “Epic Fury” hits the spot. Is it possible that Trump has some vague memory of Homer’s Iliad? It’s an epic account of great fury, and its sort-of hero, Achilles, became famous. Will Trump have his Homer? “Sing, Goddess, of the fury of Trump!”

Of course, Homer does seem to suggest over the course of his long epic poem that the rage of Achilles was kind of a mixed blessing for his fellow Greeks.

What about the epic fury of Donald Trump? How’s that working out for us?

Trump thinks, or claims to think, it’s been just great. As he said yesterday in Kentucky, “Let me say we’ve won . . . We won. We won. In the first hour it was over. But we won.”

And earlier in the day, Trump called Barak Ravid of Axios to tell him that “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable.” Later, in Ohio, he said “For us, it’s turned out to be easier than we thought.”

Is he protesting just a bit too much?

Surely he knows that so far he’s failed to remove the reprehensible Iranian regime. He knows the Iranians still have plenty of short-range missiles, drones, and naval mines because they’re continuing to use them, some to damaging effect. He knows that he’s been unable to prevent the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the disruption of the global economy, and a dramatic rise of oil prices up to the neighborhood of $100 a barrel. He knows that seven American soldiers have been killed and many more seriously injured. He knows that the cost of all this is running at some $2 billion a day. And even he must know that U.S. forces were responsible for the killing of scores of school children in an accidental bombing—a tragedy that, as the New York Times put it, “is sure to be recorded as one of the most devastating single military errors in recent decades.”

You might think that Trump would therefore know—though he’d never admit it—that all is not going swimmingly well. After all, while he may not be re-reading his Homer, he’s probably aware of what our own bard, Joe Rogan, is saying. The podcaster who supported Trump in 2024 declared on his show Tuesday that the war was “crazy” and had left Americans feeling “betrayed.” “This one’s nuts,” Rogan concluded.

I suspect that Trump may realize deep down that his exercise in epic fury is nuts. Presumably that’s why he’