{"id":222559,"date":"2026-08-30T19:50:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T19:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/bomb-oman-trumps-mental-decline-has-us-threatening-allies-opinion-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T19:50:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T19:50:45","slug":"bomb-oman-trumps-mental-decline-has-us-threatening-allies-opinion-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/bomb-oman-trumps-mental-decline-has-us-threatening-allies-opinion-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Bomb Oman? Trump's mental decline has us threatening allies. | Opinion – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m no military strategist, but it seems unwise that our flailing, 80-year-old president is threatening to \u201cbomb the s—\u201d out of our Middle Eastern ally Oman<\/a> while America is failing to end its ongoing and wholly unnecessary war with Iran.
That\u2019s a mouthful, but it accurately captures where we\u2019re at in a war of President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s making. You know, the one that\u2019s causing us to pay more than $4 a gallon for gas<\/a>. The one Trump keeps finding new ways to make dumber.
The Aug. 17 stupidity augmentation came via a Fox News correspondent who spoke with<\/a> Trump. The president said that if Oman gets in the way of his attempts to end the war, \u201cwe’ll bomb the s— out of them.\u201d
There are a couple problems with that.
First, Trump\u2019s attempts to end the war he said would be over quickly have been as effective as my New Year\u2019s resolution to cut back on feeling angry that Donald Trump is president.\u00a0
In fact, Aug. 17 also marked the expiration<\/a> of the much-ballyhooed \u201cmemorandum of understanding\u201d with Iran that Trump signed<\/a> all fancily at the Palace of Versailles in France on June 17. That memorandum was supposed to suspend hostilities and lead to a lasting peace. Neither of those things panned out. Oops.
Second, and more important, Oman is a key regional ally of the United States<\/a>. Officials from Oman have been negotiating with Iran to find a way to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which I like to call \u201cthe water thingy over there where all the oil boats go.\u201d
Getting the strait open, as it was before Trump and Israel decided to bomb Iran, is key to getting fuel prices down.\u00a0So profanely threatening to bomb the ally trying to get the oil boats moving through the water thingy and lower my gas prices is, in my estimation, suboptimal.
It\u2019s also another example of Trump\u2019s increasingly erratic behavior, one that shines a bright light on questions about the president\u2019s mental acuity in a time of war.
In an Aug. 16 Truth Social post<\/a>, President Grandpa boasted of his \u201cvery good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea,\u201d which is like Gotham City\u2019s Police Commissioner Jim Gordon hailing his awesome friendship with the Joker. In the same post, Trump announced he\u2019s scaling back U.S. involvement in joint military exercises with our ally South Korea. So continuing the Gotham City simile, that\u2019s like Commissioner Gordon telling Batman to pound sand.
None of this makes sense. We shouldn\u2019t be in this war in the first place, and nobody can feel good about the way Trump keeps saying a peace deal is imminent<\/a>, then saying he\u2019s going to bomb Iran, then saying he\u2019s going to bomb a different country, then saying the Strait of Hormuz is open when it\u2019s not<\/a>, then saying he wants to make the strait a U.S. territory<\/a>, then dozing off during press events<\/a>, then posting some pro-dictator nonsense on social media.
All the folks who filled the airwaves with concerns about former President Joe Biden<\/a>\u2019s cognitive decline are notably silent while this disaster unfolds around us. Who knows, maybe Trump will threaten to bomb them as well. Every day\u2019s a new adventure.
But this much is painfully, obviously true: We are living in a nation ruled by a man who has lost the narrative, if not his marbles, and we might as well hang a \u201cPlease Excuse Our Mess\u201d sign around the Statue of Liberty\u2019s neck.
Follow\u00a0USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke\u00a0on Bluesky at\u00a0@rexhuppke.bsky.social<\/a>\u00a0and on Facebook at\u00a0facebook.com\/RexIsAJerk<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m no military strategist, but it seems unwise that our flailing, 80-year-old president is threatening to \u201cbomb the s—\u201d out of our Middle Eastern ally Oman while America is failing to end its ongoing and wholly unnecessary war with Iran.That\u2019s a mouthful, but it accurately captures where we\u2019re at in a war of President Donald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}