Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump’s Only Iran Move Left to Play the Bully?
President Trump took to Truth Social Sunday and threatened Iran again, posting that “there won’t be anything left of them” if they don’t make a deal fast. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a man with no allies and no plan, swinging wildly after his China trip came back empty. Trump met his national security team at his golf club, called Iran’s leaders “crazy,” phoned Netanyahu, and the Pentagon’s drawing up fresh target lists. Meanwhile, here’s what his war already costs you. Gas hit four dollars and fifty-one cents a gallon, up fifty-six percent since we bombed Iran in February. The Strait of Hormuz is still blockaded. Oil reserves are running low. Trump picked this fight, abandoned every partner who could’ve helped end it, and now working families pay at the pump for his incompetence.
Why Are These Preachers Anointing a Strongman?
At Trump’s taxpayer-funded “Rededicate 250” rally on the National Mall, Franklin Graham called America “morally rotten, completely sick with sin.” Sick from transgender people and gay marriage, he said. Not from concentration camps. Not from gutted healthcare. Not from a president carpet-bombing his way through the Middle East. Then preacher Eric Metaxas, who once compared a Clinton win to Hitler, told the crowd God spent two centuries raising up a “great man” to build Trump a four-hundred-million-dollar ballroom. A ballroom, headlined by the Secretary of War, paid for with a hundred million in your tax dollars. These charlatans looked at a corrupt strongman and called him a gift from heaven. They’ve traded the prophets who spoke truth to kings for a man who jails his critics. That isn’t faith. That’s idolatry with a microphone, wrapped in a flag.
Did You Sink Money Into Trump? Watch It Vanish
Imagine a loyal MAGA voter who bet on Trump three times. He bought a thousand dollars of Trump Media stock. A thousand more of the Trump meme coin. Five hundred down on golden Trump phones for Christmas gifts. Total faith invested, twenty-five hundred dollars. Total value today, one hundred forty dollars. That’s a ninety-four percent loss. The stock cratered from ninety-four dollars to under nine. The coin collapsed from forty-five to two. And the phones? They never shipped, and there’s no refund. Five centuries ago Martin Luther wrote that God gives riches “to such gross Asses” and nothing good besides. Trump’s true believers handed him their savings, and he handed them ashes. The grift always runs the same way, from his casinos to his church coin. He wins. They lose.
Ebola Spreads While Trump Guts the Watchtowers
The World Health Organization just declared a global emergency over an Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda. At least eighty dead, hundreds of suspected cases, and it reached two capital cities before anyone caught it. That delay is the whole story, and this strain has no approved vaccine or cure. Trump dismantled USAID, pulled us out of the WHO, and killed the spillover programs that watched for exactly this. One public health expert said plainly, before this administration, “USAID would have been on the ground.” Field teams went home. Lab samples sat unprocessed. A virus burned undetected for three weeks because DOGE took an axe to the early warning system. When the next pandemic reaches Portland or Pittsburgh, remember they tore down the watchtowers to save a buck.
Why Won’t Trump Drop His Greenland Obsession?
If you thought Trump forgot about Greenland, think again. The US is deep in quiet talks with Denmark to plant three new military bases in southern Greenland, and American negotiators floated making them sovereign US territory. Not a treaty. Not a lease. Ownership. This is the same obsession that had Trump threatening tariffs and force against a NATO ally just months ago. Now he’s getting much of what he wanted by grinding Denmark down behind closed doors. Greenland’s prime minister keeps repeating, “We are not for sale.” But fifty-seven thousand Greenlanders are watching big powers carve up their home for radar stations guarding the North Atlantic and rare earth minerals. When a president treats other nations like real estate, no ally is ever truly safe.
Has Fox News Finally Outdone North Korean state TV?
And finally, A Fox-so-called-news Alert. Fox host Maria Bartiromo opened her Sunday show by crowning herself one of the nation’s “leading critical journalists.” Critical journalism, she explained, means the Russia investigation was fake and Biden’s mind was a Democratic plot. One reporter watched and said, “Move over, North Korean state TV.” Another said she’s basically reading Q drops on air now. Here’s the joke that isn’t funny. State television always thinks it’s the brave truth-teller. The anchor in Pyongyang believes it too. When the propagandist starts pinning medals on herself for courage, you’re not watching news anymore. You’re watching the regime applaud its own echo. Laugh if you want. But the midterms are coming, and ask yourself who owns the megaphone.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, May 18, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
