CLIFF’S NOTE: You’re not crazy—you’re seeing patterns most people miss.
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By Cliff Schecter — April 10, 2026
Is Donald Trump effectively paying Iran Protection Money in the Strait of Hormuz? Bowing down like he owns a jewelry or coat business on the corner of Delancey and Ridge and Meyer Lansky or John Gotti just came swashbuckling in to remind him how kerosene and fire interact?
Because, let’s face it, the man should beg for forgiveness--not to murderous Irani Mullahs. But dead U.S. soldiers, murdered Iranian schoolgirls, U.S. farmers, gas prices, good taste, those possessing an IQ in excess of 85, and probably most other people alive.
Because among a long list of just flat-out, head-buried-in-feces, stupid-arse things the untreated gonorrhea goon has done, this may just be the dumbest. How do you go from free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to a giant toll like we’re stuck in Blazing Saddles? I give you the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
So as Iran now enacts tolls on global shipping via one of the world’s key oil chokepoints, this story just got a lot bigger: it’s no longer about just his warmongering or changing the subject from himself and his billionaire predator friends in the Epstein files. It’s about global leverage, oil prices, shipping extortion, and Trump’s unbelievable, pathetic, physical and intellectual febrility.
Imagine if someone told you a few weeks ago, when this mentally and morally blighted ignoramus started a war for no reason, that Iran would now be charging $2 million on ships passing thru the Strait of Hormuz? Effectively boosting its economy by 15%--which I’m sure won’t be used on enriching uranium as Trump tore up the agreement that was preventing that--as American consumers foot the bill?
We were doing just fine. But that’s when Trump always steps in to do what he does...what he’s done his whole life. Which is fuck everything up
It’s sort of impressive how badly this dolt can screw things in no time. Like the man has a gift for ensuring everything crossing is his path is demonstrably worse than when he arrived. To quote, well, myself, from the show, “just a wholly absurd outcome for a wholly absurd president who engaged in a wholly unnecessary attack.”
The ultimate checkmate. For the man with the ultimate checkered history of failure as a lifestyle choice.
