WASHINGTON, DC, USA. — This is the full, brain-melting, day-by-day autopsy of the most dishonest four months of adjudicated rapist, alleged pedophile, alleged child sex trafficker and US President, Donald John Trump’s modern foreign policy.
THE ONE-HOUR PRESIDENT
One hour. Sixty minutes. That is the certified, lab-tested, peer-reviewed shelf life of any Donald Trump foreign policy announcement before reality wanders in and disembowels it.
This Saturday just gone, Trump gets up, puffs out whatever is left of his chest, and tells the planet a deal with Iran will be “announced shortly.”
A beautiful deal. A perfect deal. A deal that will finally, FINALLY, reopen the Strait of Hormuz so the world’s oil can move and your wallet can stop bleeding out at the pump. One hour later, the time it takes to watch a quarter of footy and demolish a meat pie, Iran’s own state-aligned Fars News strolls out and says, roughly translated, yeah nah, the strait stays under Iranian management, champ.
Not next year. Not next month. Within the hour. The man could not keep a story straight for the length of smoko.
The media keeps stamping the word BREAKING on this dross. It is not breaking. Nothing is breaking.
A clapped-out poker machine coughing up the same three cherries for the 24th time is not breaking news. It is a malfunction you have been gormlessly standing in front of for 11 weeks, feeding your coins in, wondering why you feel poorer.
Between the author starting this piece and finishing it, Iran went again.
Within hours of Trump’s so-called “largely negotiated” brag, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told the state news agency IRNA that nuclear issues are not even part of the current talks.
The focus, he said, is ending the war, full stop. Iran’s Fars agency went further and dismissed Trump’s account of the Strait of Hormuz as “incomplete and inconsistent with reality,” confirming the strait stays under Iranian management.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for Iran’s military command, put it plainest of all. Trump’s claim is “not true,” he said, and “Hormuz will stay fully under Iranian control. We decide who passes, when, and how.”
Trump announced a “largely negotiated” agreement, and within the same day, the other government in that agreement said the central plank, the nuclear file, had not been discussed, and the second plank, the strait, was not his to open.
He did not announce a deal that later fell through. He announced a deal that, by the other side’s own account, does not exist. That is a bloke standing alone at the altar, telling the congregation the bride said yes, while she is out in the car park telling everyone she has never met him.
Sit down, pour something strong, and let the author walk you through the whole rotten timeline. Because once you see it carved up and laid out on the bench, organ by organ, you will never trust a single syllable that falls out of Trump’s mouth or Truth Social rants, ever again.
THE WARM-UP ACT
This pattern is not new. It is not a war-stress thing. It is just who he is.
Wind back to March 2025, a full year before a shot was fired. Trump tells NBC there will be “bombing” if Iran does not negotiate, “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” So the bombing threats are not a 2026 invention. They are a hobby.
A man who threatens to flatten a country the way you or I might threaten to finally clean the gutters.
Then we get to 2026 proper. January 29: he warns that any future attack will be far worse if Iran does not comply.
On February 19 Trump announces a hard deadline that Iran has 10 to 15 days to do a nuclear deal, while simultaneously cooing that negotiations are “going well.” Both at once.
The threat and the sweet nothings, out of the same orange gob, in the same press gaggle. On February 26, at the State of the (collapsed former) Union address, Trump made clear that the deadline is backed by force.
On February 28, the negotiating ends as Trump launches Operation Epic Fury. And here is the kicker that the Carnegie Endowment flagged and nobody on Fox will ever say out loud: the war kicked off WHILE the US and Iran were still talking through Omani mediators.
The “negotiations” may have just been a stall, a bit of theatre to run the clock while the bombers fuelled up. Keep that in your back pocket. Every “deal is close” you are about to read comes from the same bloke who used the last round of talks as a decoy.
THE MAN WHO WON A WAR FORTY TIMES
War starts February 28. By the second week, Trump is already doing a victory lap with his shirt off.
On March 1, it’s that combat will continue until “all objectives are achieved,” that Trump reckons it will take “4 to 5 weeks.”
On March 7 Trump tells America’s closest allies, including Australia and Canada, that America: “We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won.”
Already won, Trump claims. On March 9 Trump claims that “the war is very complete, pretty much.” On March 11, at a rally in Kentucky, he goes full tinpot messiah and tells the MAGA crowd, “we won in the first hour, it was over.”
The first hour. This bloke declared total military victory faster than he can locate a toilet.
On March 15, Trump claimed that the United States has “ … essentially defeated Iran.” On March 20, Trump posts on Truth (sic) Social that “we [America] are [is] getting very close to meeting our objectives.”
On March 24, Trump again claims for the umpteenth time that the United States that “this war has been won.” He has now formally won this war more times than Australia has won the Ashes.
You know what this is? It is a punter at the track tearing up his losing ticket while screaming that his horse won. The horse is still running. The horse is, in fact, on fire. And he is doing a lap of the betting ring with his arms in the air.
GENOCIDE BY TRUTH SOCIAL
Winning gets boring, though, so in between the victory laps, Trump starts threatening to flatten the joint. And not in a measured, head-of-state, weighed-every-word way. In a way that should have a forensic psychiatrist quietly reaching for a billing pad.
On March 6, Trump claims that there will be no deal “except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”
Then on March 21, Trump demands that Iran open the Strait or I’ll obliterate your power plants. Then, on March 30, Trump screams into the Truth Social void of his unhinged lunatic followers (what one would call Nazis by any definition of such a word) to “do the deal, or I blow up your electric plants, your oil wells, and Kharg Island.”
On April 1, in a primetime address to the collapsing nation, Trump promises to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” On April 4, Trump posts that: “48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them.”
On April 5, on Easter Sunday no less, this is a message from a sitting President of the (soon to be former) United States of America.
Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.
Trump kisses his mother with that mouth. In the same Easter post, Trump announced that the coming (Easter) Tuesday would be, his exact words, “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day.” Let that one marinate in the pan. The man named two public holidays after war crimes he had not gotten around to committing yet.
On April 6, at a White House press conference, he tells the media that: “the entire country [Iran] can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” And then, the absolute showstopper, April 7, in the (US) morning:
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
Genuine, on-the-record, posted-between-a-tee-off-and-lunch threat to erase a 5,000-year-old civilisation. The New York Times ran a piece pointing out this had sailed well past bluster.
Here is the part that should be carved into stone above the door of every journalism school in the country. Four hours and 1 minute later, just past midnight, the very same Trump, using the very same thumbs, posted on his Truth Social feed that today was a: “A big day for World Peace!”
Within four hours, Trump went from threatening to wipe a civilisation off the face of the earth to scribbling a chirpy little peace greeting before the sun came up. This is not a foreign policy. Trump, like many American “seppos”, has the emotional range and attention span of a dying smoke alarm.
THE DEADLINE THAT NEVER WAS
Deadlines. We need a whole chapter for the deadlines.
Trump treats a deadline the way the rest of us treat a gym membership in January: announced with thunderous confidence, quietly abandoned, never spoken of again. The House of Commons Library, a research outfit so dry it makes a cracker biscuit look juicy, actually sat down and counted them. Somebody had to.
He set a hard, final, no-more-mucking-about deadline for March 21. Blew past it. Then on March 23, Trump blew past it.
Then Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum on March 26. Gone. Then April 6 and April 7. Then the ceasefire expiry of April 21, which Trump simply extended because the alternative was admitting the last six deadlines were all bullshit.
Seven separate “this is the final final FINAL line in the sand” moments. Seven.
Every last one of them drifting past like a tinny with no driver and a warm beer in the holder. If a tradie quoted you like this, if he gave you seven finish dates and turned up for none of them, you would have the dog onto him and a one-star review up before lunch. Trump has the nuclear codes. God help us all.
THE STRAIT THAT IS ALWAYS ABOUT TO OPEN
The Strait of Hormuz. The entire point of this American circus, although the (soon-to-be former) United States has always been a circus of unhinged raving lunatics. One fifth of the world’s oil goes through that channel, and reopening it is supposedly the prize at the bottom of every Trump cereal box.
Trump has declared it open, about to open, or part of an imminent deal at least eight separate times since the middle of April. On March 9, he flat-out claimed it had reopened. It had not.
On April 17, Trump falsely claimed that: “most of the points are already negotiated.” 8 times the strait has been gloriously, triumphantly “open.” It has been shut the entire time.
SIX DAYS IN MAY
A reporter put it to Trump plainly. No spin, no ten-part question, just the one thing every sane person on earth wants answered.
That is not diplomacy. That is an unhinged raving lunatic standing at a clay range bellowing “PULL” over and over with no clay, no shotgun, and no earthly idea why nothing is exploding. The rest of us are standing behind the United States, paying for the cartridges whilst Pine Gap provides Israeli soldiers and the United States with RADCOMM, SATELLITE and SIGINT military intelligence.
I guess Americans need intelligence from elsewhere, given seldom few – if any – Americans have any intelligence, or they wouldn’t love McDonald’s and call Macca’s “restaurants” and call Trump “President” when he’s not even fit to be the President of a collapsing country footy club.
“When are you going to be done giving Iran chances?” And what does the leader of the free world, the self-described greatest dealmaker in human history, do with that question? He keeps walking. He hoofs it. He treats a simple question from a working journalist like a process server at the front door. Because he has no answer. There is no answer. “Done” is not a setting this man has.
So if you reckon Trump has mellowed, that the war has worn the sharp edges off him and steadied his hand, have a good long squiz at the last six days. Because this is the stretch that should end his credibility in any nation that has not had its collective brain scooped out with a melon baller.
On May 5,Trump launches a brand new operation called “Project Freedom,” to push ships through the strait. He pauses it within the same day, citing “great progress.”
Thirteen hours later, the same bloke, with a fresh Truth Social rant, threatens that if Iran does not fold, “the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.” Great progress and a bombing threat, 13 hours apart.
On May 10, Iran sends a counter-proposal. Trump calls it “garbage,” says he did not even finish reading it, and declares the ceasefire is on “massive life support.”
Trump announces on May 18 that he has called off a “very major attack” on Iran that was scheduled for Tuesday. Trump says, out loud, to reporters, that he was “an hour away” from launching it.
An hour away from a major assault on a nation of nearly 90 million people, called off because some Gulf mates asked him to wait a couple of days.
Less than 24 hours later, on May 19, Trump is back at the microphone, threatening “another big hit,” which he helpfully pencils in for “Friday, Saturday, Sunday.” Trump scheduled the violence like a bin night.
By Saturday, May 23, the big hit has evaporated into thin air. It’s now suddenly a deal “largely negotiated.” And then he tells Axios, and I am quoting the man directly so nobody can accuse me of gilding it, that he is “50/50” on whether to sign a peace deal or bomb Iran.
Fifty-fifty. A coin toss. Trump shows more conviction in picking how long today’s red tie will be. Iran’s own foreign minister, Araghchi, put it better than any of us could: every day brings a different message from Washington, sometimes two in a single day. That is not a negotiating strategy. That is a man arguing with himself and losing every time he opens his mouth.
WHY YOU SHOULD GIVE A TOSS
Here is the part where it stops being funny and starts being your money.
Every single time Trump opens his gob, the global oil market lurches like a drunk on a moving train. Brent crude jumps on a “deal,” dives on a “big hit,” jumps again on the next “deal,” chasing this man’s moods like a dog chasing a laser pointer. When he called the ceasefire “life support” on 10 May, Brent shot up nearly three per cent in a single afternoon. One sulky adjective. Three per cent.
That volatility does not politely stay locked inside a Bloomberg terminal in Manhattan.
It rides all the way down the line to the pump. Sydney, Texas, the Blue Mountains, the Midwest, wherever you have got this open. You are paying, in real folding money, every single week, for the privilege of one washed-up American seppo bastard being constitutionally unable to choose between peace and genocide before his lunch is served.
His dummy spit is your fuel bill. His mood swing is your grocery shopping bill. That is the deal nobody asked you to sign up for.
TALLY THE SCORE
Let’s count the times the adjudicated rapists, alleged pedophile, child sex trafficker, and President of the collapsing United States, Donald John Trump, has declared the war won, the deal close, or an agreement about to be signed: at least 24.
The number of times Trump has threatened to bomb, obliterate, flatten, or wipe Iran off the map: at least 23.
Hard deadlines set and blown clean past: at least 7.
Major attacks were personally scheduled, then called off at the last minute: at least 3.
Times the Strait of Hormuz has been declared “open” or “about to open”: at least 8.
Times the Strait of Hormuz is actually open, on Trump’s terms, as of this morning: none. Zero. Not a single ship on his say-so.
That is the record. Four months. That is the so-called man holding the nuclear codes.
Trump is not a dealmaker. Trump never was or will be. Trump is a clapped-out fortune-telling machine that knows exactly three answers: “we won,” “big deal coming,” and “I will end your civilisation,” and he gives himself a good hard shake roughly every 90 minutes to see which one drops out.
The boy cried wolf, and eventually the whole village stopped sprinting down the hill, because a village can only be made a mug of so many times. Trump has cried Hormuz two dozen times now. The only ones still bolting toward the headline are the journalists hammering the word BREAKING onto the same recycled nothing, and the poor bastards at the pump bankrolling the entire pantomime.
Believe him when the strait opens, when the ships move. When the oil flows and the price drops, you can prove it with your own two eyes at the pump.
Until then. Fuck the seppos.
This article was originally published by “I Fucking Love Australia” on their Substack page. It is republished in the public interest. You can read the original article here.
For Americans reading this, who don’t understand Australian slang:
smoko: A short work break, originally taken for a cigarette. Used here as a unit of time, roughly 10 to 15 minutes, which is comfortably longer than Trump can hold a single position on Iran.
seppo: Australian slang for an American based on ‘Yank’ rhyming with septic tank, so “septic tank” is not just a septic tank, it refers to Americans and is often shortened, like most Aussie slang (eg it’s Maccas, not McDonald’s in Australia) to simply “seppos.”
yeah nah: A complete and grammatically correct sentence. It means “no.” The “yeah” is politeness, the “nah” is the actual ruling. It is what Iran’s news agency said to Trump’s Saturday brag, and what Australians say to roughly everything.
cake-hole: The mouth. Deployed specifically and exclusively when the mouth in question is talking absolute rot.
dummy spit: A tantrum. A “dummy” is a baby’s pacifier, and spitting it out is the foundational act of throwing a wobbly. A grown adult locked in a permanent dummy spit is the current operating condition of the United States presidency.
dropkick: A useless, hopeless, beyond-help individual. Affectionate when aimed at a mate, ruthless when aimed at a head of state.
have a squiz: To take a look at something. “Have a squiz at that” is an open invitation to inspect, usually a mess, usually one somebody else made.
have the dog on someone: To pursue a person aggressively over money or a broken promise. From the mental image of setting the dog on a debtor. What every Australian would rightly do to a tradesman who blew 7 deadlines in a row.
a mug: A fool, specifically one who has been taken advantage of. To be “made a mug of” is to be played for an idiot. See also: anyone still reading the word BREAKING above a Trump Iran headline.
poker machine: A slot machine, known here as a “pokie.” A coin-operated gambling device, beloved of Australian pubs and clubs, engineered to take your money slowly while flashing just enough cherries to keep you standing there. A near-perfect model of the Trump Iran negotiations: same three results on a loop, no payout, and only a mug keeps feeding it.
