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🎶 Friday Listening: Black Sabbath - War Pigs (Live)

It's Friday, and you know what that means. The end of the work week for us proles, and the beginning of the war week for the Trump administration. Will we be putting boots on Iranian soil? Find out after the closing bell rings on Wall Street.

This is the topic of my new reported monologue, up on our YouTube channel and podcast feed now. I wanted to establish two things with this piece. The first is to show the overall pattern of how President Trump makes his most escalatory moves in the war, both in terms of his verbal bellicosity and actual military firepower, when the markets are closed over the weekend. Then he tries to calm the Street with a well-timed announcement either Sunday night, when commodities market open, or Monday morning before the stock market opens. The other point is to show some of the suspicious trading patterns that occur in the narrow windows around some of these announcements, like the surge in oil and stock future contracts that hit the tape just before Trump's post on Monday morning that the US had "good and productive" talks with Iran, which of course caused stocks to jump and oil to drop and whomever bought those futures to make tens of millions of dollars in the span of 5 minutes. Lucky timing, I guess.

This little charade of planning the war around market hours is already showing signs of getting old. Yesterday afternoon, 10 minutes after the market ended its worst day of the war, Trump said he was extending his "pause" on attacking Iranian energy infrastructure for another 10 days. Oil fell 6%...and then it immediately rebounded, erasing that decline. Meaning investors are getting numb to the president's announcements. Because the fact is, even though we keep being told the war is going GREAT and we're WINNING, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. You know what that means? It means Iran is winning. Because they are the ones with the leverage, even after a month of being bombed to smithereens from the air. Sorry if that goes against what you’re hearing on Fox News, but it’s the truth. 

If this was going so well, why is Trump so angry NATO isn't getting involved in the Gulf? The president has been lashing out at the alliance for not joining the fight against Iran, calling it a "paper tiger" and that the US will "remember" they failed this loyalty test. I love the idea that the thing this conflict is missing is the French Navy’s involvement. Wait, a readout of one of Trump's calls with NATO just crossed the wire. Let's take a look.

Hello, this is NATO. How may I direct your call? 

It's Donald. I need your help with this Iran thing. Can you send troops? A boat? Anything?

I'm sorry sir, but you must have dialed the wrong number. This is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Not the Middle East Pigf-ck Help Desk. Don't worry, common mistake. Let me transfer you.

I am just astounded — astounded — at all the post-hoc rationalizations for this war that I hear on television, social media and in my inbox from so many of you. There's something unmooring about feeling so sure in my bones that this entire thing is a gigantic disaster that is going to have God knows what unknown second-order effects, and seeing so many people either blase about those downstream effects, or adamant that whatever they are, it's the price we had to pay for finally dealing with the big, bad Iranians. JD Vance proffered a new justification yesterday at another one of these obsequious Cabinet meetings where everyone goes around saying how great Dear Leader is. Vance suggested we had to go to war to prevent Iran from obtaining.... nuclear-armed suicide vests. Yes, you read that right. I transcribed the quote because it was so ridiculous:

"You talk about people who walk into a crowded supermarket and have a vest on, and they blow up the vest and a couple of people get killed, and that's a terrible tragedy. What happens when what's on the vest is not something that can kill a couple of people, but can kill many, many tens of thousands of people?”

What are you talking about, brother? The country that's been "weeks away" from getting a nuke for decades, but doesn't have one that can fit on a missile, is also somehow in possession of tactical warheads that they are going to smuggle here and blow up inside a Kroger? They really think you were born yesterday.

That was actually only the second most absurd thing I heard over the last 24 hours. Here's conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, whose entire project is about dragging us into Israel's wars, telling his audience to prepare for a long war of attrition in Iran and American troops who will bravely sacrifice their lives so that "energy will become cheap again because the Strait of Hormuz will be free again." You know, LIKE IT WAS A MONTH AGO!

Do these people hear themselves? Do you need any more evidence that the entire Trump project has been hijacked by the neocons? Seriously, if you're a MAGA true believer, what is it going to take for you to realize you've been bamboozled? Vance staked his entire career on being anti-war and now he sounds like the excavated ghosts of Condi Rice and Don Rumsfeld talking about how we need to "fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them here". People like Shapiro manufacturing consent for a new Vietnam.  I legitimately feel like I am going insane. I cannot believe we are doing this again, running the exact same playbook, and some people are falling for it.

Serious question for any Trump supporters reading this. What did you get for your vote? Because my recollection is the point of voting for this senile narcissist again was "no new wars and cheaper groceries." Now you've got inflation going UP, thanks to his idiotic tariffs and a war he explicitly promised not to start, with a price tag of $200B and climbing. That's more than we've spent on the four-year war in Ukraine, btw. $5 gas by summer. A weaker dollar, and a stock market running off the fumes of an AI bubble about to pop if energy prices don't come down. Mortgage rates back above 6% and climbing. You'll own nothing and like it. Government spending higher than ever, in spite of whatever that DOGE experiment was. A national debt going up by trillions. Bribes and insider trading everywhere you look. Air travel that is completely broken. If you make it through the 3-hour TSA line, hopefully you aren't killed in flight because of our overworked and understaffed ATC system.  Did you even get your promised mass deportations?! Nope. But you've got a likely ground war with Iran incoming at least. It just keeps getting better!

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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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Carlo examines how Trump wages war and makes policy when markets aren’t open to feel the pain — and how some lucky traders are profiting off of the chaos.

Watch the newest episode here. ⬅

After weeks of disruption and brinkmanship, the Senate approved a plan to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but without new funding for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations and parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). 

Lawmakers couldn't reach a grand bargain on immigration enforcement. They simply ran out of runway, and the pressure on both sides to end the shutdown only intensified, as TSA staff shortages began to cause long delays and traveler chaos at airports.

President Donald Trump's move to direct DHS to pay TSA officers during the lapse eased immediate pressure while talks stalled. It was clear the situation couldn't last. Everyone would have to take the L. 

President Trump told an archbishop to keep his speech short at a Greek Independence Day celebration at the White House. I was there, and while some in the crowd laughed, I also heard some gasp.

The president was in a hurry. He began his remarks by saying he was late for other commitments but decided to stop by the event anyway.

The event took place in the East Room, and the media was placed far from the stage. Some were on the left side facing the stage and the rest were all the way in the back. The president did not take questions from the press, and even shouting one was impossible given the room arrangement.

The whole event felt like a rally, with most attendees filming and taking pictures the entire time as if they were at a rock concert.

Among the most notable guests I spotted were U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., and former White House Chief of Staff from Trump’s first term Reince Priebus.

I overheard attendees say the following:

“The Greeks are here.”

“How many Greeks can we fit here.”

Overall, there were a couple hundred people, and the event did not make much news as the president surprisingly stuck to his speech, something he rarely does.

“Do you remember when we had lunch years ago at Trump Tower? You have not changed... You may be even better looking.”

— President Trump to Fox’s Dana Perino when asked if Iran’s population has food and water.

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].