Whispering sweet apocalyptic nothings
Mike Huckabee, heaven help us, has the ear of the president on what to do in Iran
By Sam Bellamy
When contemplating whether to order U.S. military action abroad, presidents should seek the advice of learned professionals who possess the experience, expertise, historical perspective and sound judgment necessary to arrive at the best decision.
Or, what the hell … they could just see what Mike Huckabee has to say.
“Mr. President, God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential President in a century — maybe ever,” Huckabee texted Donald Trump earlier this week. “The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else.”
Trump, not surprisingly, thought this was a pretty smart thing to say, maybe the smartest thing anyone’s ever said, so he shared Huckabee’s full text on Truth Social for the world to see. The White House did the same on X.
“You have many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is ONLY one voice that matters,” continues Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Besides Trump’s own voice? Who on earth could that be?
Oh. Riiight. Higher.
“I believe you will hear from heaven, and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s,” Huckabee explains.
OK, show of hands here: How many people think it’s a good idea to encourage Trump to listen out for previously unheard voices in that word salad head of his?
Should we really risk the chance he’ll mistake some randomly misfiring neuron as the voice of God?
C’mon, Huckabee, help us out here. Don’t fill the most-consequential-president-ever’s head with any crazy ideas.
“No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours,” Huckabee writes. “Not since Truman in 1945.”
Great. Well, that’s just great – he had to go and bring up Hiroshima.
Trump may actually be familiar with that part of U.S. history, thanks to Tulsi Gabbard’s recent cryptic video about her foray to Hiroshima. In the video, she warns us that “political elite and warmongers” are pushing us “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.”
But Huckabee isn’t so sure the end of the world is a terrible thing.
As Fight the Fire’s Mike Sorrell explained in columns earlier this year, Huckabee is an extremist Christian Zionist and Christian Nationalist and part of a group of American evangelicals who view Israel not so much as the home of the Jewish people but as a stepping stone to the return of Christ.
“Trump’s mandate as envisioned by Huckabee isn’t to save the Jews,” Tristan Sturm, a scholar on apocalyptic thought, wrote in a piece this week for The Forward, a Jewish news outlet. “Rather, it’s to bring about an imminent Rapture, during which all true believers will be lifted into auditorium seats in Heaven to watch Christ defeat the Antichrist’s armies at Tel Megiddo.”
Sturm explains: “The specific Christian theology to which Huckabee subscribes, known as dispensational premillennialism, promotes a narrative that the whole of history, past and future, is already written. Rather conspiratorially, it suggests that elect believers have the knowledge to interpret future history by claiming to read the Bible literally.
“What this means: Despite their infallible belief that the future is foretold, Christian Zionists grant themselves some agency by claiming their actions were guided by God. If Trump chooses to act as another Esther [who saved the Jewish people from genocide in what is present-day Iran], in this framework, he is doing so as part of the pre-established chain of actions that will lead to the Rapture.
“To Christian Zionists with dispensationalist beliefs, this theological loophole essentially depoliticises any culpability they might have for their actions …”
In other words, Huckabee is in a hurry to meet Jesus and Trump is an Uber driver about 10 minutes away.
Gabbard told Congress a few months ago that U.S. intelligence indicates Iran is at least a few years away from building a nuclear bomb. Reminded of that by reporters this week, Trump said, “I don’t care what she says.”
Since the video, Gabbard has been excluded from some Iran discussions, so this week she reversed herself and said she agrees with Trump that Iran could be weeks or months from a nuclear bomb.
The fake media, she said, told lies about her earlier statement that U.S. intelligence shows “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003."
If all of this reminds you of the Bush administration using bogus claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to our invasion in 2003, you wouldn’t be wrong. But Trump claims it’s not at all the same.
“Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction. I never thought there were. And that was somewhat pre-nuclear,” Trump said this week, claiming he was opposed to the war in Iraq from the start, which is, of course, a lie.
“Somewhat pre-nuclear”? The world hasn’t been pre-nuclear since the Manhattan Project, that thing Huckabee alluded to. Yes, North Korea has gained nuclear capability in recent years, but Trump claims he has that under control. Otherwise, we’re sitting on the same capability to blow up the world several times over that we have been for roughly 80 years.
The focus of White House discussion is reportedly on using a so-called bunker buster on an Iranian nuclear facility deep underground in Fordow, but The Guardian in London is reporting that some Pentagon leaders have said that to truly destroy the facility, the U.S. would need to use a “small” tactical nuclear weapon. Defense officials said Trump is not considering the option.
NBC News reports that Trump is relying on advice about his next steps in Iran from Vice President JD Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of State/interim national security advisor Marco Rubio and Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.
And, it appears, Huckabee.
Perhaps you just heard a voice in your head saying, “God help us.” That one’s probably real.
