#dignified transfer

Trump isn't attending dignified transfer of soldiers who died in Lithuania

The four Army soldiers died in a training exercise in Lithuania. Trump chose to attend his personal business partners’ dinner Thursday and play golf Friday.

It has been nine days since Trump began a war with Iran for reasons that are clear to no one, including Trump and his man-child Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. To them, war is about blowing things up. They lack the education, experience, and intelligence to understand the inevitable global consequences of war with a major Middle Eastern country of 90 million people that controls the Strait of Hormuz, through which 25% of seaborne oil and 20% of liquefied natural gas transit. Nor do they comprehend how their reckless action in the Middle East will encourage Russia in Ukraine and beyond.

What follows is sobering news about the cascading consequences of Trump’s illegal war. We can stop it by demanding that our representatives in Congress do their job—to exercise oversight of the executive in matters of war. The point of reviewing the quickly unfolding consequences of the war is not to frighten people, but to embolden them to reclaim our primacy as the government’s source of legitimacy and authority.

With that framework of hope, let’s take a look at the latest.

Prices are on the rise at gasoline pumps in the US, to which Trump replied “[I]f they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.” It remains to be seen how high gas prices will rise, but even “a little bit” to Trump can be the difference between being able to commute to work or not for Americans earning minimum wage or living on fixed incomes.

By show of hands, how many people believe Trump has ever pumped gasoline into a car?

While Trump is dismissive of increases in gas prices, the rest of the world is preparing for a generational “oil shock.” Oil pushed past $100 per barrel over the weekend, causing the Wall Street Journal to lead its Sunday edition with a feature article entitled, The Long-Feared Persian Gulf Oil Squeeze Is Upon Us. (Gift article accessible to all.)

Per the Journal,

The doomsday some oil analysts believed could never happen was coming to pass. Unable to ship crude to world markets, much bigger producers in Iraq began to run out of places to put it. The country cut output by more than two-thirds. Tanks in Kuwait were next to fill up. U.S. oil prices vaulted above $100 a barrel Sunday for the first time since the fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine. “In the whole written history of the strait, it has never been closed, ever,” said JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva. “To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario.”

Per CNN, oil hit $108 by Sunday evening, with leading experts suggesting that the price could reach $150 per barrel by the end of March if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. CNN, Oil prices soar past $100 a barrel as war escalates in Iran.

The oil shock has already hit the gas pumps in the US:

“In the U.S., a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.45 on Sunday, about 47 cents more than a week earlier, according to AAA motor club. Diesel was selling for about $4.60 a gallon, a weekly increase of about 83 cents.” See Boston.com, Crude oil prices surpass $100 a barrel.

The US stock market lost all of its gains for the year last week and turned negative for the year. As of Sunday evening, the Asian markets (trading on Monday) and the DOW and S&P futures markets were down 2%+, suggesting a very bad opening to the US stock markets on Monday. See CNBC, Dow futures tumble over 1,000 points as U.S. oil nears $120 a barrel to begin the week’s trading.

Trump has admitted that he believed the war would last “four to five weeks.” What Trump and his military leaders failed to anticipate was the response of the Iranians, who just selected the Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, as Iran’s new leader, even as Tehran widened its attacks across the Mideast to strike oil and water facilities crucial to its desert sheikdoms.” See AP News, Iran names Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader.

The new Supreme Leader Khamenei is reportedly close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and is seen as a continuation of his father’s radical, hardline ideology. See Who is Mojtaba Khamenei? Iran’s hardline next supreme leader, explained.

Per Axios,

Between the lines: Mojtaba is expected to be more hardline than his father, and his ascent means the Iranian regime may get more repressive. He has close ties to some of the most “ideologically extremist clerics” who have been at the forefront of the regime’s most violent crackdowns, per the Council.

Of course, Iran has suffered significant damage to its war-making ability over the last nine days. But eradicating its nuclear capability may require a ground invasion. See NYTimes, op-ed, W.J. Hennigan and Massimo Calabresi, There Is One Crucial Reason We’re Talking About Boots on the Ground (Gift article, accessible to all.)

As Hennigan and Calabresi explain, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium likely sits in underground vaults not susceptible to destruction by conventional bombing. One approach to seize the material is to launch a ground assault by elite troops trained to seize nuclear materials—an assault never before attempted.

Of course, it is a “best-case scenario” if the nuclear stockpile is still in one location and under the control of whatever functioning government exists in Iran. The cannisters containing the material could have been scattered across Iran in the early days of the US war—a possibility that would put the materials within reach of rogue states and stateless terrorists.

So, it is not enough to destroy Iran’s nuclear processing capability. The US must destroy or seize the existing stockpiles of enriched uranium—a task most likely accomplished through ground assault or negotiations, which is where the parties were nine days ago, before Trump pulled the trigger on a reckless war.

All the above is bad news that is difficult to hear and process. But talking about problems is only half the equation. We have agency. We grant the government legitimacy and power. We must withdraw both—through peaceful protest and regime change at the ballot box. It is not too late for Congress to begin to exercise oversight of Trump and his illegal war.

As of Sunday evening, DHS is still in partial shutdown mode, and the Pentagon will need a supplemental appropriation to continue its air war against Iran. Democrats and a handful of Republicans can stop (or cut short) the illegal war in short order by denying the Pentagon new funds.

Do not give up, do not lose hope. The coming global oil shock and the unpopularity of the war will weaken Trump and the GOP’s resolve to protect him at all costs. Although Trump is currently unrestrained, we are seizing the momentum. Stay strong, and show up!

Trump wears a golfing cap to the dignified transfer of the bodies of US soldiers.

The dignified transfer of the bodies of US soldiers killed overseas is one of the most solemn and mournful duties performed by a president of the United States. Any perceived indignity during the ceremony is viewed as an insult to the honored dead. President Joe Biden was severely criticized because some people believed he glanced at his wristwatch while waiting for the bodies to be returned to US soil.

On Saturday, Trump fidgeted through the dignified transfer ceremony, compulsively fiddling with his jacket buttons and lapel. Worse, he wore a white golfing cap and never took it off. By tradition, civilians remove their hats during ceremonies, e.g., during the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner.

There is no suggestion that the golf cap is part of Trump’s regalia as Commander in Chief. To the contrary, the golf cap is available on Trump’s campaign site for $55.

Trump’s disrespect provoked widespread condemnation. See International Business Times, Trump Sparks Major Outrage on Social Media After Wearing a Baseball Cap During Transfer of US Soldiers Killed in the Iran War.

This is not a “gotcha” story. It is about Trump’s lack of understanding and empathy. As I wrote above, Trump sees war as “blowing things up.” Dealing with the bodies of soldiers he sent to war is—for Trump—an annoyance that delayed his weekend golf by a day, to Sunday, when he wore the same golf hat that he wore during the dignified transfer. See Daily Beast, Trump Blasted for Golfing as More Die in His War.

Fox News was so embarrassed by Trump’s behavior that the network used video from a previous dignified transfer during which Trump did not wear a hat. When Fox was criticized for attempting to cover up Trump’s disrespect, Fox corrected the video and apologized for its “mistake.” See The Guardian, Fox News uses old clip of Trump after he wore hat while saluting slain US soldiers.

Trump’s inability to understand and appreciate the sacrifice that he is demanding from men and women who volunteered to defend their country is appalling. And it is another reason that we must do our best to ensure that Congress exercises oversight of this illegal war as quickly as possible.

Trump threatens to veto every bill until SAVE Act passes

Demonstrating his increasing desperation, Trump has threatened to veto any bills brought to his desk before he is able to sign the SAVE Act—a voter suppression bill that seeks to impose VoterID and proof of citizenship requirements. Notably, Trump is also threatening to impose those requirements by way of executive order—a move that would be immediately invalidated by the courts. See The Hill, Donald Trump threatens to veto all bills until SAVE Act passes Senate

Trump’s threat to veto all bills before the SAVE Act makes its way to his desk is an acknowledgment that he has no authority to impose VoterID and proof of citizenship requirements by executive order.

Concluding Thoughts

I received a remarkable “group email” from a reader who encouraged everyone in her address book to attend the next No Kings rally on March 28, 2026.

The reader wrote, in part,

Dear family, friends, and anyone who is in my email address book,

I am doing something audacious. I am writing to everyone in my address book. I know some of you well - you are in my heart. Some of you are people I have met and may have lost contact with. Some of you are names that got into my address book by chance email, and I don’t really know you that well. I am writing to all of you anyway.

That’s not my audacity. My audacity is that I am, as a political activist, writing to ask you to take action:

On March 28th, there is a nationwide  No Kings rally.

I am asking each of you to attend the rally in your area. 

Clear your calendar. Make a plan. Attend your rally with a commitment to be peaceful. But commit to being there. 

It is indeed an audacious act for the reader to reach out to everyone in her address book to encourage attendance at a No Kings Rally. While I understand that many readers would not feel comfortable making a similar request to hundreds of people, each of us can commit to asking one or two people to join us on March 28.

If everyone who attended the last No Kings protest recruits one new participant, March 28 will be the largest one-day political protest in American history by a large margin! If we can make that happen, the cowards in Congress will reconsider their absolute loyalty to a man who cares not a wit for them—and who is recklessly plunging the world into an “oil shock recession.”

The time to act is now, while we still have time to prevent far worse damage. We can do that—together. Ask a friend, acquaintance, or complete stranger to join you on March 28!

"Now the irrepressibly venal Donald Trump is trying to shake down America’s abundance of dumbasses by exploiting the deaths of U.S. service members and peddling access to “unfiltered” national security briefings."

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

President Donald Trump isn’t attending the dignified transfer of four American soldiers who died in Lithuania, because he has instead chosen to attend a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his country club in Doral, Florida. Staff Sgt. Jose Duenez Jr., Staff Sgt. Edvin F. Franco, Pfc. Dante D. Taitano, and Staff Sgt. Troy S. Knutson-Collins, all in their twenties, died during a training exercise in the Baltic region of Europe when the military vehicle they were driving sank into a swamp, Military.com reported. Their bodies began their dignified transfer back to the United States on Thursday and are expected to arrive on Friday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. In place of Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be present at the transfer, according to Fox News. “The President of the United States as of now will not meet the remains of our service members when they land at Dover…because he will be at a golf tournament,” Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote in a post on X. “Now you see why we are worried about his cuts to the [Department of Veterans Affairs]?” Unlike Trump, thousands of Lithuanians have honored the soldiers, lining the streets of Vilnius as the hearses carrying their bodies drove to the airport on Thursday. [...] For Trump, ignoring the dignified transfer is about as respectful of fallen service members as when, during the 2024 presidential campaign, he used the graves of dead soldiers to stage a photo op. Last August, Trump’s campaign used a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to create campaign content, with his staffers verbally abusing and even getting into a physical altercation with a cemetery official who told the campaign that it was against the rules to film in a section of the cemetery where recent casualties are buried. All of this is part of Trump’s long history of dishonoring fallen soldiers. He has called soldiers who died "suckers" and "losers." And in 2018, he canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, where thousands of American troops who died in World War I are buried, because feared the rain would mess up his hair and “he did not believe it important to honor American war dead,” according to The Atlantic, which cited four people familiar with his statements.

Cadet Bone Spurs has zero respect for our troops, as he blew off a dignified transfer ceremony honoring 4 dead American soldiers who died in Lithuania to go golfing instead.

See Also:

Trump Goes to Dover to Receive America’s Fallen from Syria Suicide Blast

Four Americans were killed in Manbij, Syria when a suicide bomber detonated his vest near a restaurant. At least 16 people were killed in the blast. The four Americans have been identified. On Saturday, President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan traveled to Dover, Delaware to meet with the families of the fallen and honor them during the dignified…

Ann Telnaes

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 8, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 09, 2026

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump was among the dignitaries who attended the dignified transfer returning the remains of the six U.S. soldiers killed in the military action against Iran to the United States for burial. At the transfer, Trump wore a white USA baseball cap for sale in his campaign store.

Recognizing that Americans would recoil from seeing Trump wear a baseball cap at a dignified transfer, the Fox News Channel declined to show how he had looked yesterday and aired old footage of Trump from his first term without the hat. Caught in their lie, the Fox News Channel admitted they had shown the wrong footage but claimed it was inadvertent. They did not, however, show the real footage from yesterday, showing Trump wearing his merch.

The producers at the Fox News Channel seemed to recognize that Trump’s USA hat at a dignified transfer looked like deliberate disrespect for those whose lives had been taken in the service of our country. They seemed to understand the gulf between the administration’s cartoonish approach to the war in Iran and the reality of war for those participating in it.

The official social media account of the White House has portrayed its military adventures in Iran as a movie, or a game, splicing images from what appear to be footage of U.S. military strikes with clips from adventure movies and video games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Undeterred by criticism, White House communications director Steven Cheung called for supporters to show their enthusiasm for one of the videos in comments below it.

Last Thursday, March 5, Trump talked to ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl about the war. “I hope you are impressed,” he said. “How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better. How do you like the performance?” Karl answered that “nobody questions the success of the military operation, the concern is what happens next.”

“Forget about next,” Trump answered. “They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back.”

“We’re marching through the world,” Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) told a laughing Maria Bartiromo of the Fox News Channel this morning. “We’re cleaning out the bad guys. We’re gonna have relationships with new people that will make us prosperous and safe. I have never seen anybody like it. This is Ronald Reagan Plus. Donald Trump is resetting the world in a way nobody could have dreamed of a year ago. He is the greatest commander in chief of all time. Our military is the best of all time. Iran is going down, and Cuba is next.”

The administration’s approach to foreign affairs appears to be the logical outcome of two generations of a peculiar U.S. cowboy individualism. Since the 1950s, right-wing ideologues in the United States have embraced a fantasy world in which a hero cuts through the red tape of laws and government bureaucracy to do what he thinks is right. That image was fed by TV westerns that rose after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to portray a world in which dominant white men delivered justice to their communities without the interference of government. By 1959, there were twenty-six westerns on TV. In one week in March 1959, eight of the top ten TV shows were westerns.

The idea of white men acting for freedom and justice on their own, unhampered by a government that served Black Americans, people of color, and women, became a guiding image for the rising right wing beginning with Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. It found a home in the Republican Party with Ronald Reagan in 1980, as supporters took a stand against a federal government they insisted was redistributing the tax dollars of hardworking Americans to undeserving minorities and women.

That cowboy individualism spread into foreign affairs as well, until by 2003, right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh could use it as shorthand to defend President George W. Bush’s military operation in Iraq. Just after the 2003 capture of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Limbaugh gushed about presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who had ignored the rules imposed by “liberals” and fixed what was wrong with the world. Limbaugh explained that Reagan was a cowboy: “He was brave, positive, and gave us hope. He wore a white hat…. Liberals hated Ronald Reagan.”

Limbaugh continued: “They also hate President Bush because he distinguishes between good and evil. He calls a spade a spade, and after 9-11 called evil ‘evil,’ without mincing any words, to the shock of the liberal establishment. That’s what cowboys do, you know…. In the old West, might did not make right. Right made might. Cowboys in white hats were always on the side of right, and that was their might. I am glad my President is a cowboy. He got his man! Cowboys do, you know.”

In Breaking the News today, James Fallows wrote that that way back in 2015, he concluded that “it had become far too easy for political leaders to strut and posture about ‘honoring the troops’—the Hegseth term ‘warfighters’ was not yet in common use—but then to commit them in half-thought-through “forever” wars, since so much of the public was so insulated from the consequences.”

But if Trump’s Iran adventure began with the strutting and posturing of a military performance, it is running hard into reality. It appears that Trump saw the strikes themselves as the culmination of his performance and did not have a plan for what would happen after them. He has said he was surprised that the conflict has included neighboring states.

Now the ships that carry about 20% of the world’s oil are not traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, and oil prices are surging. Rising oil prices are already hitting Americans at the gas pump—gasoline prices rose 14% last week—and will also hit the economy in general as jet fuel and diesel for trucks and tractors become more expensive. Trump tonight posted that high oil prices are “a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY.”

The public support for the financing of this war is different from that of past adventures. While President George W. Bush could borrow to pay the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, 2026 is a different story. The national debt has ballooned in the two decades since the Iraq war, and Republicans last summer justified their dramatic cuts to government programs, including healthcare and supplemental nutrition assistance, by insisting that it must be addressed. Now Trump is spending an estimated $1 billion a day on Operation Epic Fury, highlighting that while there was no money for programs that helped the American people, there appears to be plenty for a war of choice in the Middle East.

Since the 1980s, Republican presidents have been able to sell their military adventures with the argument that, like cowboys, they were cutting through bureaucracy and laws in order to do what was right. As Limbaugh described it, they were never looking for trouble, but when trouble came they faced it with courage. They were always on the side of right, defending good people against bad people. They had high morals and spoke the truth. They were “a beacon of integrity in the wild, wild West.”

The fantasy of those who embraced cowboy individualism was that if only they could have full sway, they would solve the world’s problems and keep Americans safe. But the conduct of the war is starting to illustrate that any claims of a moral code disappear when a leader exercises military might on a whim. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. will not be bound by any “stupid rules of engagement” and will rain down “[d]eath and destruction from the sky all day long. This was never meant to be a fair fight,” he said, “and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them when they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

On Wednesday, March 4, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in international waters. The vessel was not participating in hostilities; it was off Sri Lanka returning from a naval exercise organized by India in the Bay of Bengal. In the past, the U.S. has participated in those exercises.

Andrew Roth, Cate Brown, and Hannah Ellis-Peterson of The Guardian noted that submarine attacks since World War II have been incredibly rare, as are attacks on vessels not taking part in hostilities. The ship was believed to have 180 people on board; Sri Lankan officials said they rescued 32 and recovered 87 bodies from the water. Hegseth boasted: “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters.”

On Thursday, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali of Reuters reported that the U.S. appears to bear responsibility for the February 28 strike on a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran, in the early waves of the Israeli-U.S. attack. The strike appears to have killed 168 people or more, many of them children. Since the Reuters report, others have noted that the U.S. was operating in the area and Israel was not. The strike remains under investigation.

After Saturday’s dignified transfer, Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “I hate to do it, but it’s a part of war,” he said. “It’s a sad part of war.”

“It’s the bad part of war.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN