Jenny Braddock, Politics Editor, Reluctantly
April 8, 2025
They don’t tell you we’ve moved the B-2s unless they want someone to flinch. Diego Garcia—our leased-at-gunpoint island parked in the middle of the Indian Ocean—isn’t the kind of place you Google unless you’re hunting oil tankers or hiding bombers. But now? It’s practically trending. That’s what happens when the United States quietly sends six B-2 Spirit bombers, nearly a third of its active stealth fleet, to a base best known for its colonial guilt and thermonuclear parking spots. Each B-2 costs about $2 billion—yes, billion with a “B”—and chews through roughly $135,000 per flight hour, which means that just one bomber farting around over the Indian Ocean for the afternoon costs more than your grandma’s house. This deployment is shaping up to be one of the most expensive middle fingers ever extended from 40,000 feet. And because it wouldn’t be a proper prelude to World War III without nautical hardware, a U.S. Navy destroyer has reportedly been spotted patrolling near the island, just in case anyone tries to lob a drone at our flying yachts. All that firepower floating and flying over a speck of reef because nobody in Washington can back off the oil-soaked chessboard of the Middle East.
This isn’t diplomacy. This is saber-dancing with jet fuel. France—yes, France—just declared that war with Iran is “almost inevitable” if nuclear talks fail. Spoiler alert: they’ve already failed. Iran’s leadership told Trump to stuff his olive branch back in the envelope it rode in on, rejecting direct negotiations in favor of middleman diplomacy via Oman. (AP News) Which is fine, because Trump doesn’t seem to understand how diplomacy—or math—works anyway. Now Tehran’s sabers are out too: Iranian state media is warning they’ll launch missiles and long-range drones at Diego Garcia if it’s used as a launchpad for U.S. strikes. (Israel Hayom)
That brings us to the economic flank of this three-ring circus. Over the weekend, Trump’s tariff policy was exposed as mathematically illiterate, the policy equivalent of rubbing peanut butter on a smoke alarm and wondering why the fire won’t stop. The error? Even the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank not known for panicking over Republican economic policy, flagged the math as totally broken. The AEI report revealed that Trump’s team used the wrong elasticity value in its formula for determining tariffs—0.25 instead of the correct 0.945—resulting in tariffs nearly four times higher than intended. Vietnam, for example, got slapped with a 46% tariff when it should’ve been closer to 12%. This wasn’t policy—it was numerology with a head injury.
Even Trump’s friends on Wall Street are sweating through their American flag socks. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called the tariffs “massive and disproportionate,” warning of inflation and a body blow to consumer spending. (Investopedia) Meanwhile, the stock market puked into its own shoes, with the Dow swinging 700 points like a drunk hula-hooper. (Business Insider) And John Oliver, never one to miss a target this fat and slow-moving, dedicated a segment to the “idiotic and flawed” math that’s now setting the global economy on fire. (The Guardian)
But the show must go on. Pentagon insiders are already pre-gaming for another forever war, briefing journalists in back rooms like they’re running a fantasy draft for World War III. There are whispers, war-gaming scenarios, and PowerPoints featuring phrases like “strategic deterrence posture” that basically mean “we might vaporize a city, but only because we love freedom.” Meanwhile, Iran plays it cool, their nuclear sites humming quietly while U.S. bombers fan out across the sky like the world’s most expensive poker bluff.
It’s all the same sick loop: bombs in the air, tariffs on the books, and nobody left who knows how to read either. We’ve got stealth aircraft positioned for preemptive strikes while our former president is out here reinventing arithmetic with the precision of a malfunctioning slot machine. And when the whole thing collapses—whether from a misfired missile or a miscalculated percentage—no one will remember that it all started with bad math and worse instincts.
Filed from a Capitol Hill nail salon where the staff gives better foreign policy advice than half the Senate.
