In Tijuana, the change is visible. This is what voters expected<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When I came to this border city in February this year \u2014 San Diego lies on the other side \u2014 in the north-westernmost corner of Mexico, residents told me that for a year the situation at the border had looked completely different: calmer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eduardo, a taxi driver from Tijuana, drove me from the beach toward the city centre and talked about life in the shadow of the border wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You used to see people jumping over the barrier. It wasn\u2019t a big problem. The Americans didn\u2019t have enough Migra<\/em>,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Eduardo said, using the colloquial term for Border Patrol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But now that\u2019s history. You can\u2019t do it that way anymore, because they\u2019ll catch you quickly. If you want to try your luck, you have to look somewhere far out in the desert, where there are no people and the wall is less secure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how Donald Trump fulfilled the most important of his campaign promises on domestic policy. <\/strong>During Joe Biden\u2019s term, at the height of the border crisis, when real caravans of migrants moved toward the United States, encouraged by reports of the practical capitulation of local border enforcement, more than 2 million apprehensions were recorded each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In truth, it is hard to estimate how many people managed to enter the United States illegally. As U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently indicated, in the first months of Trump\u2019s presidency that number fell by 92 percent<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration invested in Border Patrol, but it also ended the liberal rules<\/strong> that allowed detained illegal immigrants to wait freely in the United States while their asylum claims were processed. Sending such signals inevitably reduced the number of people interested in crossing the border illegally. And this, after all, was one of the most important issues in the eyes of American voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOrdinary\u201d Americans could not understand how the most powerful country in the world could fail to control its southern border effectively, while millions of illegal arrivals poured through it and destabilised the country internally. On the other hand, Trump clearly overplayed this policy when he sent ICE agents into the streets of American cities to catch illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The agents conducted these operations so aggressively that 2 people protesting against the policy were killed by them in Minnesota. Trump, in a sense, admitted that things had gone too far when he announced that he would pursue \u201cde-escalation.\u201d And indeed, ICE operations are no longer quite so ruthless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump also introduced the higher tariffs on foreign products that he had promised<\/strong>. The goal of this tariff policy was supposed to be action in the public interest: making it profitable again to manufacture various goods in America and bringing some manufacturing jobs back to the United States from Asia. Here, however, the balance sheet is not clear.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the one hand, tariff revenues tripled compared with the previous year, and some industries \u2014 steel and aluminium producers, for example \u2014 strengthened their position thanks to this protection. Yet despite Trump\u2019s promises, American consumers largely covered the increase in tariff rates. The cost was passed on to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another issue is that the Supreme Court \u2014 to the undisguised fury of the U.S. president \u2014 ultimately ruled that the tariff mechanism he had introduced was unconstitutional. As a result, the Treasury will have to return 166 billion dollars to importers. Consumers are unlikely to receive anything from that sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden\u2019s successor also carried out the anti-woke counter-revolution<\/strong> with determination, removing from government the institutions that promoted various shades of \u201cequity\u201d politics. Trump\u2019s words from his inaugural address became the symbol of that shift:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only 2 genders: male and female.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The counter-revolution also reached American universities, which faced a clear choice: either abandon the implementation of a radical left-wing agenda in the spirit of woke politics, or lose federal funding. Yet there was a catch. While trying to cleanse America\u2019s best-known universities of the effects of the radical left-wing revolution \u2014 including the presentation of white people as a problem for society \u2014 the Trump administration also made sure there was no antisemitism on campus. The term, however, was understood so broadly that virtually any criticism of the State of Israel could fall under it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matthew Lohmeier, a retired U.S. Air Force officer, is a good example of the anti-woke counter-revolution. He was removed from service during Biden\u2019s term. The reason for his exclusion from the ranks of the U.S. armed forces was the fact that he had written a book titled Irresistible Revolution: Marxism\u2019s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In it, Lohmeier warned that the radical left was indoctrinating young soldiers and causing racial divisions to appear in the U.S. military, something that, in his view, had not happened before. He considered this a dangerous phenomenon, because soldiers were no longer concentrating entirely on their basic tasks \u2014 training for combat in order to defend the United States \u2014 but were being distracted, for example, by \u201ctrainings\u201d on \u201cproblems related to white skin.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lohmeier spoke about this threat with passion, as I learned when I interviewed him. Last year, this U.S. Air Force officer, once expelled from the military, was appointed to the Pentagon as under secretary of the Air Force, where his responsibilities included removing elements of woke ideology from the armed forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question of truth in Donald Trump\u2019s political life looks much worse in foreign affairs. <\/strong>The loudest political \u201cdivorce\u201d may serve as a symbol here. Tucker Carlson is not a politician, but a commentator with an audience in the millions. Still, he deals with politics. And by supporting Donald Trump so explicitly for years, he inevitably moved beyond a purely media role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As often happens in divorces, this break-up too is full of bad emotions and bitter words. The American president called the famous commentator \u201clow IQ,\u201d while Carlson described his former political guru as a \u201cslave\u201d \u2014 of Israel. A few days later, the commentator went even further: he officially apologised to conservative voters for having urged them 3 times in the past to vote for Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What caused this great split? Carlson now tells<\/strong> his fans on the American right that Trump spectacularly lied to all Americans about the war with Iran<\/strong>. In his view, this was not \u201cordinary\u201d political manoeuvring, but a betrayal of the slogans that had formed the foundation of the Make America Great Again movement. Trump\u2019s America was supposed to stay away from distant, unnecessary wars that did not serve its vital interests.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Carlson had already drawn attention to what he saw as the absurdly large influence of the Israeli lobby on Washington\u2019s foreign policy. But since February 28, the famous commentator has put the matter plainly: in Iran, Trump is serving Israel\u2019s national interest while also damaging America\u2019s position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s right-wing critics point out that in successive campaigns he condemned previous U.S. presidents who entangled America in unnecessary wars. These were wars that Americans \u2014 despite brilliant battlefield victories \u2014 could not win on the most important field: the political one. And although Trump said directly on the campaign trail, \u201cIn the future, we will keep our country out of endless wars,\u201d a year after beginning his second term he ordered U.S. armed forces to fight in the Middle East once again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What is more, in his inaugural address in January 2025, he stressed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will be like no other nation: full of compassion, courage and exceptionalism. Our power will stop wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent and completely unpredictable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Today, when Donald Trump\u2019s decision to attack Iran threatens the whole world with economic turmoil, and the United States may suffer a humiliating defeat with far-reaching consequences, those words sound like a grim joke. That is exactly why Trump must now face record-low support. According to the latest polls, around 2\/3 of Americans believe the president is leading the country badly.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Americans see the effects of this turmoil especially clearly at petrol stations. Fuel prices have risen over the past 2 months to levels seen under the Biden administration \u2014 which candidate Trump, not incidentally, had presented as one of the Democratic president\u2019s greatest failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a spectacular trampling of promises made to voters on foreign policy, and the unleashing of a war with Iran that may prove hard to end, does not exhaust the problems connected with Trump\u2019s attitude toward his own words \u2014 and, more broadly, toward reality \u2014 amid the turmoil in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For two months, the world has watched the U.S. president manoeuvre, bend reality and often simply lie<\/strong>, trying at all costs to show that America controls the situation and that a \u201cgreat victory\u201d is just around the corner. The goal, of course, is to calm the markets and push the price of crude oil down, if only a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until now, business generally believed the U.S. president when he said that Iran was already on the ropes and wanted an agreement, so lifting the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz was only a matter of days. Yet each new assurance, soon mocked by Iran, means that \u2014 to put it mildly \u2014 the frugal handling of truth by the president of the world\u2019s greatest power, the leader of the West, may have disastrous consequences. The business world may simply conclude that statements from the occupant of the White House mean very little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the words of the American president lose value so quickly, the foundation of all negotiations and agreements is also damaged. Can one seriously talk to a man who so openly misses reality and trust that any arrangements will be honoured?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n John Bolton, who served as Trump\u2019s national security adviser during his first term and later fell into sharp conflict with him, has his own theory here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump can\u2019t tell the difference between what\u2019s true and what\u2019s false,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Bolton said on CNN during the last presidential campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not that he lies a lot, because to lie you have to do it consciously. He simply doesn\u2019t know the difference.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Bolton was referring to a situation in which Trump, during a press conference, maintained that other people around him had demanded prison for Hillary Clinton, while he himself had never expressed such thoughts and had even been \u201cvery protective\u201d of her. Meanwhile, recordings from Trump\u2019s rallies are easy to find online, and in them he said directly that Clinton should go behind bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever the truth looks like here \u2014 whether Trump consciously uses lies, or whether Bolton is right and, for some reason, Trump confuses reality with his imaginings \u2014 the fact remains that the U.S. president\u2019s attitude toward truth may have dangerous consequences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This was visible long before February this year, before the attack on Iran. After losing the election in November 2020, Donald Trump reached for improbable conspiracy theories, grasping at every chance to overturn the democratic verdict of American voters. And although one cannot point to a statement in which Trump called on his supporters to attack Congress, many of the people who stormed the Capitol in January 2021 ultimately did so because they believed the lie about the \u201cstolen\u201d election<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worth reading:<\/strong> Started by Tragedy: How Delta Force Became Invincible<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
All it took was a hard signal from Washington<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The border success had a darker side too<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/holistic.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Trump_and_Iran_war_2-1024x575.jpg\")
Trump\u2019s second term. The price of \u201cAmerica First\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The counter-revolution on campus. The right had waited for this moment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The officer dismissed for his warnings. He returned as the man in charge of change<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/holistic.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Trump_and_Iran_war_3-1024x576.jpg\")
Trump and Iran war: the domestic record stopped being enough<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The divorce from Carlson. A deep crack in MAGA<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump and Iran. The promise of peace against the decision to attack<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Americans see this war at the pump<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/holistic.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Trump_and_Iran_war_4-1024x576.jpg\")
Donald Trump\u2019s lies: a problem bigger than one conflict<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When the president calms the markets, but the world stops believing him<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A problem with distinguishing facts from imaginings?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The lie about the stolen election already set America on fire once<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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