Oil markets breathed a sigh of relief this morning, with the price of Brent crude dipping back below $100 a barrel on two pieces of hopeful news.

First, Saudi Arabia announced it had resumed flows through the crucial oil pipeline that was damaged by a drone strike from Iranian proxies this month. And we got our first suggestion in months of positive motion for the Strait of Hormuz, with Reuters reporting that Iran is offering to reopen the strait in exchange for demands including America’s lifting of its military blockade. Whether this is actually a new concession from Iran or simply a repeat of this summer’s negotiating language games remains to be seen. Happy Tuesday.

Join Bill and Andrew for a special Morning Shots Live today at 9:50 a.m. EDT—they’ll react live to Trump’s address to the United Nations. Should be completely sane and not at all embarrassing for the country. Watch on Substack and YouTube.

The Quad’s Four Corners

by William Kristol

The “Republican Triangle of Doom” is Sarah Longwell’s name for the feedback loop of Donald Trump, the right-wing infotainment complex, and Republican voters. Here’s how it works: Trump lies, Fox amplifies the lies, and his voters believe the lies. Then GOP politicians echo the lies because that’s what their voters believe. It’s a closed cycle, and it helped bring Trump to power and sustain him in power. It’s shaped our politics to a remarkable degree for a decade.

The good news is that the Triangle of Doom is now fraying, perhaps even coming apart, because reality has (finally) pierced the cycle.

The bad news is that we may now be seeing it supplemented, even supplanted, by an equally dangerous Quadrangle of Doom shaping the behavior of the Trump administration as it enters its last two years. The Quadrangle of Doom consists of a megalomaniacal president, powerful fanatics occupying key positions in his administration, increasingly radicalized MAGA true believers, and reliably cowardly and collaborating elites.

Let’s take a quick look at the four corners of the Trump administration’s Quandrable of Doom.

An unhinged president

It’s pretty obvious that Trump’s psychological disorders—narcissism and solipsism, the unconstrained lying, the unchecked grandiosity—are increasingly out of control. From the AI posts on Truth Social depicting him as a world savior to his desperate desire to put his name on the Kennedy Center and build his arch, from kicking media organizations out of the White House to using taxpayer resources to invent Trump TV—we’re at a new level of egomania.

One could say we’ve gone from egomania to megalomania, from authoritarianism to a kind of messianism. Trump seems even more detached from reality than he was a year ago, let alone five or ten years ago. Whether it’s advancing age and intimations of mortality, or simply the familiar spectacle of authoritarians believing their own propaganda and becoming ever more detached from reality (likely some of both), Trump is clearly more unhinged, more reckless, more unconstrained than ever. Any filters that once existed are gone. Calculating enablers like Hope Hicks have been replaced by deranged worshipers like Natalie Harp. And as the world and the American public have turned out not to be too resistant to his whims and wishes, he becomes increasingly desperate in his conduct and frenzied in his behavior.

An administration of fanatics and sycophants

If an unhinged president is the first corner of the Quadrangle of Doom, an administration filled with—and led by—fanatics and sycophants is the second corner. Trump’s first term had cabinet secretaries and some White House aides who knew better and would sometimes push back. Trump’s second term has Stephen Miller running immigration policy unchecked, Russell Vought seeking to destroy the civil service, Pete Hegseth firing general officers of the military, and Todd Blanche obeying orders. And so it’s not just Trump’s personal megalomania and narcissism that are increasingly out of control. It’s his administration’s machismo and militarism, its bigotry and nativism and extremism, that are all increasingly out of control.

A radicalized MAGA

The third vertex is MAGA. It’s always been a movement of true believers. But we’ve seen the familiar pattern of increased self-radicalization of authoritarian movements once they taste power. And so over the last several years we’ve gone from more guarded expressions of traditional American bigotry to overt white supremacism, from occasional claims of religious blessing for the movement to outright Christian nationalism, from post-liberalism to neo-fascism. Years of stewing in the poisoned waters of conspiracism and the fetid swamp of victimization has led to increased levels of derangement. And in the face of disappointment, many of the true believers have become not chastened but more extreme. So even as popular disgust at Trump’s mass deportation policy broadens, anti-immigrant fantasists and fanatics inside and outside the administration are doubling down.

Accommodating elites

And yet . . . the elites remain on board. Business and conservative elites, and many social and civic elites, continue to accommodate Trump and his administration. The rise of Trumpist tech oligarchs has made Trump’s dominance of the business world easier, but the more normal business elites have deeply internalized the lesson that they can do well by going along and getting along. And so the calculation and cowardice and capitulation of the elites remains strong even as support from the public drifts away. That may change to some degree after the midterm elections. But lots of business leaders are in too deep to get out. They have real interests and investments in the Trump administration and in Trump world, and they’re not changing course.

So Trump’s megalomania and narcissism are increasingly out of control. His deputies’ fanaticism and sycophancy are increasingly out of control. The radicalization of the MAGA movement is increasingly out of control. And the elites’ accommodation is as widespread and their acquiescence as entrenched as ever.

This Quadrangle of Doom means that we face a truly perilous next two years. The rise of Trumpism was dangerous enough. Its end game could be more dangerous still. Eventually, this Quadrangle may collapse of its own weight, or explode from its own contradictions and psychoses. It may doom the Trump administration and perhaps even Trumpism. But at what cost to the nation, and the world?