Does Trump’s wild F-bomb online rant show that cracks are appearing?

When Donald Trump posted on Truth Social just after 1pm UK time on Sunday, journalists around the world rushed to grab a screenshot.

Surely this is some sort of hack, and it could be deleted at any moment? Why would a US president write such a vulgar message, then sign it off with ‘Praise be to Allah’ – on Easter Sunday?

But evidently not. More than 24 hours later, the post – possibly the wildest statement yet made by a man with a history of very, very wild statements – remains on Trump’s feed.

It reads: ‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!

‘Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy b******s, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!’

If those words had come from any other president, it’s fair to assume the reaction would be: ‘Ah – he’s clearly lost his mind. Someone crack out the old 25th amendment and we’ll get him the help he needs.’

As mentioned above, though, this is a man with a history of very, very wild statements. So instead, this one has initiated a guessing game.

Could it be a hollow threat, designed to bamboozle the enemy? Could Trump be fully intent on destroying civilian infrastructure, which would constitute a war crime? Perhaps he hasn’t made his mind up yet.

‘The answer is, I just don’t know,’ said Michael Cox, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and leading expert in US foreign policy.

‘I think, to be totally honest, very few of us do know, and maybe even Donald Trump doesn’t.’

He told Metro: ‘We know that Trump threatens, and then quite often doesn’t follow through on his threat, but he might. It’s the unknowability, it’s the uncertainty that it throws up, and that’s been true for the last five weeks, throughout this particular war.’

During the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon sought to create an image of himself as capricious and unpredictable, so the North Vietnamese would never know if he was going to follow through on his extreme threats.

This became known as the ‘madman theory’ – the idea is that adversaries will give in more quickly if they think they’re negotiating with someone prone to irrational behaviour.

Trump – who was pen pals with Nixon in the 1980s – is a big proponent of this theory. His use of it even goes beyond war and peace: just look at the way he employs tariffs.

The eye-catching (to say the least) use of expletives in his Truth Social post may be an element of this.

It’s not the first time he’s done this, nor even the first time he’s done it in the context of conflict in the Middle East. Last June, he memorably told reporters outside the White House that Israel and Iran ‘have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing’.

In discarding the taboo against a president swearing in public, he may be sending the message that he’s liable to lash out at any moment.

Or… perhaps the post shows exactly what it seems to show: frustration with the way the war is going, as Iran appears to have successfully caused real and lasting damage to the global economy in retaliation.

The post on Easter Sunday could be the clearest indication yet that cracks are starting to show in Trump’s strategy for the conflict, with little obvious success beyond the deaths of several key figures.

If negotiations in the background fail to produce anything before Tuesday evening, the president’s madman theory may have landed him in a position where he must follow through on his threat – inflicting years of misery for ordinary Iranians, and ensuring the war will not come to a quick end.

‘It’s just one more indication of the style of a president who, frankly, is difficult to interpret, and worries the life out of a lot of people over here on this side of the Atlantic,’ said Professor Michael Cox.

‘And this war, by the way, is not popular either in the United States, so if he follows through, then I think it’s gonna become an even less popular war.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.