Has Something Shifted?
4/11/202610 min
April 10, 2026
Donald Trump’s genocidal threats earlier this week terrorized millions of Iranians and thus violated the Geneva Conventions, Trump continues to try to assert his power over Iran, Trump has issued further threats in an interview and on social media, Trump is throwing the economic might of the US behind authoritarian Viktor Orban of Hungary in his run for re-election, Trump’s actions this week have given momentum to those trying to rein him in, Democrats are asking the president’s physician for a detailed report on Trump’s health, Pushback is being seen across the US, and rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen is giving voice to that power.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHeather Cox Richardson· Host0:00
[ on-hold music] April 10th, 2026. It feels like something shifted in the United States this week after President Donald J. Trump threatened on Tuesday that a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. As Professor of Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy, Mattias Risse of Harvard University's Kennedy School noted, "The Geneva Conventions prohibit acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to terrorize civilians." He notes that Trump's threat terrorized ninety million Iranians by threatening them with genocide. Trump has continued to struggle to assert his power over Iran since Tuesday and has continued to fail. Yesterday, former Secretary of State John Kerry told Jen Psaki of the briefing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and George W. Bush to strike Iran, and they all refused him. Only Trump was willing to go along. But negotiations have been rocky all along, and today Trump warned that if Iran didn't come to a peace deal, the US would launch even deadlier attacks. "We have a reset going," Trump told the New York Post. At nine thirty-one this morning,