On Iran, Greenland and press access, Trump is more talk than action

The "sound and fury" line is a good one. It's also the sort of thing people say after losing the argument and deciding to pretend it was beneath them. Editorial boards draped in Shakespeare are still just editorial boards nursing a burn. Take Greenland, for example. Every serious person laughed when Trump mused about buying it. Now the same serious people are writing anxious briefings about Arctic sovereignty and Chinese icebreakers. The talk changed the map, whether the talk was ever meant to be literal or not.

Iran is the same story. Maximum pressure isn't theater. It's what keeps Tehran guessing and their proxies on a leash. The critics demand "action" because they miss the comfort of a forever war. Talk is deterrence. Talk is leverage. And when your economy is a wreck and your influence is shrinking across the region, the talk is the least of your problems.

Then there's the press access dust-up. The Associated Press walked itself into a corner refusing to say Gulf of America. That's not an assault on the Fourth Amendment. It's a White House holding a hostile press corps to basic standards. They want unlimited access so they can grade every move in bad faith. They aren't owed a ringside seat to the republic. They're owed the truth, and they're the last ones willing to print it.

Conservative voters can tell noise from outcome. We'll take the unpolished talk that breaks the script over the polished silence of editors who've spent years.