ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Did you miss out on the $50 million payday for literally bagging Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — aka federal inmate 00734-506 — because US special forces stole your thunder when they kidnapped him and stuffed him into a plane?

Well, now Trump needs you again — this time, to retroactively prove to America why he invaded Iran.

Now’s your chance to get reimbursed for any parachutes, headlamps, burlap bags or Cessnas you might have purchased for that Trump-sponsored game hunt in Caracas. Back then, Team Trump was obsessed with blaming “narco-trafficker” Maduro for the fact that American kids were getting high in alleys. But now that oil companies are getting high on new contracts over there, the war on drugs seems to have wrapped up.

So, onto the next adventure! The mission now is to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And you, too, can participate directly for a chance to win $20 million from Trump’s State Department. All you have to do is hand over information about “Iran’s nuclear program, including its facilities, equipment, and associated personnel,” according to the State Department website.

It goes on to say that Iran is close to having a nuke, but that no one currently knows what the status is.

Has anyone asked Trump? Because he knows, according to himself. Although the answer tends to vary depending on his political needs at any given moment.

Trump lost the midterm elections because he’s been too busy picking fights with Iran — mostly so he has some good starting material for his next Nobel Peace Prize nomination — instead of holding down the fort at home. Pretty much everyone knows this now, as NBC News exit polling data suggests.

Only 4 percent of voters, split evenly across party lines, give a toss about foreign policy these days. But they sure care about what happens when politicians start messing around with it and crater the economy through the inevitable knock-on effects. Economics was named the top issue, with Trump’s Iran debacle either a major or crucial factor for 74 percent of voters.

But as Trump tells it, he had no choice other than to go 200 rounds (and counting) with Iran in its own backyard. Because Iran absolutely can’t be allowed to get a nuke, he kept saying — right up to and including on Election Day.

He has repeatedly claimed to have already bombed Iran’s nuclear program into oblivion, but somehow keeps arguing that it’s still enough of an issue to justify this ongoing squabble that’s tanking the US and global economy by messing with fuel prices because much of it transits through the Strait of Hormuz, controlled by Tehran.

The fact that the U.S. government is now crowdsourcing its intelligence on Iran — relying on some average dude sitting at home watching Netflix to be sufficiently motivated by a payout to do the job of intelligence agencies that hoover up billions in taxpayer cash — blows several well-worn assumptions out of the water.

The first is that either the CIA, or Israeli intelligence, knows what’s going on. Or that they're reliable. If they were, the U.S. wouldn’t need to put out a public call for information. After all those years of troughing, Washington has decided that a $20 million public tip line is the missing piece of the puzzle. So much for having the best that money can buy.

Surely it’s just a coincidence that the State Department’s public admission of having no clue what’s going on comes in the immediate wake of perpetually warmongering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being strapped into the ejector seat amid the latest Israeli election, with the opposition now poised to take over his role.

If the Israeli people hadn’t just sidelined Netanyahu, democratically shoving him off the stage, how much longer would Americans — and people across the entire planet — have been kept in the dark about the apparent lack of evidence needed to justify this costly war, which we’re all subsidizing through higher fuel prices and the resulting cost-of-living increases?

Why is it only now that they’re indirectly calling Netanyahu out on his questionable fever dreams about Iranian nukes? And if they don’t trust the Israeli intelligence apparatus, then why is Team Trump simultaneously looking at deeper integration of U.S. and Israeli military technology, weapons development, intelligence-related systems and defense industries under the GOP-initiated United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Act of 2026?

Taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for a $20 million intelligence hunt to legitimize a narrative that they’ve already seen through — even as the bureaucratic entities responsible for the mess are on the verge of being better integrated for hook-up to a permanent drip of U.S. public cash.

At this rate, any seniors center probably has more reliable intelligence on Iran — running ops between cups of lukewarm coffee and rounds of bingo. And they’d probably do it for a small donation to the craft fair. But $20 million could sure buy a lot of A-listers for Sock Hop Night.