From the moment Donald Trump began the first legacy-shaping lap of his 2.0 presidency, things started looking and feeling nothing like he wanted them to be.

Every day began feeling like a desperate uphill effort. Yet his polls kept tumbling downhill. So he began doing more of his usual things – bragging and making up whatever facts he needed to make himself and his presidencies look like America’s best ever.

He began putting his name on things where “Trump” doesn’t even have a legal right to be. (Such as one of Washington’s official presidential monuments – the Kennedy Center – where the law says it can only be done by an act of Congress). But nothing seemed to work.

Trump even began calling himself the “president of PEACE” and demanding a Nobel peace prize. He kept saying he’d ended all sorts of wars. And when that didn’t work, the “president of PEACE” chose to start a war. He hoped it would be celebrated as his legacy’s noble war – Trump’s no nukes, regime changing, people-liberating quick little war in Iran.

It turns out that part of Trump’s ultimate problem is that his hopes and dreams for himself and his legacy were being sabotaged from within. And we’ll be exploring that later today.

But first, let’s recall how America’s president of PEACE came to start – which is to say, approve – the February 28 joint U.S.-Israeli bombing assassination of Iran’s supreme ayatollah and entire top tier of the country's leadership.

Here’s how that approval happened: The CIA reportedly discovered Iran’s leaders would all be meeting together on Feb. 28, at their leadership compound in Tehran. The CIA passed the info to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Trump. It was their chance to catch them by surprise and get them all. And they did.

When Trump announced the surprise military operation on that Saturday, he also made what he apparently figured would be two legacy moves. Trump told Iran’s troops to “lay down” their weapons. And he told Iran’s long-besieged people to “take over your government,” assuring them: “It will be yours to take.”

Somehow. But he never said how. And that was problematic. After all, Iran’s Islamic theocracy troops had massacred some 20,000 people who last protested in the streets. Trump’s over-promising words sent Iranians dancing into the streets. But Trump hasn’t done anything to help them since.

How did Trump see Iran becoming “yours to take” – when he had no intention of doing anything to help them take it as he promised?

Perhaps Trump thought it would all play out as easily for him as it had in Venezuela in January. Trump’s troops simply swept in and took dictator Nicolas Maduro to New York for a trial on narco-terrorism charges. Trump simply picked Maduro’s veep, Delcy Rodriguez, to run Venezuela’s oil dictatorship the way he wanted her to run it. Now both countries can enjoy big oil riches.

Maybe, in Trump’s mondo bizarro mind, he figured it could be just as easy finding someone to run Iran’s Islamic theocracy just the way he wanted. If so, he had no one in his West Wing telling him there’s no way it can happen.

Astonishingly, Trump quickly demanded an “unconditional surrender” from Iran’s Islamic leaders and fighters. Double-astonishingly (see also: double-absurdly), Trump also said he expected to approve Iran’s new leader.

Obviously, Iran’s theocracy had long prepared for a smooth transition after their quite ill, 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They quickly chose his lightly regarded son, Mojtaba, age 56. And they wouldn’t have consulted Trump even if he’d showed up wearing a MAGA turban. Militarily, U.S. forces decimated Iran’s navy, air force, missile stockpiles and factories.

But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still began raining missiles and drones down on their oil kingdom neighbors. And then, of course, Iran once again shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile wide corridor through which the region’s oil kingdoms fuel most of the world. World oil prices soared. So did global shortages.

Before the war, Trump was warned by his Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Dan Caine, that Iran would do that. No, Trump replied, Iran will capitulate before it closes its oil strait lifeline.

Here’s where we get to explaining how Trump’s 2.0 presidency has been – and is being – sabotaged from within. And what he should have done to fix it long ago.

Last May, Trump put his presidency at a severe disadvantage when he named his national security advisor Mike Waltz as his ambassador to the United Nations – and then chose not to name a new fulltime highly qualified national security adviser who could always be there beside him, coordinating all military, intelligence and diplomatic matters.

Instead, Trump asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to also serve as interim national security adviser. Rubio still has both roles. But that can’t work fulltime because Rubio is often traveling and fully occupied at State. That’s a blueprint for disaster, especially for a president with Trump’s limited international security experience. And Trump has made a world of disastrously wrong choices ever since.

Trump clearly feared being eclipsed by a high visibility figure like Henry Kissinger. So he deprived himself of the help he needed most – a highly capable, low visibility, soft-spoken expert like the late Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who could be beside him and always available. Just like Scowcroft was as national security adviser to Republican presidents, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush.

A Brent Scowcroft could have helped Trump become the best he can be – and at least never trump himself in a crisis. And frankly, Scowcroft was such a fine patriot he might even have tolerated Trump’s ego-explosive eccentricities and saved Trump from the above miscalculations that have made his 2.0 presidency what it has become.

Indeed, a Brent Scowcroft as national security adviser might have also saved millions of Americans from the unhappiness they now feel. After all, they trusted and voted for the one candidate who promised them he’d never start a regime change war like the one Trump 2.0 started and is struggling to end today.

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