THE ANGRY MAN: President Trump is venting his anger that allies will not join him in the war against Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open for the oil trade. He posted on Truth Social, “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Straight?’ That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!”

  But just yesterday he posted: “Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer “need,” or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”

  He doesn’t need it, but he’s angry about not getting it.

  Asked yesterday whether he would remove the US from the NATO alliance Trump said, “I don’t need Congress for that decision, as you probably know, I can make that decision myself.”

RESIGNED: One of the Trump administration’s higher-ranking counterterrorism officials quit yesterday in disagreement over the war with Iran,

  “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote in his letter to President Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

  Kent is the first and only administration official to resign because of the war.

  Trump predictably attacked Kent in return. “I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat.”

  If you think the administration has lost a rational voice, reconsider. Kent espouses the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He subscribes to conspiracy theories, including that US intelligence had a hand in the January 6^th insurrection.

  Kent wrote in his resignation letter that, “Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”

PROOF: Benjamin Netanyahu, the man driving Israel’s end of the Iran war, felt the need to prove that he is alive.

  Following an address the prime minister delivered by video, internet sleuths questioned whether it was a creation of artificial intelligence, including that Netanyahu was shown having six fingers. 

  Thousands of fake videos have been produced since the start of the Iran war, many of them depicting attacks and events that have not occurred.

  Netanyahu posted another video holding out his five-fingered hands … proof that he’s alive or that AI is improving.

THE REGIME:

— A federal judge yesterday ordered the Trump administration to bring the staff back to work and restore operations at the government-run Voice of America’s international broadcasting. US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth gave the US Agency for Global Media a week to make a plan for getting 1,000 people back to work.

  The judge had previously ruled that former Arizona news anchor Kari Lake, appointed by President Trump, did not have the legal authority to dismantle VOA last year.

— Yet another federal judge says he expects to rule by the end of the month on whether President Trump can build his White House ballroom. 

  U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in the District of Columbia has questioned the administration’s story that the president does not need congressional approval for the project. Leon told government lawyers that Trump is a “steward” of the White House, not its owner.

  The White House has argued that Congress set aside several million dollars for alteration and maintenance of the president’s residence — a characterization that Leon said was “brazen,” given the scope of the planned 90,000-square-foot, $400 million project.

— New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority sued the Trump administration for restoration of funding to extend the city’s east side 2^nd Avenue subway.

   The suit charges that the US government improperly refused to disburse more than $58 million that had been intended for the project. About half the expected $6.9 billion cost for the subway would come from the federal government.

  The funding holdback occurred while the administration was pressuring Democrats to end their government shutdown last fall. But the Transportation Department told the MTA that the subway money was held up because of a review of the authority’s race- and sex-based criteria for working with disadvantaged businesses.

THE OBIT PAGE: British spy novelist Len Deighton, whose tales of betrayal and deception filled the pages of “The Ipcress File,” “Funeral in Berlin,” and “Billion Dollar Brain” while skewering England’s class structure, died March 15^th  at age 97.

  His heroes didn’t drive a sports car or get the girl. They were wise-cracking middle class men, cogs in the machinery of espionage. Deighton wrote 20 books.

  “I’ve never written books for people more clever than I am, or more stupid,” he is quoted as having said. “I’ve always tried to direct things at people like me.”

THE SPIN RACK: The recording industry raked in a record $11.5 billion in US sales last year, led in part by the surging popularity of vinyl records and one artist, Taylor Swift. Vinyl sales accounted for more than $1 billion in US sales last year, up more than 9 percent, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Olympic gold medal skater Alyssa Liu, who has already pierced her own ears and mouth, said she plans to get a piercing license so she can work on other people. If you noticed the metal grill hanging in front of her teeth, that’s her own handiwork.

-30-