Heart & Soul Conversation Special Edition: Bill Zittel of Zittel’s Country Market

With the war with Iran spiraling and public opinion about the military excursion at an all-time low, a leading scholar on tyranny warned on Tuesday that Donald Trump’s people may do the unthinkable.

Late Monday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned the president that “the clock is ticking” as supporters lose patience with the war that has been unpopular since the U.S. attacked in late February.

According to historian Timothy Snyder, whose book "On Tyranny" is often cited when discussing the Trump administration, a false flag terror attack in the U.S. that can be blamed on Iran is not beyond the realm of possibilities as the president's approval numbers slide.

On X he wrote, “Trump is pursuing this war in the HOPE that Iran carries out an act of terror in the US. And even if it doesn’t, which I doubt it will, consider the possibility that Trump's people would fake one. Please consider this essay, written back in March, as well as the last few lessons of ‘On Tyranny.’”

In the March essay he linked to, he predicted, "A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or 'federalize' the coming Congressional elections.“

"Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses," he added.

As for the timing, he elaborated, “We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions.”

A journalist pointed out that Trump's speech revealed what angered him much more than election meddling.

During an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, executive editor Hugh Dougherty looked back at Trump's Thursday night speech on election security. Trump had touted it as a "primetime" speech earlier in the week, and what left him fuming more than election meddling was how it was snubbed by major television networks like ABC and NBC.

"That's the thing that really angered him," Dougherty said. "He wanted this speech to be on prime time. There's nothing he loves more than being on prime time. There's nothing he loves more than ratings, and he was boycotted. Effectively, he was switched off."

Trump showed that he was enraged by the snub more than anything because "the rest of the speech was, if I'm honest, a bit low T," Dougherty said.

"He was raspy," Dougherty said. "He was not quite slumped, but he was not standing energetically, and he went through a whole lot of grievances."

Dougherty noted that Trump did seem "very sore" about losing a presidential election. "He's very sore about what happened six years ago," Dougherty said. "And he became president again, but he can't get over that. He lost."

By contrast, "the most alive bit of this speech on Thursday night was when he demanded that they face revenge for not showing their speech," Dougherty said, referring to how Trump complained that networks such as ABC and NBC were "part of a plot."

Trump suggested that ABC and NBC should lose their broadcast licenses for not airing his remarks, reporting by The Daily Beast noted, adding that the White House Rapid Response Team even went after members of the press for their coverage afterwards.