[This conversation with Claude concerning the February 28 coordinated strike by the United States and Israel on Iran is the last in a series that ran throughout the week. You can read Parts 1, 2 and 3 here.]

The French playwright Alfred Jarry published his five-act play, Ubu Roi, in 1896. No one had seen anything like it before, and perhaps since. It holds a unique place in Europe’s literary history.

That December the play ran for one night at the Nouveau Théâtre in Paris. The evening ended with an audience riot, not an unusual event in Paris during la Belle Epoque. Audiences of that era knew that their role was to display emotion. Modern critics tend to agree that this exceptional late-19th-century work of literature “prefigured modernism, surrealism, Dadaism, and the theater of the absurd.” Jarry opened the door to the 20th century.

Full disclosure: I’m no fan of the play, either as literature or theater. I saw it performed about 15 years ago in Vincennes, France. Though curious to see how the actors might turn the outrageous script into daring Pythonesque comedy, I found the performance too self-consciously over-the-top and ultimately incapable of varying its tone, which all good comedy requires.

Moreover, as a serious student of Shakespeare, Jarry’s awkward pastiche of the plots of Macbeth, Hamlet and much else seemed to me disrespectful of the man from Stratford (yes, that man, and not the Earl of Oxford, as some odd fanatics claim).

Jarry was intent on mocking the politics and politicians of his age, unconsciously offering clues to what would occur less than two decades later: the eruption of World War I. None of the politicians of Jarry’s time — what historians call the century of “the concert of Europe” and the Pax Britannica — spoke like Jarry’s Père Ubu. Even while retaining the veneer of men skilled in managing “the balance of power,” they were quite capable of reasoning and acting like the sanguinary, eponymous hero of Jarry’s play.

Inspired by William Shakespeare’s texts and conscious of the power of more subtly delineated villains like Macbeth and Richard III, Jarry wanted to show that, like Hamlet, he understood that “something is rotten” in Europe’s political culture, but felt none of the Danish prince’s “cursed spite that ever” he had been “born to set it right.” Setting things right was beyond everyone’s power. Exaggerating European society’s worst political trends in the text of a delirious drama was enough for the brash young playwright.

I claim that Ubu Roi is disrespectful in a way that Tom Stoppard’s 1966 play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, clearly was not. Stoppard’s absurdist comedy reads like a dynamic work of serious, thought-provoking literary criticism that entertains in its own absurdist genre while casting fascinating light on Shakespeare’s tragedy. It’s brilliant “metatheater.”

Ubu Président

Why in this column am I looking back at a play I don’t even like? Because the outrageous, untethered absurdity of Jarry’s iconic character, crafted to act abrasively unlike the rulers of a society Jarry was satirizing, has found a contemporary incarnation in the 21st century. Even more surprisingly, it has done so in the role people usually refer to as “the leader of the free world.” US President Donald Trump is Ubu Roi.

The title of Jarry’s play is meant to echo the most famous Greek tragedy, the one both Aristotle and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud highlighted as exemplary of Greek tragedy, usually referred to in Europe as Oedipus Rex. But with the very first word of the play, Jarry makes it clear this is taking place in another dimension. It’s a word the author invented for the occasion, and which reappears throughout the play.

“Merdre!” exclaims Père Ubu in his opening dialogue with his wife. By adding an “r” to a vulgar word used frequently by the French, he transforms the word’s impact, making the recognizable expletive sound almost like a verb ending in -re (like prendre, rompre, descendre, etc.). It’s a trick Jarry may have borrowed from author Charles Dickens, who in “Little Dorrit” gave the name Merdle to the greedy and eventually bankrupt banker who set off a financial crisis in London. Dickens saw the banker as “merde” with a £ sign before the final letter.

I can’t help but notice an interesting contemporary parallel. Dickens’s Merdle was a kind of Victorian Bernie Madoff, a master of Ponzi schemes. We could see this as a demonstration of the principle that reality sometimes imitates fiction, not just in the actions of people, but even in the naming of characters. Bernie, as all his victims realized, literally “made off” with a lot of their money.

Trump is another example. In a 21st century play or novel, Jarry or Dickens might be tempted to create a character inspired by the current US president and give him the name: Mr. Tromper. (Tromper means deceive in French.) Far more coincidentally, there was an episode of the 1950s television show, Trackdown, titled, “The End of the World,” that featured “a sketchy salesman by the name of Walter Trump.” Mr. Trump “pitches the idea of building a giant wall, claiming it would protect townspeople from a catastrophic cosmic event.” Fortunately, for the TV viewers of the time, Trump’s actions do not bring about “the end of the world.” Instead, “Trump tries to depart from the town, he’s arrested and then shot by a villager he tried to conspire with.”

With all these literary associations floating around in my mind and having been repeatedly astonished by many of the things the real Trump has been saying over the past few days, I addressed the following prompt to Gemini:

What are some direct quotes Donald Trump has made about the war in Iran? I’m looking for the most outlandish and absurd quotes, of which I know there are plenty.

During his second term, President Trump’s rhetoric regarding Iran has been characterized by his signature mix of military bravado, casual asides about interior design, and grand historical comparisons.

As of early 2026, with “Operation Epic Fury” ongoing, here are some of his most notable and “outlandish” quotes regarding the conflict.

On Military Strategy and “Boredom”

Following reports that he might lose interest in a protracted conflict, Trump addressed the media at the White House on March 2, 2026:

“Somebody actually said, from the media, I think you’ll get bored after about a week or two. No, we don’t get bored. I never get bored. If I got bored, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I guarantee you that.”

The “Ballroom” Pivot

In one of the more surreal moments of his presidency, Trump paused a somber briefing on the Iranian missile threat to discuss White House renovations:

“This was our last best chance to strike… and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime.”

[Abruptly pivoting] “By the way, we are building a new ballroom at the White House. It’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom in the world. We’re coming in under budget and ahead of schedule—$400 million or less.”

On “Unlimited” Supplies

In a March 2026 Truth Social post, Trump dismissed concerns from the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding depleted munitions after years of supporting Ukraine and Israel:

“Our weapons are unlimited. We can fight forever with these supplies. The cupboards are not bare; they are overflowing with the most beautiful, high-tech equipment you’ve ever seen.”

Historical Analogies and “Knocking the Crap”

Trump has frequently used colorful language to describe the intensity of the strikes:

• The World War II Comparison: At a 2025 NATO summit, he reportedly drew a controversial parallel between modern precision strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to illustrate “ultimate strength.”
• The “Crap” Quote: “We are knocking the crap out of Iran. They’ve never seen anything like it. Their navy? It’s at the bottom of the sea. Ten ships, just like that. They’re gone.” (March 2, 2026)

On Regime Change and “The Venezuela Scenario”

When asked about the future of the Iranian government following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in early March 2026, Trump told the New York Times:

“What we did in Venezuela is the perfect scenario… where everybody’s kept their job except for two people. We want the Iranian people to take over. We’ll be there to help, but it’s their country. They can make it rich as hell again.”

In a previous column, I mocked Trump’s use of the stale formula “take back the country.” Trump provided another I enjoyed when he was asked about how long the war would last.

“It’s always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so. It’s always been about a four-week process so – as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks – or less.”

We know that for Trump, things can be their opposite. For example, he has demonstrated at least twice that negotiations, usually associated with the striving for peace, are synonymous with conflict. Now he calls war a “process.”

I can think of one appropriate response to this creative use of language: “Merdre!”

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue. 

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At Fair Observer, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.