{"id":149734,"date":"2026-04-27T13:41:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/04\/27\/targets-too-hot-to-troll\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T13:41:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:41:51","slug":"targets-too-hot-to-troll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/04\/27\/targets-too-hot-to-troll\/","title":{"rendered":"Targets Too Hot To Troll"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
(Photo by SAUL LOEB \/ AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donald Trump has met his match.<\/p>\n

Twice.<\/p>\n

First, Trump has probably learned that one should not pick online fights with the Vicar of Christ.\u00a0Those fights are hard to win \u2014 maybe because the Pope\u2019s got a certain someone on his side.<\/p>\n

Having failed in jousting with the Pope, Trump decided to up the ante.\u00a0The President suggested that the Pope is merely the Vicar of Christ, whereas Trump is Christ himself.\u00a0But when Trump posted a\u00a0picture of himself as Christ<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 dressed in a toga, surrounded by angels, and hands glowing with heavenly light \u2014 even the MAGA faithful wouldn\u2019t buy it. Trump had to explain his blasphemy.\u00a0He decided to say that he didn\u2019t realize this was an image of Trump as Christ; he thought it was an image of Trump\u00a0as a physician<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How many ways is that excuse pitiful?\u00a0Let me count the ways.\u00a0First, look at the\u00a0picture<\/a>.\u00a0Any person who thinks that\u2019s an image of Trump as a physician is a moron.\u00a0But Trump says he thought the picture was of him as a physician.\u00a0Is Trump a moron?<\/p>\n

The alternative is that Trump is not a moron.\u00a0He knows full well that the picture shows himself as Christ, but he decided to lie about the picture in order to excuse himself.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does this explanation reflect on Trump?\u00a0He\u2019s ready to lie about his understanding of the image.\u00a0He disdains the public, thinking that the public is stupid enough to believe this obvious lie.\u00a0And his previously keen political instincts are fading, as Trump believes that blasphemy, coupled with telling an obvious lie, coupled with disdain for one\u2019s voters is somehow a useful public relations strategy.<\/p>\n

Protip:\u00a0Politicians should not pick fights with the Vicar of Christ.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or Christ himself.<\/p>\n

Got it?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s another target that\u2019s too hot to troll?<\/p>\n

Iran.<\/p>\n

In the battle of military might, the United States is defeating Iran.\u00a0The U.S. is destroying the targets that it attacks, and the Iranian counter-attacks are doing only modest damage.<\/p>\n

U.S. 1; Iran 0.<\/p>\n

In the battle of political wills, however, Iran is winning.\u00a0Iran may be suffering economically, but the Iranian government consists of religious fanatics who aren\u2019t worrying about the Iranian people.\u00a0And the Iranians have managed to close the Strait of Hormuz with relatively little firepower, thus creating a crisis for the U.S. and the world.\u00a0The Iranian government may be feeling less political pressure than Trump, who\u2019s haunted by higher gas prices and upcoming midterm elections.<\/p>\n

U.S. 1; Iran 1.<\/p>\n

In the battle of controlling the narrative, the victor probably depends on how you look at the situation.\u00a0Iran says Trump started this war two months ago by launching an unprovoked attack on it.\u00a0Trump says the war actually started in 1979, with the Iranian revolution and later attacks that Iran or its proxies launched on American targets.\u00a0Iran, of course, could say that the war started in 1953, when the United States returned the Shah to power in a coup against Prime Minister\u00a0Mohammad Mosaddegh.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And why stop there?\u00a0I bet historians could keep going back in time, blaming the United States and Iran for various things that occurred ever since the sixth century B.C., when King Croesus misinterpreted the prophecy saying that, if Lydia attacked Persia, a mighty\u00a0empire would fall<\/a>.\u00a0(Oops!\u00a0His bad.)<\/p>\n

But think about it differently.\u00a0You don\u2019t need to go back 2,500 years to see how this problem started. The Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, which restricted Iran\u2019s right to enrich uranium. Trump decided this was the worst deal ever negotiated, and he tore it up in 2018. Relieved of the obligations of Obama\u2019s deal, Iran started to enrich uranium to a higher level. This posed a threat to the United States, which the U.S. supposedly obliterated in its attack on Iran last year, and had to re-obliterate in its follow-up attack on Iran this year.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say the war is Trump\u2019s fault, because he never should have abandoned the Obama nuclear deal, but I guess there\u2019s room to argue about that.<\/p>\n

Finally, who\u2019s winning the battle of the online trolls?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very hard to troll Iran. Even if Iran is an Islamic republic with a theocratic core, thousands of its people, many of them innocent, have died. Pete Hegseth can post his online images of powerful American weaponry, but that\u2019s not really trolling. It\u2019s more like showing the bully kicking sand in the face of the 98-pound weakling. Trump can spout about how he\u2019s going to instruct the military to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, but at this point those repeated bluffs sound like a senile old man who\u2019s had one too many.<\/p>\n

So the U.S. is not trolling Iran effectively. But the Iranians, for their part, are actually pretty good at trolling. Iran has done a remarkably good job of using images created out of\u00a0Legos<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0to poke fun at Trump, divide America, and move global public opinion to its side.<\/p>\n

Trump, the ultimate cyberbully, is getting out-cyberbullied. Iran is owning the Trumpists.<\/p>\n

And the Pope and Iran are targets too hot to troll.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019d a thunk it?<\/p>\n

\n

Mark\u00a0Herrmann\u00a0spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>The Curmudgeon\u2019s Guide to Practicing Law<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate links). You can reach him by email at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>inhouse@abovethelaw.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Targets Too Hot To Troll<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
(Photo by SAUL LOEB \/ AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donald Trump has met his match.<\/p>\n

Twice.<\/p>\n

First, Trump has probably learned that one should not pick online fights with the Vicar of Christ.\u00a0Those fights are hard to win \u2014 maybe because the Pope\u2019s got a certain someone on his side.<\/p>\n

Having failed in jousting with the Pope, Trump decided to up the ante.\u00a0The President suggested that the Pope is merely the Vicar of Christ, whereas Trump is Christ himself.\u00a0But when Trump posted a\u00a0picture of himself as Christ<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 dressed in a toga, surrounded by angels, and hands glowing with heavenly light \u2014 even the MAGA faithful wouldn\u2019t buy it. Trump had to explain his blasphemy.\u00a0He decided to say that he didn\u2019t realize this was an image of Trump as Christ; he thought it was an image of Trump\u00a0as a physician<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How many ways is that excuse pitiful?\u00a0Let me count the ways.\u00a0First, look at the\u00a0picture<\/a>.\u00a0Any person who thinks that\u2019s an image of Trump as a physician is a moron.\u00a0But Trump says he thought the picture was of him as a physician.\u00a0Is Trump a moron?<\/p>\n

The alternative is that Trump is not a moron.\u00a0He knows full well that the picture shows himself as Christ, but he decided to lie about the picture in order to excuse himself.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does this explanation reflect on Trump?\u00a0He\u2019s ready to lie about his understanding of the image.\u00a0He disdains the public, thinking that the public is stupid enough to believe this obvious lie.\u00a0And his previously keen political instincts are fading, as Trump believes that blasphemy, coupled with telling an obvious lie, coupled with disdain for one\u2019s voters is somehow a useful public relations strategy.<\/p>\n

Protip:\u00a0Politicians should not pick fights with the Vicar of Christ.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or Christ himself.<\/p>\n

Got it?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s another target that\u2019s too hot to troll?<\/p>\n

Iran.<\/p>\n

In the battle of military might, the United States is defeating Iran.\u00a0The U.S. is destroying the targets that it attacks, and the Iranian counter-attacks are doing only modest damage.<\/p>\n

U.S. 1; Iran 0.<\/p>\n

In the battle of political wills, however, Iran is winning.\u00a0Iran may be suffering economically, but the Iranian government consists of religious fanatics who aren\u2019t worrying about the Iranian people.\u00a0And the Iranians have managed to close the Strait of Hormuz with relatively little firepower, thus creating a crisis for the U.S. and the world.\u00a0The Iranian government may be feeling less political pressure than Trump, who\u2019s haunted by higher gas prices and upcoming midterm elections.<\/p>\n

U.S. 1; Iran 1.<\/p>\n

In the battle of controlling the narrative, the victor probably depends on how you look at the situation.\u00a0Iran says Trump started this war two months ago by launching an unprovoked attack on it.\u00a0Trump says the war actually started in 1979, with the Iranian revolution and later attacks that Iran or its proxies launched on American targets.\u00a0Iran, of course, could say that the war started in 1953, when the United States returned the Shah to power in a coup against Prime Minister\u00a0Mohammad Mosaddegh.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And why stop there?\u00a0I bet historians could keep going back in time, blaming the United States and Iran for various things that occurred ever since the sixth century B.C., when King Croesus misinterpreted the prophecy saying that, if Lydia attacked Persia, a mighty\u00a0empire would fall<\/a>.\u00a0(Oops!\u00a0His bad.)<\/p>\n

But think about it differently.\u00a0You don\u2019t need to go back 2,500 years to see how this problem started. The Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, which restricted Iran\u2019s right to enrich uranium. Trump decided this was the worst deal ever negotiated, and he tore it up in 2018. Relieved of the obligations of Obama\u2019s deal, Iran started to enrich uranium to a higher level. This posed a threat to the United States, which the U.S. supposedly obliterated in its attack on Iran last year, and had to re-obliterate in its follow-up attack on Iran this year.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say the war is Trump\u2019s fault, because he never should have abandoned the Obama nuclear deal, but I guess there\u2019s room to argue about that.<\/p>\n

Finally, who\u2019s winning the battle of the online trolls?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very hard to troll Iran. Even if Iran is an Islamic republic with a theocratic core, thousands of its people, many of them innocent, have died. Pete Hegseth can post his online images of powerful American weaponry, but that\u2019s not really trolling. It\u2019s more like showing the bully kicking sand in the face of the 98-pound weakling. Trump can spout about how he\u2019s going to instruct the military to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, but at this point those repeated bluffs sound like a senile old man who\u2019s had one too many.<\/p>\n

So the U.S. is not trolling Iran effectively. But the Iranians, for their part, are actually pretty good at trolling. Iran has done a remarkably good job of using images created out of\u00a0Legos<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0to poke fun at Trump, divide America, and move global public opinion to its side.<\/p>\n

Trump, the ultimate cyberbully, is getting out-cyberbullied. Iran is owning the Trumpists.<\/p>\n

And the Pope and Iran are targets too hot to troll.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019d a thunk it?<\/p>\n

\n

Mark\u00a0Herrmann\u00a0spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>The Curmudgeon\u2019s Guide to Practicing Law<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate links). You can reach him by email at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>[email\u00a0protected]<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo by SAUL LOEB \/ AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB\/AFP via Getty Images) Donald Trump has met his match. Twice. First, Trump has probably learned that one should not pick online fights with the Vicar of Christ.\u00a0Those fights are hard to win \u2014 maybe because the Pope\u2019s got a certain someone on his side. Having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":149715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-634136694-3gZ7Gu.jpg?fit=594%2C393&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}