**White House Tries to Repackage a Threat Against 90 Million Civilians as a "Negotiating Style"**

President Donald Trump told the world that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" — a direct threat aimed at the more than 90 million people living in Iran — and his White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stood at the podium the next day and called it good strategy. "I understand the questions about the President's rhetoric, but what the President cares most about is results," Leavitt told reporters, "and in fact, his very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the results that you are all witnessing today." When pressed on how the United States could claim moral authority while threatening to wipe out an entire civilization, Leavitt called the question "frankly insulting."

The threat was not vague. In the days leading up to his Truth Social post, Trump laid out exactly what he intended to destroy: every bridge in Iran, every power plant, oil wells, Kharg Island — the country's main oil export terminal — and "possibly all desalination plants." These are not military targets. These are the systems that keep a population of 90 million people alive — their electricity, their drinking water, their ability to move food and medicine. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in war is a violation of international law, full stop. Human rights experts did not mince words. Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, said Trump was "openly threatening" to carry out a war crime. Iran's representative at the United Nations said the threats "constitute incitement to war crimes and potentially genocide."

The legal framework is plain. The United Nations Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 and written into U.S. law in 1988, defines genocide as actions "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," including "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction." Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and former State Department human rights lawyer, said the threat was "what would plausibly be considered genocide." Senator Patty Murray called it "the rantings of a bloodthirsty lunatic." Senator Chris Coons called it "a threat to commit a war crime, plain and simple."

When NBC News correspondent Garrett Haake asked Leavitt directly — "Why is the president threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the U.S. military, and how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?" — she did not answer the question. She pivoted to talking about Trump not being "afraid to use" the military and about Iran needing to make a deal. The administration has repeatedly claimed the U.S. military "always acts in accordance with the law" while the president publicly announces plans to destroy water and power systems that civilians depend on to survive.

The reaction was not limited to Democrats. Even former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene called for his removal from office through the 25th Amendment after the "whole civilization" post. Republican lawmakers privately expressed alarm, according to NBC News, which reported that a group of GOP members read the threat "with alarm" in a large text chain — though few said anything publicly. The gap between what elected officials say behind closed doors and what they say in front of cameras is part of why this kind of rhetoric escalates unchecked.

For Black communities and communities of color watching this unfold, the pattern is familiar and the stakes are personal. The same government that threatens to annihilate an entire nation of Brown people abroad has sanctioned the International Criminal Court for investigating U.S. and Israeli nationals for potential war crimes. The same government that talks about "results" over "rhetoric" is the one whose war has spiked gas prices over a dollar per gallon for most Americans — hitting working-class families and Black households the hardest — while the Treasury Secretary calls it a "small bit of economic pain." When the people absorbing the pain at home and abroad are disproportionately Black and Brown, the word "results" starts to sound a lot like the word "acceptable losses."

The two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is set to expire on April 22 with no formal extension in place. Negotiations have stalled over Iran's nuclear program. Trump has imposed a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, choking off Iran's oil exports. Leavitt says the White House feels "good about the prospects of a deal." But the facts on the ground tell a different story: a president who publicly threatens genocide, a press secretary who calls it a negotiating tactic, a Congress largely too afraid to say anything out loud, and millions of ordinary people — in Iran and in America — left to absorb whatever comes next.