Friday Bite 10 April 2026

Eggregious

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Donald Trump, Easter Sunday.

This is our God: Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them… ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’ ”  Pope Leo, 29 March.

“The America that I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration.”  Bruce Springstein, 1 April

“The American president has lost his mind.” Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence, 7 April

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,”  Donald J Trump, 7 April

FOR A MINUTE there, I thought I’d have to write a Wednesday Bite. The ominous words of a president delivered in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, left little room for doubt. If the Iranian regime did not come to the table and open the Strait of Hormuz, it would be the end of its civilization. Iran had until 8:00 pm Eastern time to decide.

Even though we have become inured to this president’s lies, threats and distortions, his statement of intent sent chills down the spine. Was this the moment the world descended into a fireball, delivering on the promise of the Kali Yuga. Or was it just another teaser in the ongoing cliff-hanger that is Donald Trump’s presidency. “The entire country could be taken out in one night,” he told reporters on Monday, “and that night might be tomorrow night.”

Ninety minutes before Tuesday’s deadline, Trump posted, “Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE AND IMMEDIATE and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of 2 weeks.”

How magnanimous. And what a distortion of the truth. According to the Financial Times, far from Iran’s “begging for a deal”, it was the other way round and the Trump administration had been pressing Pakistan to broker an agreement. Which is almost certainly why we have no idea what the ten-point cease-fire plan actually comprises, at least from the United States’ perspective. On the one hand, it appears to be an Iranian wish list – the lifting of all sanctions on the country, continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz, US military withdrawal from the Middle East, an end to attacks on Iran and its allies, the release of frozen Iranian assets and a UN security council resolution making any deal binding. On the other hand, according to Donald Trump, “You don’t know what the points are. And many of them are very good points. I can’t talk about it… but all of them are good points.”

In the version released in Farsi, Iran also included the phrase “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear program. But for reasons that remain unclear, that phrase was missing in English versions shared by Iranian diplomats to journalists. To add to the confusion, while Pakistan and Iran believed Lebanon was part of the cease-fire agreement, the US and Israel apparently did not.

As it stands, at 6:45 pm UK time Friday, the Strait of Hormuz is all but closed. The hope is that Saturday’s meeting between US and Iranian officials in Pakistan will lead to clarity, better still an end to the conflict.

Many political pundits believe the cease-fire, imperfect as it may be, will hold. However, the approaching transits would say otherwise.

As the talks begin, Mars will be within a degree of a conjunction to Neptune (exact on Monday, 13 April) with Mercury following in its footsteps (exact on Friday, 17 April). Over the following weekend Mars will conjoin Saturn – Mercury, close on its heels – and by Friday (24 April) Venus will be conjunct Uranus and the Sun squaring Pluto. Unstable.  Explosive. Transformational. We can play around with these adjectives leaving room for actual events to play out, but I suspect that the cease-fire will be repeatedly broken, although it may be in the interests of everyone to keep on negotiating until the bitter end.

I looked at the new moon from the perspective of several countries, including Iran, but the influences of the time affect the United States most. Not only is Pluto on the Midheaven, suggestive of major changes in the leadership and running of the country, but the new moon itself (27 degrees Aries 30’) is closely square America’s Pluto. Transiting Pluto is conjunct the US south node, Neptune is conjunct the US IC and Mars and Saturn are squaring the nation’s Jupiter. In these connections, we might see America empowered and renewed but we could also see it rocked to its core.

Frankly, I’m shocked that an administration can stand behind a president who openly threatens genocide, whose ill-considered war has created a crisis of epic proportions for the whole globe and, contrary to disenfranchising the enemy, has given it the means to continue to hold the rest of the world to ransom. The Strait of Hormuz was an international waterway. No one owned it. Now Iran is the toll master. And Kharg Island, a giant toll booth.

If Sir Keir had taken the United Kingdom into a war without consulting parliament and/or the country, and ended up in a similar predicament, he’d have gone by now.

So, my question to myself was, could these explosive, unstable, transformational transits take Trump out of the White House?

They should but they probably won’t. At least not in the way of the 25th Amendment. As I see it, the only way this president will be removed from office is by an act of God.

Intriguingly, the Ascendant of the Aries new moon is conjunct Trump’s Midheaven and squaring his Mars, so maybe, just maybe, in the symbolism we can interpret some kind of collapse. More important, the solar eclipse of 27 February fell on the president’s Descendant, opposed his natal Mars and squared his Midheaven. These are certainly signs of a threat to his standing in the world, if not a threat to his person. If he manages to stay at the helm, and I’m not convinced that he will, he will be considerably weakened, and over time the movement to have him impeached or removed will grow.

WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT it. Out of nowhere, on Thursday afternoon, Melania Trump addressed the White House press pool (and the nation) from behind the podium bearing the presidential seal. She informed us that rumours surrounding her relationship with the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein, were unfounded – she barely knew him – and emails between her and Ghislaine Maxwell were nothing more than polite exchanges. Finally, she called on lawmakers to “give [Epstein’s] victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress”. Then she turned and left the way she came leaving behind a small trail of malapropisms.

Melania Trump is the least popular First Lady in history. She has certainly failed to embrace her role, which is why it was all the more shocking that she should suddenly take to the podium to explain herself. Apparently, the President knew nothing about it…

Quite why she felt she had to deny friendships with Epstein and Maxwell will become clear in the fullness of time, but it may have something to do with the civil defamation suit author Michael Wolff has filed against her. Discovery has remained frozen until now but a court ruling regarding the case is due any day. Michael Wolff is holding onto many interviews with Jeffrey Epstein and we can only assume that they are very revealing about the nature of his friendships with both Melania and Donald.

There could be another reason why Melania has suddenly thrust the Epstein files back into the spotlight and that is that it takes the focus away from Operation Epic Fury…

Who’d have thought it.

As you can see from the above chart, Melania has a Boomerang alignment – the Sun in Taurus is inconjunct Uranus and Neptune and opposed by Jupiter, and at this point in time, transiting Pluto is squaring the Sun-Jupiter opposition and triggering the rest of the configuration. Not only this, but with her Mars at three degrees Gemini, Uranus will shortly conjoin it.

We do not have a time of birth for Melania so we do not have the benefit of the angles, but these two transits are enough to have thrust her onto the horns of a dilemma. And since the Sun and Mars, two masculine principles, are the focus of the Pluto and Uranus transit, there is a nod to the instability and uncertain future of her husband, the president.

Friday Bite 3 April 2026

I am at Ammerdown House for the Decoding the Divine Conference.  The Friday Bite will return next week.

Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter.