This week in the saga

The ceasefire he announced is four hours old when it breaks, and at ten to seven on Tuesday morning he stops it the way he started it — in capital letters, addressed to one country by name, ordering pilots already in the air to turn around. Thirty-eight minutes later he reports that they have, and that on the way home they will give Iran a friendly plane wave. The rest of the week is spent defending the size of the hole: a network says the sites were only damaged, and he spends three days insisting they were obliterated while the Pentagon holds a press conference to say so on camera. Thursday the summit in the Netherlands agrees to five percent and he calls it the most unified in history. Friday afternoon the other supreme leader says he won, and the reply runs seventeen hundred words: I knew exactly where he was sheltered, and I did not let them kill him. Thirty-five minutes after that, without any bridge at all, he terminates all trade discussions with Canada over a digital tax. The war is over. The tariffs are not.