Last year on this date, Donald Trump wanted to proclaim his "Liberation Day" tariffs to the world. Saner heads prevailed at the White House, and Trump was talked into postponing his announcement for a day. This year, those saner heads obviously weren't available, so Trump is going to address the nation today (of all days) on the state of his war of choice with Iran, with gas prices heading north of $4.00 a gallon. How could anyone live almost 80 years in America without realizing the cultural significance of this date on the calendar? It's a mystery, that's for sure.

Personally, I think it'd be amusing if Trump took to the airwaves tonight and boldly announced he was resigning the office of the presidency at midnight tonight. Then just before the clock struck twelve, he could put out a statement on social media saying: "April Fool's! Gotcha!"

But that's not very likely to happen. Instead, we will get Trump lying about the war, lying about his reasons for going to war, lying about the status of the war, lying about the objectives of the war, and lying about how he's going to boldly end it. And he won't finish the speech with a hearty "April Fool's!" so the media and the public will have to (once again) pretend to take everything he says seriously.

Being as much of a fool as the average American, I thought I would offer my own preview of what Trump is likely to say this evening. 'Tis a fool's errand indeed, since he could say just about anything tonight, but I bet I get at least a few of these right.

First and foremost, Donald Trump is going to proclaim success. This has been the most successful war in the history of all successes, so much so that the dictionary should just replace the definition of "success" with a stern photograph of Trump's face and the words "(see: Donald Trump, Iran War)" as explanation. In fact, much of his speech will likely be nothing more than his chest-beating about how awesome American military power is, and how we've bombed them back to (as he calls it, apparently unaware that it's supposed to be a singular and not plural term) "the Stone Ages." If I were to create a drinking game for the speech, I would say everyone has to take a drink every time Trump uses the word "obliterated." Maybe he'll even slip up and use the term "Mission Accomplished," even? He will proclaim it to be the most successful success of any success ever successed throughout the entire history of all successes, period (and he'll do it over and over again).

Snark aside (even though I bet it proves to be fairly accurate snark), much of Trump's speech is likely to consist of defining his objectives downwards. This is the first formal address Trump has given the public during the war, so his objectives have been built on quicksand all along -- shifting daily (sometimes hourly) depending on the whims of Donald Trump's peripatetic mind. Asking for a list of war objectives from his cabinet members and other aides doesn't help either, since they try to match what they say to whatever Trump has settled on for that particular day, meaning their lists shift just as often as Trump's does.

The original goal -- Trump's big objective that caused him to begin the military buildup in the first place -- is now null and void. Trump watched on his television screen as the Iranian people rose up and took to the streets in protest of their government, and Trump thought it'd be a dandy idea to tell them: "We've got your backs!" This didn't work out the way he had planned, mostly because it takes a long time to move warships and troops and pilots and sailors around the world to get close enough to Iran to be a threat. He had to call back the aircraft carrier he had foolishly sent to the Caribbean to bomb random fishing boats, and send it steaming towards the Persian Gulf instead. After roughly a month, finally all the assets were in place.

Unfortunately, by that point, the protest movement had died out -- literally, in many cases, as the Iranian government reportedly just slaughtered them in the streets or rounded them up and executed them by the thousands. But Trump wasn't deterred, and egged on by Israel's Netanyahu, he decided to launch his war anyway. Bibi whispered in Trump's ear that they could take out most of the leadership with one bombing raid, and then (obviously) the Iranian people would return to the streets and overthrow their repressive government and install a new regime much more friendly to the United States. The whole thing would be over in a couple of days, max.

That, obviously, did not happen. It has not happened since. And it is not likely to happen any time soon, either.

So Trump has taken to defining the term "regime change" downward. Instead of meaning "removing the current oppressive government and replacing it with either an opposition government or a whole new governmental setup," Trump now insists it just means that some new guys are now in control. Here is how he now talks about the subject:

We've had regime change, if you look, already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed. They're all dead... we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before. It's a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change. Regime change is an imperative, but I think we have it automatically.

And this, from a different interview:

I didn't need regime change, but we got it because of the casualties of war. We got it. So we have regime change.

Hey presto! Regime change! Ta da!

The Iranian form of government has not changed. It still has a supreme leader, the Ayatollah. He's the son of the one we assassinated at the start of the war, and he's reportedly even more of a hardliner than his dad was. The rest of Iran's government and military is also exactly the same as it was before the war started -- Trump used the phrase "Iran's New Regime President" today, even though Iran's president is the same guy who has held the job for over a year. The regime has not changed, but Trump will insist it has tonight, no doubt.

The second big objective for this war was to remove Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon. Last year, Trump swore he had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program, but that was a lie -- they still have enough highly-enriched uranium (around 1,000 pounds of it) to make roughly 10 nuclear devices. It's currently thought to be buried far underground. But now, Trump considers it no big deal. "That's so far underground, I don't care about that," he told Reuters today. "We'll always be watching it by satellite," he added. So, as far as Trump is concerned, it is no longer a problem -- simply by redefining the objective down to "the status quo ante."

Reportedly, Trump told the Pentagon to come up with a plan to remove all of what he calls "nuclear dust" (it's not, it is in fact gaseous), but when they told him it would be very dangerous and probably take weeks if not months and involve lots of American casualties, Trump seems to have soured on the idea (at least, for now). So we will leave Iran at the end of the war just as close to taking the final steps to build nuclear weapons as they were at the start of it.

Another objective was to destroy Iran's ability to launch missiles towards Israel, towards the Gulf states, towards oil tankers in the Gulf, and towards American military forces. No matter how many times Trump swears that they've all been "obliterated," however, they just seem to keep launching more of them. And Israel seems to be running out of its high-tech interceptor missiles, so it's becoming more of a danger to them. But tonight, Trump will probably continue to define this objective down and insist that they've all been blown up.

One objective that didn't exist at the start of the war was "reopening the Strait of Hormuz." Even though his generals warned him that Iran would indeed try to shut down the Strait by attacking oil tankers, Trump brushed these fears aside. As far as he was concerned, the war would only take a couple of days and this would never happen.

He was wrong, quite obviously. But the new way of thinking from Trump can be summed up as: "We broke it, and we don't care -- it's someone else's problem to fix." Seriously. He's not even pretending to define this one down, he's just going to walk away from it and leave it to Europe and other countries to somehow fix. As usual, he relayed this sentiment in the most petulant way possible, on social media:

All of those countries that can't get jet fuel because the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT. You'll have to start learning to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!

Nothing like stellar American leadership on the world stage, eh? Now it's just: "You're on your own, good luck!" Trump is likely to toy with America completely pulling out of NATO in his speech tonight (which is a subject worthy of a whole other column), but hopefully he won't actually do so (hopefully he'll just threaten to do so).

Other than defining all of his objectives down to a level where he can claim he has achieved them all already, Trump will also (no doubt) spew lots of other lies and propaganda as well. He may refer to his initial timeline for the war, which was "four to six weeks." We're over four weeks in, so he may announce the war will be over in two weeks' time (three, tops). This, of course, completely ignores the fact that Iran has a say in this equation too.

Trump has been an absolute fount of lies over the diplomatic efforts to end the war, insisting time and again that Iran is "begging for a deal," when they quite obviously are not. He's even taken to claiming that they are now begging for a ceasefire, which is almost certainly also not true.

Trump will also likely claim that high gas prices will come down instantly whenever he announces an end to the war. This will not even be remotely true, for multiple reasons. As long as the risk in the Strait of Hormuz still exists, prices are going to remain high, period. And even when they do crest and start to recede, it is going to take a long time for them to get anywhere near where they were when Trump decided to start his little war adventure.

Of course, the biggest question in all of this is whether Trump will order American troops to invade and/or occupy any Iranian territory. That would be the next step, if he is going to escalate the war. And it's what everyone is worried about right now. But anything he says on the subject can be taken with a grain of salt, since it could all be a giant head-fake designed to launch such an attack while Iran's guard is down. And Trump could change his mind on the subject tomorrow, of course. So taking him at his word on the "boots on the ground" question -- just like taking his word on any other subject about the war is really pretty downright foolish.

I mean, seriously... can no one left in the White House actually read a calendar?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant