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Presidential addresses typically are reserved for big moments that define the United States. Harry Truman, in a stateroom of the U.S.S. Augusta, announcing the U.S. had changed the world by introducing nuclear weapons to the battlefield. George W. Bush, from the Oval Office, urging Americans to keep the faith after the brazen attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A little more than three weeks later, Bush, in his private office, telling the world U.S. forces had begun a military operation against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Barack Obama, in the White House’s Cross Hall, informing the country that 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden had been killed by elite U.S. forces in Pakistan. Those were giant days that changed the course of U.S. and global interests for a generation, moments that contemporaries will always remember where they were when they heard.
And then there’s Donald Trump’s speech Wednesday night. In a little more than 19 minutes, the incumbent President offered a meandering series of statements that were as contradictory as they were unhelpful to his failing attempts to rally the world behind the joint military operation by the U.S. and Israel to eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran. Yes, the Ayatollah and much of his leadership team have been killed. (“They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable,” Trump boasted.) But the regime survives, Iran’s military has closed the Strait of Hormuz to most oil freighters and is launching reactionary strikes at others in the region, and Washington is largely standing alone on this issue.
To hear Trump step onto a stage typically reserved for history-making moments, it was like listening to a student who did not come prepared to make a specific argument and instead chased changing theses based on instinct. The evening felt like a performance-art version of his social media posts. Trump is claiming a total win while threatening harsh escalation. He is demanding credit for an economy that is shaken daily by his vacillations on the war’s goals but says it’s all a short-term problem. And he is offering an uneasy mix of George H. W. Bush’s nuclear de-escalation agenda, George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda, and even Bill Clinton’s and Jimmy Carter’s chase of Middle East peace. Describe victory however you like, because that’s enough for Trump.
“We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said.
We should strap in for a long, vague victory lap to this war.
Trump at one point touted a “decisive, overwhelming victory” and claimed “never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks.”
And at another, he seemed to say that victory was unfinished. “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” Trump said. “We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.”
In one moment, he predicted the Strait of Hormuz “will just open up naturally.” In another, he told buyers of Middle East oil to take responsibility for the passage that is crippled in response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. “The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it. We haven’t needed it, and we don’t need it,” Trump said. “We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.”
It was as if Trump threw all the possible things that might calm some Americans’ worries together and stitched it together like a foreign policy Frankenstein.
To put this moment in context, it’s worth looking at the polls. Just one-third of Americans believe Trump has a clear plan to handle the situation in Iran, according to CNN’s polling unit. About the same number, 34%, say they approve of the decision to launch military strikes against Iran; that’s down seven points in the last month. A dismal 71% of Americans say Congress shouldn’t give the White House the $200 billion it wants to fight this war. And 68% oppose ground troops in Iran; there are currently 50,000 military personnel in the region.
Noticeably absent from Trump’s prepared remarks: any suggestion that U.S. ground troops would join the fight in Iran or any mention of NATO, that trans-Atlantic pact that Trump has repeatedly hinted the United States might abandon or upend if allies don’t step up and join the assault on Iran. With Trump’s MAGA base flaking as their leader inches away from his non-interventionist identity and seems ready to abandon an alliance that has made the U.S. an indispensable player in the post-World War II pecking order, his choice to stay silent on both will be much scrutinized.
Also left unsaid: the true drain on the economy this fighting has unleashed. Trump, as he likes to do, noted Wall Street had set dozens of records on his watch. And he cast the spiking energy costs and growing prices of other goods and services as a brief blip worth enduring for big change in Iran.
Trump delivered his address to mark one month since the war began. He then compared it to other years-long conflicts like World Wars I and II, Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq. By contrast, Iran has been easy to muzzle, Trump suggested.
“It’s really no longer a threat. They were the bully of the Middle East. But they’re the bully no longer,” Trump said.
The residents of that region who were hearing air-raid sirens as Trump began speaking would probably like a word.
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