President Donald Trump’s own aides say he’s become “more erratic” in recent weeks as he’s forced to confront the “limits on his power,” The New York Times reported Sunday.
Those “limits,” according to the Times, were exposed by the president’s inability to achieve his stated objectives in his deeply unpopular war against Iran, despite the overwhelming superiority of the U.S. military.
“In recent weeks, he has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of,” the Times’ report reads.
“He has discovered limits on his power that he could have scarcely imagined when he began full combat operations on Feb. 28, when he set out goals for a swift end to Iran’s nuclear program and the overthrow of the country’s government. Five months later, those goals remain almost entirely unaccomplished.”
Despite his efforts, Trump and his administration have failed to not only achieve their objectives in the war against Iran, but have been unable to combat surging oil prices and inflation. And those failures, according to his own aides, have left him rattled.
“Those limits have left him deeply frustrated, his aides say, and have made him more erratic, even by Trumpian standards,” the Times’ report reads.
“Not all of Mr. Trump’s frustrations, people close to the president say, are driven by the war, now so unpopular that only 29 percent of Americans polled by the Washington Post and Ipsos approved of his handling of the conflict. But much of it is. And the angst is clear as he promises to stop Iran’s nuclear program at any cost, while his allies at home want out.”
As noted by the Times, Trump only has three options at his disposal: escalate his military campaign against Tehran, which has already shown little success, rely on sanctions, which similarly have failed to topple Iran’s government, or “declare victory and go home,” which Trump appeared receptive to last month after agreeing to a tentative peace deal that quickly fell apart.
Pulling out of the war entirely, the Times noted, however, would “define his legacy,” and “make clear that there are more constraints on his power than he believed in January, when he declared that his reach was limitless.”
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