The President’s War is an ever-increasing disaster. He is increasingly vilified. And his speech will not change any of these things.
DoNald Trump leaves the Blue Room to speak about the war in Iran from Cross Hall of the White House, Wednesday, April 1, 2026.(Alex Brandon / Pool / AP) Narcissist that he is, Donald Trump needs an audience who admire him at public events. Otherwise, he gets bored. When he has to read a prepared speech without the help of an audience, his soul seems to leave his body.
So when Trump spoke to a group of pro-regime supporters and media at a news conference Wednesday, he was unscripted, relaxed and animated. But there was no adoring crowd Wednesday night, when Trump gave a highly touted prime time speech on the war in Iran.
Polls show trolling war supportand that of Trump approval rating reached historic lows. If there was ever a time when the president needed to bring some energy and focus to his communication with voters, it was this speech. Instead, we got the version of Trump that always emerges when he has to read prepared remarks and pretend to be a worthy incumbent: groggy, buzzed, and disengaged. Anyone looking for a coherent explanation of why the United States is at war and where the conflict is heading would have been left wanting.
At the press conference, Trump was asked what he planned to say. He replied”Basically, I’m going to tell everyone how awesome I am. What a phenomenal job I’ve done.” It made MAGA fans laugh, but it was also quite revealing.
Despite Trump’s loud and brazen honking – always a staple for this most self-centered of men – he must know that the war he has chosen is damaging his presidency.
Everyone can see that the war is not the quick victory Trump promised. Like himself admitshe “predicted” that the war “would be over in three days.” In fact, the war has been going on for a month and it is it looks more and more like a major failure.
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The US and Israeli militaries have inflicted enormous damage on Iran, assassinating many of its top politicians and killing thousands of civilians. But this carnage served few strategic purposes. The Iranian state has proven remarkably resilient and has retained the ability to inflict damage on Israel, US troops, and US-allied Gulf states. More importantly, by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, Iran demonstrated that it possessed a powerful economic weapon. Iran’s ability to close the strait has led to soaring oil prices, a collapse in stock markets and the possibility of a global recession.
Trump desperately needs to explain to people why all this bloodshed and hardship is necessary. But instead, he inadvertently continues to show Americans how disconnected his war goals are from their daily lives.
One moment from the press conference highlighted how little control Trump appears to have over the politics of the moment. Asked about federal funding for child care, Trump replied”The United States can’t take care of child care. It has to be on a state basis. We fight wars. Medicaid, Medicare – they can do it on a state basis. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.” Even a political party as irresponsible and incompetent as the Democrats often are should be able to exploit Trump’s confession that paying for this extremely unpopular war means the government cannot provide basic services to the public.
Trump’s speech It is unlikely to persuade a skeptical nation to support the war. Rather than offering anything new, he addressed some of his more outdated talking points and rehashed contradictory arguments that have already failed with voters. Thus, we had the greatest successes: “Barack Hussein Obama” concluded a bad agreement with Iran, which Trump was right to tear up; Iran was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons; previous presidents were too weak to do what Trump did; regime change was not the objective but was achieved; the Iranian government is eager to negotiate, but if it doesn’t, the United States and Israel would bomb it “into the Stone Age.”
This mixture of boasting and barbarity was typical of Trump. But that couldn’t hide the gaping gaps in his presentation. Trump notably was unable to answer the question of how the Strait of Hormuz should be reopened. At one point he said: “When this conflict is over, the strait will open naturally. It will open naturally.” It’s pure magical thinking, and like Chris Hayes note on MS NOW, echoed comments Trump made about Covid in April 2020: “But I think what’s happening is it’s going to go away. It’s going to go away.” Needless to say, Covid didn’t just “disappear.” Despite intermittent lockdowns and vaccines, he is still with us. Without a political solution involving negotiations with Iran, the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is also likely to be a problem that persists for years.
Besides being fanciful, Trump’s other solution to the Straits problem was to ask other countries to solve the problem he had created. His deeply irresponsible comments deserve to be quoted at length:
The United States imports almost no oil through the Strait of Hormuz and will not take any in the future. We don’t need it. We didn’t need it, and we don’t need it. We defeated and completely decimated Iran. They are decimated militarily, economically and in every other way. And countries around the world that receive oil through the Strait of Hormuz must ensure this passage. They must cherish it. They must grasp it and cherish it. They could do it easily. We will be helpful to them, but they should take the initiative to protect the oil they so desperately depend on.
So, to the countries that cannot afford fuel, and many of which refuse to get involved in decapitating Iran — we had to do it ourselves — I have a suggestion. No. 1, buy oil in the United States of America. We have a lot of them. We have so many. And No. 2, develop some delayed courage. I should have done it before. I should have done it with us like we asked. Go to the strait and take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran was virtually decimated. The hardest part is done, so this should be easy.
Needless to say, opening the strait will not be “easy.” If this were “easy,” then the United States and Israel would be able to do it. Other countries are unlikely to accept Trump’s offer either, given that he shows every day how foolish it is to go to war with Iran.
Behind all his bluster, Trump’s speech reeked of desperation. He has locked himself into a war that he does not know how to end, especially since the Iranians have every good reason to inflict as much suffering as possible to obtain real concessions (including ironclad guarantees against future attacks).
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Trump’s failure was particularly evident in the way he addressed the question of the duration of the war. He said it would be over in “two or three weeks.” This in itself will do a lot of damage. But he also tried to avoid the problem of the war lasting much longer than expected by comparing it to other conflicts such as World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War. Trump noted that the Vietnam War lasted “19 years, five months and 29 days.” This comparison is in fact not reassuring, because the worry is that, like that of Vietnam, the war in Iran will become a quagmire from which the United States will not be able to extricate itself.
Trump might be getting a bit of a dopamine hit from gloating about how well the war is going. But even his sleazy sales pitch can’t hide the fact that he’s a desperate man who knows he’s created a disaster.
Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.