MORNING GLORY: What will Donald Trump’s legacy be as a wartime president?
Every American alive today has been living in wartime. Every president since December 7, 1941, has been a wartime president. All of them. They can, and should, be judged by how they have waged war, both “cold” and “hot,” against imposing foes and against dangerous irritants. Provided he remains tough, determined and ruthless in this conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump will be the equal of any of them and far superior to most.
There have been stretches of time of largely noncombatant war since the conclusion of World War II, stretches that look a lot like the “peacetime” of the 1920s and 1930s.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 — 25 years ago this September — for example, the illusion of “peace” was pervasive. Indeed, a “peace dividend” was demanded and paid via deep cuts in defense spending because of that illusion.
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That illusion survived the United States invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War, the American cruise missile strikes on Iraq in 1993 which President Clinton ordered, the dozen years of conflict with Saddam that followed under both the first Bush and Clinton with the “no-fly zones,” Operation Infinite Reach — when Clinton ordered cruise missiles fired at Al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan — and NATO’s Operation Allied Force which was the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999.
Not until 9/11 did most of America collectively conclude that the world contained very bad actors and would never leave us alone or allow us to be indifferent to rising threats.
After 9/11 through the debacle of our collapse in Afghanistan in 2021, no one doubted we were in wars. There were obvious reminders in the tragic killings and wounding of American service members in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters. And there was the no-longer-possible-to-ignore threat posed by the rise of China into our “pacing threat,” the descent of Russia into dictatorship and the successful lunge of North Korea for a nuclear arsenal.
Through both the long period of illusory peace and the obvious wartime of 2001 to 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States. It has been thus since the hostage crisis of 1979, through the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in 1983, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996 and the long shadowy campaign of Iranian surrogates against our military in Iraq which killed and wounded thousands of our troops. The fanatics in Iran have not stopped chanting “Death to America” since 1979. They have always meant it.
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Iran’s grand plan was to gain nuclear weapons. Its secondary plan was to amass a missile force so vast and threatening to its neighbors (and eventually Europe and perhaps even America) to assure that the United States and Israel would never strike at the nuclear weapons assembly line. With the immunity that comes with nuclear weapons, the ayatollahs would have been free to pursue their agenda of the destruction of Israel and America.
Presidents before Trump have all vowed that Iran would not be allowed to have such weapons. All of them since Iran set out on this path. None of them acted. They did not act either against Iran’s expeditionary force of terrorists — the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard built and deployed in the first instance by Qassem Soleimani — or Iran’s proxies. Until Trump.
President Carter was paralyzed by the mullahs. President Reagan, intent on confronting the Soviets, withdrew from the confrontation with a much smaller threat in the 1980s, and while President George H.W. Bush destroyed Saddam’s army in 1991, he did not advance to Baghdad much less beyond and into Iran.
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President Clinton could not stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons because he believed the cost to be too high. He would not concern himself with a distant threat when he could not contain the immediate one. North Korea became a nuclear power on Clinton’s watch.
President George W. Bush was a superb wartime president as he battled Islamist extremism and eventually won through to stability in Iraq. He and every other leader in the West were wrong about WMDs, but he persevered, and the Iraqi people have a much brighter future ahead than they would have had under Saddam’s sadist sons. The conclusion of Bush’s intelligence community was that Iran, afraid and chastened, had abandoned its nuclear ambitions. That “IC” was wrong.
President Obama has been the worst of the post-war presidents because he failed even at doing nothing. He did worse than nothing. He acted to legitimize Iranian ambitions and made a $1.7 billion dollar down payment on his policy of appeasement followed by billions of dollars more in sanctions relief through the meaningless promises of the “JCPOA” — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry with the ayatollahs in 2015.
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When Trump gained the presidency in 2017, ruthless realism returned to the Oval Office. Trump tore up the JCPOA — as it had not been a treaty but simply an “Executive Agreement.” It was, of course, his right to do so.
Trump struck Syria twice for using chemical weapons, restoring a “red line” Obama had erased. (Will the new Obama Library have a “Red Line” room into which visitors disappear?) Trump also ordered the destruction of Russia’s “little green men” who dared to attack U.S. forces in Syria. And when Iran would not stop trying to kill Americans in Iraq, Trump ordered Soleimani killed in January 2020, when the Iranian terrorist set foot in Iraq.
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Then the 2020 election and the disaster for the world that was the long regency of whomever was running Joe Biden around while the sadly diminished Biden inhabited the Oval. We won’t know for years who designed the national security policy in those years, but we know whoever was making the decisions oversaw the debacle in Afghanistan which led to the second Russian invasion of Ukraine —the first had come under Obama — and Iran’s lurch towards nuclear weapons and more and more missiles with which to defend that lurch.
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Five months after he returned to power, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer and the Iranian nuclear weapons program was obliterated. At that point, Trump gave the theocrats in Tehran a choice — abandon your ambitions or face another round of punishment. Ayatollah Khamenei misjudged Trump. The Iranians began again to seek nuclear weapons and, this time, to also produce so many ballistic missiles that no one dared stop them.
Trump, along with the Israeli Prime Minister, dared. Iran’s military, including their nuclear weapons facilities and their missile factories are in ruins. The ongoing campaign is leveling the regime’s ability to rebuild others, and it may yet destroy the oil infrastructure it would need to begin to pay to start again down this path.
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By being tough with the mullahs, indeed ruthless and transparent, Trump has already done the world a great favor. The “Alliance of Tyrants” has suffered blow after blow since Trump returned and more are coming as Iran shudders and communist Cuba teeters on the brink of throwing off their dictators.
President Trump really would like to leave a legacy of peace. But he is the sort of tough and indeed ruthless Commander-in-Chief the U.S. needs to put away its enemies, not merely put them in timeout. Here’s hoping he sees this battle through until Iran cannot menace us, Israel, the Gulf Nations or anyone for a generation or three.
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Trump scolds reporter as ‘very obnoxious’ over question on Air Force One, blasts ‘most corrupt’ ABC News
President Donald Trump scolded a reporter as “very obnoxious” who attempted to ask about sending troops to the Middle East as part of the war with Iran and blasted ABC News as “corrupt” on Sunday.
Trump was asked during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One if he could explain why thousands of Marines and sailors are being sent to the region. The president appeared to shush the reporter before responding.
“You’re a very obnoxious person,” Trump said before quickly moving on to another reporter.
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The president was earlier asked, reportedly by the same correspondent, about a fundraising email sent by a Trump PAC that featured a photo of him wearing a baseball hat during a recent dignified transfer ceremony of service members who were killed during the war with Iran.
“I was at the dignified transfer, unlike a lot of other people,” Trump said.
The ABC reporter asked if the fundraising email was “appropriate.”
“I do,” Trump said. “I didn’t see it… we have a lot of people working for us. There is nobody that’s better to the military than me. Look at the election results, look at the kind of votes that we get. Look at the poll numbers.”
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Trump, who was returning to Washington, D.C., from a weekend at Mar-a-Lago, then asked the reporter who she was with.
“ABC News,” the reporter answered.
“One of the worst, most fake, most corrupt,” Trump responded. “You know what, ABC News, I think it’s maybe the most corrupt news organization on the planet. I think they’re terrible.”
Trump then declared, “I don’t want any more from ABC News.”
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ABC News did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital‘s request for comment.
Trump also said there was “AI-generated” and “fake” news coming out of Iran.
In 2024, ABC News and its top anchor, George Stephanopoulos, agreed to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit. Trump filed the suit against Stephanopoulos after he asserted that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a civil case during a contentious interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.
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During Sunday’s press gaggle, Trump also suggested the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to stand with the U.S. in defense of the Strait of Hormuz or face a “very bad” future.
Trump admin official says there’s a ‘very good chance’ gas prices will be back to normal by summer
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that there’s a “very good chance” gas prices will be normal by summer.
“After the conflict is over, you’ll start to see prices come back down, but Iran is immediately going to impede flow through the Straits of Hormuz, launching attacks at all of their neighbors. Even those completely uninvolved in this conflict illustrates why it is so important to defang this regime,” Wright told NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.”
“It’s been the greatest supporter of terrorism in the world and the greatest killer of American soldiers in 20 years has been Iran, and we haven’t fought a conflict against them until this,” Wright said.
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The comments came as the war between the United States and Iran continues to escalate, with the Trump administration signaling the conflict may last longer than initially anticipated.
While U.S. military forces’ involvement in Operation Epic Fury is underway, oil markets have been shaken.
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Americans could face higher gas prices after the Iranian regime threatened to attack vessels that cross the Strait of Hormuz, where about 20% of the world’s daily oil supply passes through.
Wright added, “It’s just this president did not want to kick this can down the road to the next administration. The world simply can’t see a nuclear-armed Iran, and so I’m proud of his actions, but yes, it is a short-term disruption of the flow of energy.”
“Americans are feeling it right now. Americans will feel it for a few more weeks, but in the end, we will have removed the greatest risk to global energy supplies. We’ll go to a world more abundant in energy, more affordable in energy and less risky for American soldiers and commerce in the Middle East,” Wright said.
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“Are you confident the gas will be back under $3 by the busy summer travel season, Mr. Secretary?” Welker asked Wright.
“There’s a very good chance that will be true. You know, there’s no guarantees in war. The timeframe is still not entirely clear, but I think that’s certainly a goal of the administration and very possible,” Wright said.
According to AAA, the national average for gas prices is currently $3.71 per gallon.
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The White House did not respond for comment from Fox News Digital.