FOR TRUMP, IT'S NOT SEPTEMBER 12

I thought America might rally around President Trump after he ordered bombs dropped on Iranian nuclear sites. I imagined that might happen because I've seen the American public's response to previous Republican wars -- not just the ones we fought after the 9/11 attacks, but also the ones we fought when Americans clearly weren't in imminent danger (Grenada, Panama, the first Iraq war). In the recent past, Americans have trusted Republicans when they said military force was necessary, at least at first. Republicans were seen as manly and heroic. Their patriotism was seen as pure. Their wars were portrayed as pure good versus pure evil. Americans believed Republican presidents, even when (in the case of Grenada, for instance) they had no idea why the hell we were fighting.

That isn't happening now, and I'm not sure Trump's cease-fire will help, even if it eventually holds. Yesterday we read a YouGov poll showing that 46% of Americans disapprove of the bombing and only 35% approve. CNN's numbers are worse for Trump:

Americans disapprove of the strikes, 56% to 44%, according to the survey, with strong disapproval outpacing the share who strongly approve....

Majorities of independents (60%) and Democrats (88%) disapprove of the decision to take military action in Iran. Republicans largely approve (82%). But just 44% of Republicans strongly approve of the airstrikes, far smaller than the group of Democrats who strongly disapprove (60%), perhaps reflecting that some in Trump’s coalition are broadly distrustful of military action abroad.

A 58% majority overall say the strikes will make Iran more of a threat to the US, with just 27% believing it will lessen the threat and the rest expecting it to do neither. Even among those who support the strikes, just 55% expect them to lessen the threat level.

Some of this seems to be Trump-specific.

Just over half of Americans, 55%, expresses little or no trust in Trump to make the right decisions about the US use of force in Iran, with 45% saying they trust him moderately or a great deal.

Even Americans who trust Trump on some issues appear not to trust him on this one. I think he might have had a chance of winning the public over, as Ronald Reagan and the Bushes did, if he seemed capable of gravitas. But he always seems jittery, impetuous, and whiny. Unlike past Republican presidents, he can't seem to suspend those qualities even for a short time during a crisis. He never seems like a steady hand on the tiller, the way past Republicans did, even if appearances were deceiving. This was Trump after the cease-fire was declared and then challenged:

🇺🇸🇮🇱🇮🇷 Trump says Israel and Iran “don’t know what the f*ck they’re doing.”

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— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 7:10 AM

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump maximally overpromised: Vote for Kamala Harris and get World War III, vote for Trump and get world peace instantly. Did anyone outside the GOP base believe that Trump would arrive at this goal through steadiness? No -- if they believed him, they thought he'd be the clever dealmaker, and also the tough guy who pursued "peace through strength." They knew he had one mode -- extremely volatile -- but they hoped he'd be so volatile that he'd frighten the rest of the world and we'd never need to fight, or he'd end wars through shrewdness. (Look, don't blame me for these characterizations -- I'm just trying to imagine the positive qualities that non-base voters might see in Trump.)

Trump didn't intimidate or outnegotiate Iran. Instead, he chose violence. His promise to swing voters was that he'd have no reason to do that.

So no one's rallying around him. According to opinion polls, he was already underwater on foreign policy (-11.2, according to Real Clear Polling). And now he's desperate to declare victory and demand a Nobel Prize. It's not a good look.

In a way, it's COVID all over again -- his need to be praised, and to be reassured that there's no danger anymore thanks to him, is the same as it was then. At least he hasn't screwed this up as much as he screwed up the pandemic (so far).