President Donald Trump observes a military demonstration at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, during a visit to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump has apparently approved attack plans against Iran though has so far stopped short of officially giving the order, according to the Wall Street Journal. And one columnist thinks whether the president of the United States gets the nation involved in another foreign war could be decided by Trump's self-esteem.
In a recent op-ed for USA TODAY, columnist Rex Huppke posited that Trump's recent actions could be attributed to the world's most powerful man having a crisis of self-confidence. Huppke argued that the commander-in-chief's deployment of U.S. military personnel to the nation's second-most populous city ended in an anticlimactic fashion, and his sparsely attended military parade didn't move the needle either.
According to the columnist, a new foreign war is just part of "the quest to quench this man’s insecurity," opining that even being among other foreign leaders at the G7 summit in the Canadian Rockies didn't do enough to satisfy his ego.
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Huppke pointed out that that Trump left the G7 summit before its official conclusion under the pretense that he had to return to Washington to address the escalating tensions in the Middle East between Israel and Iran after the former carried out a series of strikes on the latter. However, the USA TODAY columnist observed that Trump's response "seemed to largely involve posting unhinged comments on social media, bizarrely advising residents of Tehran to evacuate and, despite claiming the United States isn’t involved in Israel’s ongoing attacks on Iran, boldly proclaiming: 'We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.'"
"Trump is proving, as if we needed proof, that insecure men are dangerous," Huppke wrote after declaring that Trump's "sad-boy feelings will always override what's best for America."
"They act impulsively, with no focus beyond soothing their own tender feelings," he continued. "Dispatching troops against American citizens didn’t make Trump feel big. A military parade didn’t make him feel big. He didn’t feel big around other world leaders at the G7 summit, so he left and did some online hollering and saber-rattling.
"And now? We wait to see if our capricious president needs to drop a bunker-busting bomb on Iran to feel big," he added.
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Click here to read Huppke's full op-ed in USA TODAY.