U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Heuer
President Donald Trump has lost the Iran War, and not only can he not face it, but Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng also warns that things could get even worse as the mess grows.
Suebsaeng's morning newsletter cautions that Trump's "war has devolved into such a muddled Orwellian mess." His refusal to concede or accept a deal continues to make things worse.
Meanwhile, Trump has flip-flopped all over the place when it comes to the war. On Tuesday, Trump claimed that a deal was "two or three days" away. On Wednesday, the U.S. hit targets after an Iranian drone took down a U.S. helicopter. Trump threatened that night he would "bomb the sh—— out of them" and would be taking Kharg Island. Then, suddenly, Trump claimed that the U.S. has "ended the war with Iran."
CNN's Anderson Cooper mocked Trump on Thursday night for saying for the 39th time that there was a "deal with Iran."
Austrian economics scholar Murray Rothbard mocked, "The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, has apparently closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States, for the seventh time, won the war that wasn’t a war, so now the United States has to open the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the not-war began. The not-war began because Iran had uranium that was totally, completely, beautifully obliterated, so they can’t build the nuclear bomb they weren’t building, which is why the United States had to start the not-war it definitely didn’t start."
The president simply refuses to concede that he lost, Suebsaeng lamented. He recalled the Pentagon Papers scandal, which at its heart, was about administrations from both sides knowing full well that the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam. They just couldn't tell Americans. So, they continued to throw away money and American lives.
"President Trump is refusing to admit what most of his compatriots know: He lost, and there’s no sugar-coating it (but, boy, will Team Trump try)," explains Suebsaeng. The whiplash of deal or no deal in the war is "a perfect example of what happens when the world’s most chronically dunderheaded warmonger can’t just admit he got wrecked by a much smaller adversary."
“The chances of it change by the week,” one official tells Suebsaeng. “We think he’s going to, but then he doesn’t.”
By the time he backed off on Thursday, Trump still wasn't willing to acknowledge that he was being destroyed domestically and dragging his party down with him.
Suebsaeng compared the ordeal to Trump's host of NBC’s "Celebrity Apprentice," which made it clear that the president must "have his ego spared from two of the simplest words in the English language: 'I lost.'"