Reality check: Angry voters face the consequences of buying the Trump 'myth'

Employees attend an event with U.S. Vice President JD Vance at Pointe Precision in Plover, Wisconsin, U.S., February 26, 2026. Matt Rourke Pool via REUTERS2

New York Times columnists say President Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed master of deal making, is struggling to deal with his Iran war. But contributing opinion writers E.J. Dionne Jr. and Robert Siegel and opinion columnist Carlos Lozada say that deal-making talent was never a thing.

“This whole notion of Trump as the master deal maker, as deal maker in chief, it’s all part of a long-running Trump mythology that was part of ‘The Art of the Deal,’ part of ‘The Apprentice.’ I think that what we’re seeing now, very clearly, in the second term is the limits to his deal-making prowess, especially internationally,” said Lozada. “So, you see the president making threats with timelines and cease-fires that come and go, and get extended till the schedule, the time frame, is sort of meaningless. He’s not really trying to manage a war; he’s trying to manage the news cycle, manage the markets, and hold on to his fracturing coalition.”

Trump’s best talent is actually his capacity to deceive, and Dionne said the template for his “ability to spin, to lie, to intimidate, to distract from any problems was set when he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.”

But now, as the consequences of Trump’s entirely voluntary war with Iran land hard on Americans’ gas pumps and groceries, Dionne said Trump is learning that “there are some things that can’t be spun.”

“Trump was elected with a promise to, on Day 1: bring down prices. And he sent a strong message that this was going to be a central purpose of his administration. And he’s done, you could say, exactly the opposite of that. The tariffs, whatever their long-term effect will be, clearly increased rather than decreased prices. And now this war has increased prices for oil and, therefore, lots of other things. And voters are noticing that. And no matter what he says about affordability being a word invented by his opponents, people see that. And when you are as ill-prepared for this war as Trump clearly was — when you expect your enemy to fold instantly, and win as easily as he seemed to win in, as he won in, Venezuela — you are not prepared for what we face.”

Trump’s ineptitude, said Dionne, is more than apparent in his stumbling attempts to hash out an agreement with the nation he attacked.

“When you’re looking at these negotiation attempts, it really underscores how this is the CliffsNotes presidency that just doesn’t take detail seriously,” said Dionne. “When former President Barack Obama negotiated the deal with Iran, there were all sorts of people there, including physicists, like the energy secretary from my hometown, Ernest Moniz. Here, you got a real estate guy, his son-in-law and the vice president.”

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