U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 2, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Early Saturday morning, February 28, Americans woke up to the news that U.S. forces, on orders from President Donald Trump, were carrying out military strikes against Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Shiite fundamentalist dictator since 1989, was killed. And since then, the conflict has escalated — with Iran launching retaliatory strikes against U.S. military installations in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other countries in the Middle East. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi officials, was attacked by Iranian drones. And Israel is facing missile strikes from both Iran and Lebanon's pro-Iran Shiite militia Hezbollah.
During an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," posted on March 3, journalist Mark Jacob cited the strikes against Iran as an example of how "erratic" Trump is at this point. And he warned that Trump will grow even more "erratic" as his desperation grows.
When host Greg Sargent noted that only 27 percent of Americans, according to a Reuters poll, approve of Trump's attack on Iran, Jacob responded, "I mean, he was already way down in the polls. There's actually not that much farther he can go, considering that some people will support absolutely anything he does because of the whole cult mentality, which we've been talking about for a long time. He really has lost the country, opinion-wise. And one thing that scares me is that as that happens, he becomes more desperate and does more erratic and autocratic things."
Jacob noted that Trump has set off a broad conflict in the Middle East, "What he's done is unleash a Middle East war — it's not just an attack between Israel, the U.S., and Iran; all these other countries are involved now, and Lebanon is in it. So he has sparked a wide war in the Middle East, and you don't put the genie back in the bottle that fast. So, I think it's going to be very damaging…. And I think you may find some Republicans start saying, 'Well, this is not a good idea.'"
Jacob stressed, however, that the Iran conflict is only one example of how "erratic" Trump is.
The journalist told Sargent, "Here's the scary thing: the worse Trump does in public opinion, the more dangerous he is at this point. And you’ve already started seeing these moves toward fiddling with the elections. One thing about having a big war in the Middle East is you can get a situation where the federal government — Trump's government —declares that there's a bunch of terrorist threats, so we have to really clamp down on security, and therefore we'll declare an emergency, therefore invoke the Insurrection Act, and we will federalize our elections. He's talking about that. And I'm just worried that the more unpopular he gets, the more likely that is to happen."