Top White House official warns aides against selling Trump 'rose-colored view' of Iran war

U.S. President Donald Trump with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

After returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump made sure his second administration was much different from his first. Trump clashed with many of his appointees during his first presidency, but he avoided that during the second by surrounding himself with MAGA loyalists who — unlike former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton — would tell him what he wanted to hear.

According to Time reporter Eric Cortellessa, loyalist Trump aides in the White House claimed that his war against Iran was enjoying widespread public support. But White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, behind closed doors, sounded the alarm about their "rose-colored view."

In an article published by Time on April 2, Cortellessa reports, "The president has begun many recent mornings watching video clips compiled by military officials of battlefield successes, according to a senior administration official. He has told advisers that being the commander in chief to eliminate the nuclear threat posed by Iran could be one of his signature achievements. But Wiles, according to two White House sources, was concerned aides were giving the president a rose-colored view of how the war was being perceived domestically, telling Trump what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear. She had urged colleagues, the officials say, to be 'more forthright with the boss' about the political and economic risks."

That meeting, according to Cortellessa, "reflected a reality the White House can no longer ignore": that "time is running out before the president, his party, and the American public pay an even steeper price."

"Trump had promised to revive the economy and keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts," the Time reporter explains. "Now, he has started a war he had not gotten a mandate to wage, and the economic pain may only be beginning. A month into the largest oil shock in modern history, global growth forecasts are being slashed, shortages are emerging across Europe and Asia, and energy traders warn the world has yet to feel the full severity of the disruption. A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that is the primary exit route for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, could tip the global economy into recession."

The Trump Administration, according to Cortellessa, "now faces an acrobatic challenge: finding an off-ramp without appearing to have achieved too little."

"As the fighting drags on," the Time journalist observes, "Trump has been struck by Tehran's resolve…. Engineering a successor regime that is more stable and western-friendly than the one he aims to displace is proving trickier than Trump thought it would. The war has come to resemble a grim game of whack-a-mole, as one administration official describes it, with strikes eliminating successive leaders as officials search for a viable alternative to emerge from the wreckage."

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